Tashué’s faith in the law is beginning to crack.
Three years ago, he stood by when the Authority condemned Jason to the brutality of the Rift for non-compliance. When Tashué’s son refused to register as tainted, the laws had to be upheld. He’d never doubted his job as a Regulation Officer before, but three years of watching your son wither away can break down even the strongest convictions.
Then a dead girl washed up on the bank of the Brightwash, tattooed and mutilated. Where had she come from? Who would tattoo a child? Was it the same person who killed her?
Why was he the only one who cared?
Will Tashué be able to stand against everything he thought he believed in to get the answers he’s looking for?
Adam
Legacy of the Brightwash is a mishmash of genres, a noir, grimdark, gaslamp mystery with a prominent romantic subplot. I certainly didn’t quite know what to expect. It’s a dark world, this one, with trigger warnings for things such as child mutilation, drug overdose, forced human breeding and a whole lot more – but the protagonists never quite lost that hope that maybe, just maybe, things could end up better.
I think I could probably write a very lengthy review about what worked and didn’t work for me, but I’m conscious that mine is one of three in this post alone, so I’ll try and stick to the highlights, in both directions. Let’s start with the good first. I enjoyed the prose of this novel quite a bit, the detail enough to make the setting ooze with character, the tone succinctly set for the events that occur. The action was frenetic, brutal and easy to follow, again, fitting in with that tone.
Another highlight would be the characters – I enjoyed their layered nature, their habits and mannerisms becoming familiar enough to betray their feelings. The relationships between them were complex and visceral, the bad melting with the good in ways that made sense. The setting itself was solid, although other than its ‘mutant’ concentration camps, there’s not much to set it apart from similar settings, if you are looking for something more unique.
I did, however, run into some pretty big issues around pacing – not only is this book slow, with plotlines taking their sweet time to develop, it’s also quite flat, in that we don’t really get the rising tension building to climaxes that often pervade genre novels of this ilk. Instead, we are treated to small spikes of excitement, punctuated by long periods of what feels like wheel spinning. Perhaps this is a problem of expectation for me – but I needed more to hook me in – and while I enjoyed myself overall, the first half of the book was a bit of a struggle.
I also rarely found myself surprised by anything that occurred in the book. And by surprises, I don’t necessarily mean big plot twists – those were technically there, even if I found them to be pretty obvious once certain information was revealed. No, instead I look for the smaller surprises, like revealing hidden facets of a character that changes the way I see them, or another layer to the setting that adds depth I didn’t expect. While many of the characters had plenty of depth, that depth almost always acted to reinforce first impressions. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect something unexpected in a grimdark mystery.
Scoring this book was tricky, as I do think it accomplishes a lot, even if the overall narrative left me wishing for more. Check it out if you like complex characters, dark worlds and a slow burning plot.
7.5/10
Jared
Traditional vs independent publishing isn’t really a ‘vs’. They are two different routes to market. (Stick with me: I promise to get to the book eventually.)
Since the last time I ‘judged’ SPFBO in 2017, the ‘vs’ has faded even further. There’s been amazing progress in cover design, editorial services, marketing, and all those intangible aspects of a ‘book’ that make it, well, book-y. As a result of that (and Amazon’s significant investment in the space) self-publishing has become even more competitive with traditional routes. And, by that, I mean that it is now easy to ‘confuse’ an independent book with a traditional one. They look alike; they’re sold in the same place; they’re scratching many of the same itches.
There’s a lot of vociferous grand-standing about ‘risk-taking’ in independent publishing, but, now more than ever, many self-published books aren’t risky at all. They slot right in, as intended, alongside what more traditional publishers are offering. The risk is in the path to market, but the books themselves are increasingly alike.
The tragedy is that, as independent publishing becomes more commercially viable for commercial novels, what happens to its role as an outlet for the uncommercial? What about the truly risky novels?
Brightwash, I’d argue, tips into that latter space. It is a sloggy mass of a book. It is occasionally repetitive and always meandering. There’s no one ‘plot’ that you can shake a stick at, and the protagonist (such as he is) is seemingly stuck in a half-dozen different conflicts at once. It is a political thriller and an epic fantasy and a romance and a mystery, but never fully commits to being any of those. We know how romances are supposed to burn and schemes unfold and crimes get solved: yet none of that happens here. The pacing is bizarre and the ending is, to put it lightly, frustrating.
But… That’s also why Brightwash is wildly, ‘un-traditionally-publishably’, different. Fantasy readers (and publishers) have been well-trained to read books that follow a particular three act structure and a ‘cinematic’ format. This book definitely does not.
Brightwash eschews cinema, in favour of the televisual. Think of it less as a book than a recounting of Brightwash: Season 1. Thus the repetition and the recaps; the changes of plot and focus. It aims for peaks every episode, not once an act. It is the serial updated for the Netflix generation: storytelling as a concatenation of a dozen vaguely-progressing, mildly-interconnected plot-chunks. As a novel, Brightwash is stuffed with dead ends and red herrings; repetition and recurrence. As a TV series,… that’s how stories are told.
Does that mean Brightwash is good? Unlike some other books in SPFBO, I had no problems finishing it, nor regrets about doing so. Brightwash is doing something new and interesting, and it stands out as a genuinely independent approach from supposedly independent publishing. This may be one of the most daring entries to SPFBO, and I’m pleased it is a finalist. But I’m afraid – and perhaps this is a greater flaw with the competition – we don’t give points for trying.
5/10
Kopratic
It both felt like sections should have been cut and sections should have been added. There were a few chapters that I felt did nothing for the book and honestly felt like padding. And yet, there were multiple times in consecutive chapters from the same POV where I felt I’d missed something major in between chapters due to the abrupt scene/subplot change. The plotlines felt really disjointed. Instead of the multiple subplots interweaving together, it seemed as though they were constantly being forgotten about, then randomly picked back up much later. For example, what’s set up to be a very important subplot in the beginning—the discovery of the dead girl in the water—is barely mentioned again throughout the novel, save for a few scenes, and then suddenly wrapped up in the end. Except the conclusion for me leaves much to be desired.
This is a massive book, yet there didn’t seem to be any sort of resolution. I get that it’s part of a series, but that doesn’t change things for me. The book also included one of my least favorite tropes: withholding key information about something a character—that the POV is from— knows from the reader. Why do we get to be privy on some of their thoughts, but others are left intentionally vague? In my opinion it lessens the impact of the reveal. Instead of being awed, I’m left wondering why we’re only just finding out about this thing if it’s such major knowledge to this character…whose POV takes up like half the book. In terms of characters, it’s not that I disliked them. It’s just that to me it was like there were maybe 1.5 personalities. Nearly every character felt the same, to the point that if the chapter titles didn’t say which POV they were from, I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell.
This is a hugely ambitious book. I respect and applaud what it attempts to do. I also loved the world building and the atmosphere. For example, the scenes at the Hive and in the manor leapt off of the page. Individually, I thought the sections/chapters were pretty good, although I did get annoyed at how seemingly over-descriptive parts were. For example, there were times when it felt like we’d see a scene take place and then soon after we’d get a character explaining in detail what happened. We were just there; I’m okay with a simple, “He told them what happened.” But other than that, the writing itself was great. Very readable, easy to get into.
Overall, I wasn’t a fan. However, I think this book has and will appeal to many readers out there. My opinions are my opinions, and I encourage you to pick up this book if you think you might be interested.
4/10.
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