Walk the Darkness Down - Apocalyptic Western Horror
Wow. I was able to get this book signed by John Boden, and I am so happy I did. I've read two of his other works and I've given them all 5 Stars now. This book was the most horrific one I've read by him though, and I loved it.
This story brought me back to reading Clive Barker's The Great and Secret Show, as the title could have easily been for Walk the Darkness Down as well. It is a kind of apocalyptic story with a fateful meeting of strangers against a changing, growing, and absolutely terrifying villain. I was so mortified and fascinated by the descriptions of this villain, Levi, that I would sit and reread them for a few minutes and just shiver from the creepiness of it all. Truly the stuff of nightmares. I can only imagine how John Boden must have been sleeping while writing that character. The protagonists are broken, hardened, but still friendly people. The setting is a dusty Western. The story is a linear quest, also reminiscent of Roland Deschain trying to get to to the Dark Tower.
Like all of John Boden's works, this is a study in humanity. It delves into the faults of the protagonists and the antagonist and their pasts, bringing them all together in a flawed and beautiful patchwork quilt. There is time to see the antagonist within all of the protagonists and vice versa as well, which was heart-rending and true to reality. John Boden's writing summons familiar feelings and makes everything feel personal and imminent. Every description lit up in my mind like a high-definition film, which I think is truly the author's magical talent. For example, "The sun finished folding itself up, burned itself white and changed its name to Moon and he missed it all."
The visceral things I experienced in the story can also be attributed to the words chosen so carefully, "Keaton gagged as the smell reached out and cuffed him." Like, have you not been there before? Almost cartoonish in the idea of a hand materializing out of nowhere to slap you in the face with a putrid stench. Amazing.
The more resplendent parts were the ones that touched on the beauty of human nature, amidst filth and detritus. One wonderful and terminally ill character explains about how he imagines that humanity is a kind of dirty haze that coats Earth and blights the view of oceans, trees, and grass from those (God? Monsters? The dead? All of the above?) looking down at the planet.
Finally, the title itself, Walk the Darkness Down - I admit I had no idea what it might mean upon opening the book. As I read and learned about the characters, it began to materialize in my mind like an epiphany. "Just be mindful. Be careful. Darkness is a fickle friend, sometimes you must run ahead. Men are always chasing daylight but then there are times when you must walk the darkness down." Seems pretty straight forward, right? But I think that the meaning is more of a feeling than what is stated in that quote. And when you're done with the book, you'll be acquainted with that feeling like an old friend.
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