I first found out about This Safe Darkness by Alexis Maragold through an Instagram post. When I saw that the main character was about thirty and had a chronic illness, I didn’t even look at the rest of the plot before putting it on hold at the library. I finally borrowed it a few days ago, read it in three days while camping, and quite enjoyed it—although I should admit that I read it without thinking about it too deeply, as at first I was not thinking about reviewing it.
The main character, Orelle, is smart and level-headed, which was a nice change from young adult protagonists who still have to learn how to act in the world and end up going through a series of choices stupid enough to be irritating. The other characters were also well constructed, with personalities and lives outside of their connection with Orelle. The friendships were particularly nice to read about—although, I will admit, I have a weakness for well-written female friendships in any story.
Kalden, the love interest, I found boring. I don’t believe this is the writer’s fault: I do not enjoy reading about love stories, and while I used to appreciate a bad boy, I grew bored with them (probably read of too many in high school!). I was also perplexed by some of his actions throughout the story—ironically, he felt a bit flatter than other characters, although I might think so because of how little I was interested in him from the start. I read other reviews saying that the book would have worked better without the love story, but I don’t want to comment on that, as I would agree simply because I am not the right public for a love story. I probably would not have picked up the book if I knew there was one. The novel does not need the love story to happen though, and a friendly relationship or an alliance instead between the couple would have allowed it to proceed in pretty much the same way.
The world-building concept was interesting, but felt a bit on the nose for me. While a society that undervalues women is extremely believable (hello, every country on Earth right now…), the tiered system and how explicitly some things were spelled out felt a bit less grounded. I understand that a lot of readers nowadays want things to be clear and can’t understand subtext, but I still cannot enjoy a book that doesn’t have any. It also makes it feel less realistic, as control of a population and discrimination in said population are rarely exercised so conspicuously, I believe. The fact that all men were automatically considered Tier 1 made the whole story lack nuance as well, and I kept wondering what would happen to an intersex person, how they would be seen. While I understand that the concept heavily takes inspiration from the real world, even in our society things are not so black and white, and other things play a role in discrimination that are not gender. While I loved that the author included a disabled main character (every time she talked about her migraines or being in pain after a short walk I felt seen!), the story might have been more interesting if disability was portrayed elsewhere also: I am wondering, for example, what would happen to a man born disabled in that society? And what exactly is considered a disability? Overall, I would have liked the “rules” of this world to be more developed.
Two or three hundred years also sound like too little for a whole population to forget every single thing about how they used to live, which seems to be what happened here. [I feel like this is at least partly a problem common to writers living in the USA, but I won’t get into it because it could be a separate essay altogether.]
The writing was enjoyable and easy to follow. There was some repetition, and I read reviews complaining about all the “telling instead of showing”, to which I would like to respond with a reminder that these rules are Anglo-centric and arbitrary and we don’t need them.
A while ago I read somebody referring to a debut as having “first book syndrome” because (I paraphrase as I can’t even remember where I read this) it seemed like it wanted to contain the whole world in that one novel, and this is a bit what I felt with this book. There was so much happening that it did not dive into every thing it could have, so I would have enjoyed if it had been paced more slowly, but enough was explained to be able to follow what happened. This might have been partly because the plot-twists were not surprising, and I find that whether one enjoys this or not depends a lot on the reader, but I did not mind in this case. I feel it’s a great book for today’s market, if it makes sense, and I am wondering if, provided with a different public, the author might have expanded more on the world-building and magic system in the first book instead of leaving them for the next one, as a few more dozen pages would have probably benefited the story overall.
All considered, it was a light read with important themes and well-built characters, which I would recommend to readers who enjoy feminist stories, adult protagonists, and insta-lust.