The Honest Dark - Ryan Newberger - A Short Summary and Review
The Honest Dark - Ryan Newberger - A Short Summary and Review
By: a.d. elliott | Take the Back Roads - Art and Other Odd Adventures
A Rite of Fancy Book Recommendation and Review
A Short Summary:
In The Honest Dark, Ryan Newberger imagines a city divided between a privileged inner district and the poorer outer neighborhoods that provide its food, water, labor, and resources. The Public Defense Force, led in part by veteran hunter Lipe, protects the city from strange, shape-shifting monsters. Already undermanned and undersupplied, the PDF repeatedly warns the city council that monster attacks are increasing and that the outer districts desperately need stronger defenses. The council, however, is far more willing to preserve inner-city comfort and political appearances than spend the resources necessary to protect everyone.
The consequences become disastrous in La Canaleta. After unrest over food shortages, the council orders the neighborhood turned into a kill zone for an operation designed to lure monsters together for destruction. Although civilians are still visibly inside La Canaleta, the government declares the evacuation complete and forces the PDF to proceed. What follows is a massacre that leaves the neighborhood essentially destroyed and deepens the city's unrest. From there, Lipe is forced to confront an increasingly uncomfortable truth: the monsters threatening the city may be terrifying, but a government willing to decide whose lives are worth protecting can be dangerous in an entirely different way.
My Favorite Quote from the Book:
Questions to ponder while reading:
My Review:
The Honest Dark is a dark fantasy story about monsters, but Ryan Newberger's more interesting monster may be the city itself. The City is physically and economically divided: those living on The Rock enjoy electricity, beautiful streets, plentiful resources, and political influence, while residents of the outer districts provide the labor and necessities keeping that lifestyle possible. From the beginning, the distinction between whose deaths matter and whose do not is painfully obvious. When two wealthy inner-city teenagers die, the council immediately demands accountability; deaths in the outer districts have long been treated as part of life.
That imbalance becomes increasingly disturbing as the threat grows. Lipe presents evidence of rising monster attacks and asks for walls, gates, and watchtowers to protect vulnerable neighborhoods. Rather than reduce spending in the wealthy inner district, the council rejects the proposal. At almost the same time, it becomes far more concerned about vandalism and disruption to farming, mining, and water production, the things the outer districts provide to the people above them. That contrast gives the novel its sharpest question: Who is government actually supposed to serve?
La Canaleta is where that question becomes horrifying. The council orders the PDF to lure monsters into the neighborhood and promises to evacuate everyone first. They are not. Lipe can clearly see civilians still inside, but when he refuses to begin the operation, they threaten to have the Black Wardens take command instead. He ultimately proceeds because he believes the alternative would be worse. The result is exactly the sort of collateral damage officials had already decided was acceptable. Later, residents call what happened a massacre and interpret it as retaliation for earlier unrest.
I liked that The Honest Dark does not reduce the issue to one cartoonishly evil politician. Competing motives, dissenting council members, bureaucratic rules, fear, class resentment, ideological beliefs, and people convincing themselves that terrible decisions are reasonable. That makes the story far more unsettling. Sometimes you cannot avoid collateral damage, but this novel asks what happens when the people making that calculation are never the ones expected to become the collateral.
If you liked The Honest Dark, you may also like:
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
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She shares her journeys at Take the Back Roads, explores new reads at Rite of Fancy, and highlights U.S. military biographies at Everyday Patriot.
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