Racing the Dark

[starlady]

Johnson, Alaya Dawn. Racing the Dark. Chicago: Agate Bolden, 2008.

I got this book while it was available for free on Amazon.com (it's actually the first e-book I've ever read) because Johnson is one of the guests of honor at this year's Sirens conference. You should join us! It's been an awesome time for the three years I've gone, and I fully expect for it to be an awesome time again.

Racing the Dark, the first book in an unfinished trilogy, tells the story of Lana, who when the book opens is initiated into the sisterhood of divers on her island, who provide the community's main source of wealth via harvesting organic jewels from the mouths of fish. The jewels Lana finds on her first solo dive mark her out as having a great spiritual power, but she conceals this sign of her destiny and soon is forced to leave her island with her parents in light of the environmental upheaval that has turned the freshwater seas around her island brackish. Lana's father goes ahead of them to the capital to try to establish himself as an instrument maker, and she and her mother remain behind in the closest large port city trying to make a living as a barmaid and a laundry-girl, respectively. It was when Lana's mother turns to prostituting herself for money to buy medicine for Lana that I realized I wasn't reading a YA book (though, when Lana gets drunk and smokes weed with no consequences within the first few pages, I started to have my suspicions).

Despite the way it seems initially, this isn't a YA book. But it doesn't quite feel like an adult novel either, despite the fact that it quickly develops into a very epic epic fantasy that spans years, characters, and continents. It quickly becomes clear that the environment is profoundly out of whack: the spirits of the elements that were bound millennia ago are restless in their bindings, and they want to be free. I said on Twitter that the book's setting feels like the midpoint between FF: VII and FF: X-2, which is a reference to the fact that in one of the bonus scenes in FF: X-2 child pilot Shinra talks about possibly tapping the planet's geothermal energy and in FF: VII the geothermal power processing has nearly destroyed the planet. Environmental precariousness is a major theme in the book, as is the theme of humans being out of whack with their environment.

There are a lot of characters in here, some of whom die annoyingly early and others who linger too long (I personally loathed Kotaku from the very first time we got his POV), and I have to agree with oyceter's remark that Lana, for most of the book, seems rather passive. But in all honesty the narrative propels along fast enough that I honestly didn't notice, in part because the setting and the characters are pretty original: the language and the setting feel Pacific Island mostly, although much of the language and cultural details seem Asian (mochi are specifically referenced at one point). (On that note: characters aren't pictographs, KTHNXBAI.) All the characters in the book are people of color, which I also appreciated.

The structure was also, as I've implied, kind of whacked out--I continue to think that this book is more YA than not, except for how I don't know that it could ever be marketed as YA. Anecdotal evidence seems to be that the book got next to no marketing, or if it did, it was the wrong marketing, which is a crying shame. This is a really interesting world with a fascinating and varied cast of characters, and I will very much be seeking out the sequel, The Burning City, as well as the rest of Johnson's works.

Comments

[rachelmanija]

It was when Lana's mother turns to prostituting herself for money to buy medicine for Lana that I realized I wasn't reading a YA book (though, when Lana gets drunk and smokes weed with no consequences within the first few pages, I started to have my suspicions).

HEEE.