The Dark River

John Twelve Hawks is an enigma. With the release of his (or her?) first book, The Traveler there came a flurry of press about the writer who lived “off the Grid.” The publisher claims to have never even met him. You might say it was all a publicity stunt, something to get readers who don’t dwell a lot in sci-fi to pay attention. Whatever the case may be, The Traveler went on to be a New York Times bestseller, paving the way for the next book in the Fourth Realm Trilogy.

The Dark River drops you in the action pretty quickly. You’re allowed a brief moment to catch up by way of a Dramatis Personae, a brief summary of the previous book. However, even having read the first book upon its release some two years ago, I found the summary not as helpful as I might have hoped. While reading I still struggled to remember certain characters, bits of history, terminology. While it would have been cumbersome to include all of that in the summary, it was mildly frustrating. Read The Traveler before diving into The Dark River. It will save you a lot of headache.

Here’s my attempt at a summary of the trilogy’s basic premise: Throughout history, there have been men and women known as Travelers. They have the ability to detach their souls, or Light, from their bodies and travel between the six realms. The Earth that we know is actually the Fourth Realm. These Travelers go on their journeys and return with knowledge and insight that is revolutionary, and, to the people in authority, dangerous. An organization known as the Tabula exists to unite mankind in their idea of order. They have fought against the Travelers for as long as anyone can remember. They have invaded even the highest levels of world government. Their plan is to entrap mankind in the “Virtual Panopticon;” that is, they want to monitor everyone, at every moment. The theory is that less crime will occur if people believe they are being watched all the time. Protecting the Travelers from this group are the Harlequins, an order of warriors who have detached themselves from earthly things and live only to guard their Traveler until the end.

One thing John Twelve Hawks does well is present you with a frightening, believable scenario—at least in the parts that don’t involve spiritual travel to other worlds. Our main characters—Maya, a Harlequin, and Gabriel, her Traveler companion—don’t just face enemies from other universes. They must contend with an entire world government that wants them destroyed. The author’s ideas are unsettling. And, it would seem, most of the real-world scenarios he presents have at least an ounce of truth to them.

The plot moves along briskly, leaving me wanting more. Of course, this is the penultimate novel in the trilogy, so it has its Empire Strikes Back-style non-ending, but we’re left knowing so little about what is really going on.

I had only a couple of hang-ups in terms of plot and character. For one, the large climax at the end of the novel is divided into two separate stories. One of them, featuring Maya and Gabriel, is intense, if a bit on the short side. The other story I didn’t really care about. It features two minor characters that are thrust into the position that Maya would typically find herself in, and as a reader, I didn’t want them handling the situation. I didn’t feel the intensity there.

Secondly, I think John Twelve Hawks might be a little too proud of the research he has done. It seemed that he frequently went off on tangents about the history and sociology of the places the characters visited. I appreciate the history to an extent, and acknowledge its usefulness in setting a scene, but much of the history felt inserted simply for its own sake.

So, two minor gripes in what was otherwise an engaging novel. Now begins the two-plus-year wait for the conclusion.