The book I am currently reading is called The Darkness After by Scott B. Williams. This story is about Mitch, a fifteen-year old hunting fanatic, and April, a teen mother, who are both trying to return to their respective families after solar flares shut down every electrical device on Earth. They meet coincidentally when April is attacked by three men and Mitch, discovering the event from afar, shoots two of them with his bow, April killing the third. These two then decide to travel together, first by car and later by foot.
So far, I am not thrilled with this book. Mitch and April, while they do possess some admirable qualities, are very flat, static characters to me. Mitch is a boy who lives on a massive plot of land in Mississippi, and lives to hunt. He has grown up using a bow, and is very well adapted to life in the wild; in fact, he prefers it. April has been taught several forms of martial art by her father and always has a knife by her side. These two people are already adapted to their environment, so they as characters do not develop during the story. It is just two well-equipped people walking around and shooting rabbits.
Additionally, I find the characters to be fairly difficult to relate to. I have never hunted before and I do not believe in it, so I find Mitch's obsession with it a little annoying. April, as a teenage girl, should be pretty easy to relate to, but she is mother, which instantly dividers her from me and almost every other reader of this book, as I believe the intended audience is young adults. As a mother, your perspective on life completely changes. I'm not criticizing April for how she acts and thinks; I think her bravery and determination to get to her child is admirable. However, there are no apparent quirks to these characters, no details that intrigue me, make the characters more relatable, or make me want to root for these characters.
There is one more problem with the characters in this book: their dialogue is extremely stiff. Especially towards the beginning of the book, the characters spoke in long, unnatural monologues, explaining their background stories to each other. This may be the result of the book's third person point-of-view, which I find makes it more difficult to relate to characters. There was no differentiation between the dialogue and the narration, which makes the voices and personalities of the characters even more hidden. As far as I am concerned, teens do not say things such as "widely regarded" in their everyday speech. There is also an abundance of stiff phrases like "sure is," "all right," and "of course." Instead of bringing the characters to life, the dialogue served to flatten them.
However, despite the flat characters and the way they interact in the story, I do not simply want to dismiss the book as "bad." After all, I am only one quarter through. The plot still has potential for an interesting story or twist; who knows what the two will encounter that could change their plans? Maybe as the book continues, the characters will begin to develop more in response to more action. All hope is not lost.
