In Light’s Shadow, by Warren Rochelle (JMS Books)
This dystopic urban fantasy blends a sweet m/m romance, a
coming-of-age story, and a horrific alternate-history world. Magic and magical creatures
exist, although throughout the history of this world’s United States, the
Columbian Empire, they have been progressively more restricted and then criminalized.
Even a hint of returning the “the Relaxation” is enough to ignite assassination
attempts. Meanwhile, fairies are locked away in ghettoes or have gone into hiding,
and magical beasts, such as gryphons and unicorns, are kept in zoos. Hand in
hand with oppression of magical beings comes proscriptions against same-sex
relationships and freedom of speech. Church, school, and state unite in
systematic brainwashing and instilling fear and hatred for anyone who deviates
from a rigidly conformist norm.
Gavin Booker has grown up in such an environment. His
half-fairy mother was so traumatized by discrimination that she has become
pathologically secretive. Although “passing” for human-normal by marriage, she imparts
her paranoid to Gavin. He has always known he was different, but with the
stirrings of his earliest childhood attraction to other boys, his very life is
now at risk. His mother is terrified that such close friendships may cause them
both to be revealed as hybrids, and she pressures him to “pass” as straight. At
the same time, she takes him to a healer who dispenses medicines to suppress
the beautiful golden glow of fairies and teaches him psychological suppression
methods.
Gavin’s life becomes one of unending denial of his deepest
feelings and his true nature. The price of exposure is not just immediate
public execution without trial. It has consequences for the family and friends
of the accused. Suicides by gay, fairy youth are rampant, and Gavin himself, a
teenager drowning in despair, attempts to end his own life. One of the few
consistent bright spots in his world is his relationship with a golden fairy
boy who visits him in dreams. Their emerging love and sexual bonding sustain
Gavin through the deaths and disappearances of every other boy he’s cared
about.
The Columbian Empire is alarmingly like our own United
States. Rochelle fleshes out Gavin’s daily life with details like news reports by
Walter Conkrite, popular obsession with “the royals,” and almost-accurate bits
like Aaron Copeland’s “Appalachian Summer” (my favorite)
Rochelle’s portrayal of the intense psychological
devastation of unrelenting fear, the toxic nature of secrets, and the impact
upon self-esteem is chillingly accurate. I grew up in the 1950s, when my father
was the target of a McCarthy Era probe and a lawsuit brought by the Justice
Department to take away his citizenship. Although I was too young to know about
the FBI surveillance of our family or the relatives who went “underground,” I
have vivid memories of the anxiety my family endured. Yet even in those
dreadful times there were beacons of light: friends, family members, sympathetic
and courageous attorneys, organizations like the ACLU, labor unions, and Quaker
and other religious groups who, often at great risk to themselves, stood up for
the rights of those under suspicion.
Although in Rochelle’s world, there is an underground of
sorts, I found the absence of public resistance disappointing. The Columbian
Empire arises from the same traditions of rights and limits on power as the
United States today, dating back to the Magna Carta and earlier. At the same
time, the unrelenting targeting of both gays and hybrids is an important dramatic
element in how much it intensifies the pressure on Gavin and others.
One of the strengths of this book is how many different ways
a reader can look at it. Certainly, it’s a gay love story. It’s also a
psychological and political thriller. It’s an examination of the corrosive
effects of ignorance and hatred. In all these areas, it has broad appeal.
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