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Darkland by Liz Williams
01/05/2006 . Source: Donna Jones 
pub: TOR-UK. 308 page enlarged paperback. Price: £10.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-4050-4125-0. Buy Darkland in the USA - or Buy Darkland in the UK  check out website: www.panmacmillan.com and www.tokuk.com
Vali, an assassin of the Skald , has disturbing memories of her past. She has the scars to prove it and new ones blossoming to remind her. Frey, a brother she is convinced has left her for dead, weighs heavily on Vali's mind as she embarks on a life of service in an organisation known as the Skald.
During her time with them, Vali is carrying out an assassination when, unbeknownst to her, Frey is not as far from her as she would have first thought. In finding this out, she immediately becomes determined to discover why he has darkened her life again in such a subversive way.
Ruan is as far from Vali's existence as it can get. He has found a tower that disturbs and draws him at the same time. Little does Ruan know what danger he is getting himself into when he finds a trio of young siblings dwelling in the tower.
Vali and Ruan's paths are destined to cross but for what reason has Frey become involved in a tower lying on dark energy lines and a pack of wild animals known only as the Visen?
I was overall impressed with this book. Liz Williams has entertained me once before and I liked what I read then as I did with this title. The plot threads are interwoven quite expertly and she manages to achieve something which is normally a bug bear of mine in using partial first person narrative.
It was executed superbly well and there was none of the introspective shallowness of a writer trying to write as someone else. The chapters generally take on one for Vali, one for Ruan formula showing each character's story parallel with the other, which added to the tension of finding out what was happening.
The characters have back story that keeps you wondering where their lives will take them and why their pasts are so important to how they tackle the problems they are facing now.
The plot was well thought out and developed curiously with a strange mix of SF technologies and fantasy escarpments. Eventually, you come to realise that somehow Vali and Ruan are joined merely by a tentative hold on the planet of Ruan rather than anything that may or my not transpire between them.
Perhaps a little disturbing from my point of view was that as I read this book, one of its themes was covered in the media. A large part of the story surrounds Vali's possibly unhealthy coping mechanism for dealing with what her brother has done to her. Vali's already terribly scared by an animal attack that she believes he was responsible for, but she chooses to self-harm to deal with it. The one truly amazing idea that I found really imaginative and dynamic was the holographic knife-pen. All the sensation of cutting herself and none of the nasty scars to follow.
Arguably, though, there are one or two things which caused some concern. A general feeling that the writing was inconsistent in the depth at which it described events caused a little bit of a jerky flow.
One example of this that was obvious was that the home village of Ruan was not adequately described in the right place. Throughout most of the book, my imagination filled in large gaping holes in my mind's eye view of his home and then towards the end of the book the village was described and turned out to be nothing like what I had pictured. Okay, I admit that it could be a case of me not picking up the fundamental features of it but here it was apparent that the set up had not been fully explored until the very end.
Imagery was one thing that I loved about 'The Poison Master' when I read that, but 'Darkland' does it all either in volumes or not at all which can be confusing to the reader. It isn't a major fault that destroys the book, but it detracts from it in such a way you have to point it out.
One last point that I found a problem was the way in which Williams portrays the character of Gemaley, the wild animalistic girl with a disturbed personality. While you did get an idea of whom this character was, unlike the other characters, her pivotal part in the story was somewhat limited by the scope of writing. In some ways, Gemaley had the most intriguing temperament and traits of any of them and yet she didn't seem to get out of the comfort zone of just describing her a wild animalistic monster.
I enjoyed 'Darkland'. It was well worth the read. Problems with consistent writing and quirks of the characters could be subjective faults other readers may not have any troubles with. I wonder now where Williams will take this series? There is, after all, no doubt in my mind that this is not a one-off book and that the universe of Darkland is only just having its surface scratched.
Donna Jones
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