The Blurb
Doggerland, 6200 BC. As rivers rise, young mother Shaye follows her family to a sacred oak grove, hoping that an ancient ritual will save their way of life.
London, AD 2156. In a city ravaged by the rising Thames, Shante hopes for a visa that will allow her to flee with her four-year-old son to the more prosperous north.
Two mothers, more than 8,000 years apart, struggle to save their children from a bleak future as the odds stack against them.
At the sacred oak grove, Shaye faces a revelation that cuts to the core of who she is; in the wilderness of the edgelands, Shante finds herself unprepared for the challenges and dangers that surround them at every turn.
As Shaye and Shante desperately try to hold their families together in the face of disaster, these two young mothers uncover a terrifying truth: that it is impossible to protect the ones they love.
The Review
Dark River is quite unlike most of the fantasy books that I usually read. It has a bit of a “literary” flair, with vivid descriptions of natural scenery and physical sensations. There are two point-of-view characters — Shaye and Shante — who live through timelines that are 8,000 years apart, yet seem to share a lot of the same struggles. Namely, those that come with motherhood.
And really, motherhood is what this book is all about. The anxiety that comes with ensuring that your child is (and will continue to be) safe. That insidious voice that says the other parent has to be involved. The feeling that you’re always one step away from drowning, and that all you can do is keep walking, keep moving forward, and hope that you can outrun the flood.
But interweaved with all that anxiety is the warmth of unquestioning love. The reliving of a childish wonder that comes with unfettered imagination. The unquestioning support of close family and friends.
Dark River touches on both sides of the spectrum. Shaye and Shante are both outrunning the flood — quite literally. The rivers in this world are rising and everyone needs to retreat to higher ground to avoid being swept away. Shaye’s journey takes her on a trek through a forest with her family. Shante’s takes her on a quest to seek asylum in a higher-altitude city.
The style of writing is beautiful in places, though it may prove too dense for those who dislike a more literary style of prose. The dialogue is not punctuated with quotation marks (and it isn’t a very dialogue-heavy book in any case). The obvious comparison — and admittedly the only other book I’ve read that shares this style — is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. The comparison is actually pretty apt, and in some ways Dark River could be considered a gender-flipped re-imagining of The Road — though with a greater appreciation for the beauty and brutality of nature. Just in case this doesn’t get the point across, be warned… this book gets grim.
Admittedly, the way that the dialogue was handled was a bit of a miss for me. I suspect that this is a highly personal thing, so take this with a grain of salt, but I found that the lack of easy conversation made the characters seem distant. I wasn’t as invested as I could have been. It also took me a good portion of the book until I actually believed that the characters were in any immediate danger. The narration tells you that the river is dangerous, but it takes a while until you see that for yourself.
Another issue I had was that the prose — while beautiful in places — seemed overly metaphorical in others. There were a few occasions where I had to re-read a page to puzzle out what actually happened. On one such occasion, I was stumped as to why a main character would be “oozing” from their center, before eventually realizing that this was the beginning of a sex scene.
There are some things I loved about Dark River and some things I didn’t. Likely, this is a matter of personal taste and this just wasn’t a book for me. But there will be people out there who will love it completely. There will be someone who will read the phrase “gender-flipped The Road” and will immediately jump over to another site to order it.
If you’re looking for stories about the struggles of motherhood, you love thoughtful, metaphorical prose, and you don’t mind when stories take a dark turn… Rym Kechaha’s Dark River is for you.
I received an electronic advanced copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review. Thank you to Unsung Stories for the review copy!
Dark River was released on February 24th, 2020.
