Title: The Darkness of White
Author: David Dragonetti
Genre: adult dystopian/thriller
Review:
Okay, so I hate giving less than awesome reviews so I'm going to try to keep this review short. I thought the plot summary of the book looked very interesting, so I was excited to read this book. Well, there were three problems I had which prevented me from enjoying The Darkness of White as much as I would have liked. Here's the book blurb in case you want to read it:
Sam's girlfriend never woke that morning. He hadn't killed her. But who would believe him. The bedroom door was locked from the inside, there was no sign of any intruder and what's more she was black while he was a former member of a Neo Nazi group. He had no choice but to run and discover the reason for her death that was to be more shocking than he could possibly imagine. For if he believed that the extent of man's inhumanity to man had been reached in the shape of the nuclear bomb, then he had not reckoned in a new terrible gas that could kill those it was modified to destroy. A consignment of this classified gas was now missing taken by his former Nazi friends their target was London their objective to wipe out millions and only he could stop them.
First of all, the grammar was bad. I highly doubt the book had been edited before being published--there were simply too many grammatical errors. I'm not a grammar freak, but I do appreciate proper grammar. Missing quotation marks, missing punctuations, paragraph breaks in the wrong places (or lack of paragraph breaks where needed) and random capitalization of letters distracted me from the reading quite a bit. The missing quotation marks particularly bugged me, as I would often have to reread passages to figure out who was saying what.
Secondly, I felt like the hateful language used in the novel was too strong for my liking. I mean, I knew the book was going to deal with racism from the description, but I didn't know racism was going to be such a big theme in the novel and that it was going to depicted very crudely. Maybe I am being bais here? (I loathe racism.) Nevertheless, I found much of the language to be strongly offensive.
Third, I couldn't really like the main character, Sam. I applaud Sam for leaving the Neo Nazis (a group he used to be part of in his earlier years), but he still often uses racial slurs and such. Also, I disliked how he had almost no self esteem. On the flip side, I did root for Sam when he stood up to Hugo, the leader of the Neo Nazis. I guess you could say my feelings for Sam are conflicted...
There were a few positive points in The Darkness of White though. The plot is definitely unlike anything I have ever read before. Plus, I did not see Joseline, one of the characters, to be a double crosser. Last but not least, the ending was quite a surprise ***spoiler alert*** just about everybody dies.
Overall, I think that this book has strong potential to be a solid novel if:
1) it is edited. Like, seriously edited for grammatical corrections
2) the race hatred/racist language is lightened up a bit
3) Give Sam a few more relatable traits for readers to connect with
Rating:
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