THE DARK RIVER

The Dark River, John Twelve Hawks, Doubleday, 2007, 368 pp

The elusive John Twelve Hawks brings us Book Two of the Fourth Realm Trilogy, the sequel to The Traveler. The story opens with the destruction of New Harmony, an off-the-grid community in the desert where Gabriel Corrigan (the good brother) got his training as a traveler. The community was destroyed by The Brethren, the bad guys whose goal is to bring all society under their control.

Gabriel, Maya (his Harlequin protector) and friends are hiding out in NYC, but word comes that Matthew Corrigan, the father and last remaining Traveler, is alive in Ireland. So the chase is on. We meet Mother Blessing, Michael's Harlequin. In the end Gabriel follows his father into one of the other realms which is somewhat like hell and through which runs the Dark River.

This book ends with just about everything up in the air. It is not quite the totally exciting read that the first one was, but it has its moments. According to a blog I found on fantasy/sci fi, it is common for the second book of a trilogy to be a bit lower key than the first and then the big finale comes in the final volume. That is fine with me. There was a lot of stuff to explain and now that has been accomplished.

I again became aware, as I did in The Traveler, of how much is known about each of us because of the amount of surveillance that we are under. Twelve Hawks also points up the insidious but constant reminders that we must be afraid of "terrorists" so that we will go along with all the surveillance for our own protection. Whew! I am looking forward to the final book.