The League of Evil Needs a New Marketing Strategy

The Dark River:
Book Two of the Fourth Realm Trilogy
by John Twelve Hawks
p 2007



Back in the summer of 2012 I read the first book in a science fiction trilogy that capitalized on technoparanoia and fear of Big Government. I’d picked the book up off the discount rack at a Borders Books that was wheezing its last paper-thin breath and I gave it a go. 

And I wasn’t terribly impressed.

Nonetheless, when I was browsing a used book store selection and I happened upon the second book in the Fourth Realm Trilogy by John Twelve Hawks (Yeah. Take a second to parse that one out, brain!), I decided it was just too coincidental to pass up. I tossed the book on the pile and didn’t touch it for about ten months until finally decided to give John Twelve Hawks a second chance.

I spent the better portion of my review of The Traveler explaining why I think that the trilogy is an example of the trend of collaborative fiction, which is to say that it was written by multiple authors under a ‘mysterious’ pseudonym to draw attention to an otherwise banal series. I still think that—or, at the very least, that the enigmatic, private ‘John Twelve Hawks’ is a fully created persona. His scant biography, his lack of interviews, and his insistence on ‘living off the grid’ (not unlike his main characters!) just jives a little too well with the main plot of his story to be anything but a gimmick to draw in readers. But there’s no point in rehashing a minor detail, so I will not be focusing on that in my review of The Dark River.

I didn’t talk much about the plot in my first review, so I will attempt to here, however briefly. The Fourth Realm trilogy supposes that there are these people called Travelers, who are the only ones who can spiritually travel through realms. For some reason not yet touched upon, this is a much coveted power and a group called The Bretheren (John Twelve Hawks’ take on Big Brother and the aforementioned League of Evil People Doing Evil Things) want to first put a stop to then harness it for themselves. Most Travelers have been killed off, but for two adult brothers who knew nothing about their potential prior to the novel. Luckily there is a third group, the Harlequins, a class of stoic warrior types who believe they have a lifelong debt to protect Travelers, even laying down their lives to do so. Our male and female leads are, respectively, Gabriel, the younger of the two brothers, and Maya, one of the few remaining Harlequins, reluctantly roped back into her duties after attempting to escape the life. As you can imagine, romantic tension ensues, but—graciously due to the lack of the ever popular love triangle—it doesn’t feel tedious, just obligatory.

And that’s the main thing keeping this trilogy from being something I can’t be more excited about. Everything just feels... obligatory. Every character is beyond cliché, and none more so than the villains. I just cannot get over the villains. They are simply so evil, and for nothing but the pure sake of being evil. I’m not saying that when I write books I will avoid all clichés, because I won’t (in this day and age, it is downright impossible not to hit on common tropes here and there), but at the very least I’d like to think that my villains will at least have some purpose in being villains. Nobody just wakes up one day and decides to be evil; there has to be some motivation for their actions. Hell, even Hitler thought he was doing the right thing at some point down the line. The Bretheren just sort of run around laughing at civilian naïveté and drinking expensive whiskey just before their board meetings at their gloomy Gothic castle on DARK ISLAND.

I shit you not. That’s what they call it!

I have no problem buying the dystopian mantra that Big Brother is bad news. But you’re going to have to try harder to make me feel for the heroes. There’s too much running around and pontificating on the evils of Big Brother and not enough characterization. As a consequence, these heroes don’t feel like real people, just means to an end. I didn’t care at all when the several strategically-placed-to-maximize-drama deaths occurred in The Dark River because I realized I didn’t know a damn thing about these characters.

But—

I would be lying if I said I didn’t still enjoy the book in spite of all this. The Dark River is much better than its predecessor. It has the perfect blend of action and dialogue and introspection. You never had to go very far before things were stirred up with a fight scene and said fight scenes never felt forced. I got through this book a lot faster and it was about a hundred pages before the end that I realized I wanted to get my hands on the third book right away so I can finish the trilogy off. The characters’ motives may be vague and prosaic, but it makes the story much more digestible and accessible.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the book ends on a massive cliffhanger. The first book may have left the door wide open for the story to continue, but it certainly lacked the urgency of The Dark River’s ultimate chapter. I look forward to seeing how the whole thing concludes just as soon as I get my copy of The Golden City.