THE LIGHT IN THE INVADING DARKNESS

In Big Plume’s SF novel, a young woman grapples with the pressures of having to save the Earth from a deadly peril.

Fifteen-year-old Alexandra Linley shoulders a terrible burden. At the age of 3, she used her energy-siphoning powers to save her hometown, New Port Falls, from fiery destruction by a nuclear weapon called the Luminous Arrow. Widely hailed as a savior, she became known as the “Avatar of Hope.” Recruited into the Defender Initiative at a young age, she attends the New Port Falls Academy for Extra-Biological Students, an institute for young people with abilities such as mind reading and telekinesis. Soon, the Earth will face a new peril, and Lexi is widely believed to be the only person alive with the power to stop it. From the depths of space, an entity known as the Invading Darkness is approaching. The day of its arrival (“Zero Day”) is known, as is the scope of its destruction: the annihilation of all life. Lexi’s father, Stephen, and her teachers and trainers are keen to impress upon her the enormity of the task she now faces; as the only person in history to have neutralized a nuclear weapon, she must find a way to subdue the Darkness. Overwhelmed and seeking a normal life, Lexi revolts, running away and committing acts of aggression and vigilantism. Stephen is killed by the Heralds of the Liberating Darkness, a group of fanatics who see annihilation as release from suffering. The Heralds then hatch a scheme to torment and kill Lexi, filling her head with nightmarish visions and forcing her to relive her worst moments. With Zero Day nearing, Lexi must confront her own anger and stubbornness and accept her vocation as savior.

Big Plume has taken a worn plot, with echoes of both superhero comics and the later seasons of the Netflix series Stranger Things, and fashioned a character study that interrogates themes of responsibility, trauma, and societal expectations. The author’s sensitivity to the inner lives of his characters, both good and bad, makes this novel a refreshing change of pace in an overcrowded genre. The narrative stumbles a bit with its protagonist, whose lack of personality will make it difficult for readers to invest in her story. (Her most notable traits are a love of penguins and a habit of spiraling into despair, anger, and self-recrimination.) The book does a number of things exceptionally well; Big Plume introduces a subtle thread of lament for the modern age: “Children stare at tablets while their families sit around them, wondering why they can’t have a conversation,” one character complains. The Invading Darkness functions as a metaphor for the screen-induced isolation that humanity has inflicted on itself, and Big Plume’s social commentary renders Lexi’s conflict with a rather nebulous entity meaningful. The great temptation of stories in this genre is to make the final act all fight and no substance, a trap that Big Plume evades by centering the climactic battle around a pivotal encounter between two people. The book has action aplenty, all beautifully narrated, but the decision to make the stakes personal rather than global gives that action the emotional power necessary for a truly slam-bang finale, making the final chapters some of the best in the book.

A nuanced exploration of the superhero mythos that prioritizes interiority and personal stakes.