Darkness Rising
Darkness Rising
There’s a rapid banging on the door to the flat. All five of us stop speaking immediately. A heavy silence descends on the hallway like a fog. After a few moments, I realize I’ve been holding my breath since the knocking.
“It’s them,” Susie mouths at us.
I shrug my shoulders. After all, they could just be a random bunch of drunk guys…but my instincts tell me that we’re in danger.
The knocking starts again. It’s as sudden and loud as gunshots. Lily visibly jumps at the noise. This time a loud bang follows.
“I think they’re breaking the door down,” Atika whispers. Her chestnut eyes are wide with fear, and her hand shakes as she tosses her braid behind her right shoulder. “It has to be demons. No human has that strength. Not with that door.”
“Red,” I whisper back to her. “Remember your elastic. They grow stronger if we’re afraid. They feed on fear and anger.”
“Well, sod this,” Sara says, drawing her thick lips together. “I’m not mucking about, waiting for that lot to break in and kill us. I’m getting my pole and going out there. We have a ride to catch. Jasmine and Lily, you can back us up and grab curtain rods from the bedroom.”
The rest of us nod in agreement. As we turn to get our weapons, there’s a final, thunderous boom as the door to the apartment finally surrenders and slams open against the wall.
Darkness Rising is the final novel in Mary Jennifer Payne’s “Daughters of Light” trilogy, following Finding Jade and Solomon’s Ring. The trilogy is set in 2032, a future where Earth has been ravaged by climate change and terrorism. Even the areas of the world that remain habitable have water shortages, oppressive heat, and air quality so poor that the wearing of masks is a necessity. To keep out climate refugees, many former democracies have turned to autocracy and citizens are chipped and tracked. The trilogy follows Jasmine Guzman and her twin sister Jade. They are among a group of identical twin girls who are part of an ancient lineage of Seers. The Seers are tasked with saving the world from destruction wrought by demons from the shadowy Place-in-Between. Jasmine is foretold as the chosen one who will lead a group of 7 Seers to defeat the demons and the forces of darkness to restore the world to peace and prosperity and return nature to an unspoiled state. In Darkness Rising, Jasmine doubts that she is the right one for this role, and she also begins to question whom she can trust. After Jade deceives Jasmine and the other Seers at the end of the second novel, Jasmine is no longer sure if she can even trust her own sister.
Like its prequels,Darkness Rising is fast-paced and engaging. Jasmine spends most of the novel being pursued by both demons and agents of the corrupt government, moving from one precarious situation to the next. While the novel is original and captures the readers’ attention, it suffers from a tendency to provide exposition by having one character explain basic facts about the world of the novel to another character. That many of these foundational aspects of the world get repeated several times can be frustrating to read. One of the novel’s strengths is the way it resonates with contemporary challenges faced by the world, including climate change, refugee crises, and xenophobia. The novel, set in the near future, takes these things to an extreme, thereby prompting the reader to consider the challenges of the present.
Darkness Rising and its prequels are relevant to the current state of the planet but are also enjoyable reads that will appeal to fans of dystopic urban fantasy.
Tara Stieglitz is a librarian at MacEwan University in Edmonton, Alberta.