Marisha Pessl, Darkly, Walker Books, December 2024, 416 pp., RRP $22.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781529527483
Dia, along with six other high school students, wins a summer internship with the Louisiana Veda Foundation. She can’t believe her luck. Louisiana Veda created an empire based on her Darkly games: a Darkly is a black fire lily, equal parts magic and danger. It is the secret club at the end of the alley you can reach only by following faint footsteps in a locked graveyard yesterday. They are terrifying, shifting worlds of strangers and allies, ghosts and fiends, rolling hillsides cloaked in fog, out of which anything can step. In other words, these games are supposed to be seriously scary.
The young interns find themselves on an isolated island, set with the challenge of finding the lone copy of the twenty-ninth Darkly game, Valkyrie, which was stolen over forty years ago and has never been found. In many ways, it’s a classic ‘locked room/isolated island’ plot device, but with the added meta feature of the characters also being lost within a game – sort of! I will be the first to admit that I am not familiar with these sorts of games, so perhaps am not the best person to review this book, but I found the detailed retelling of how each person played the game a bit tiresome, not to mention confusing.
Some of her similes were too much for my taste: The stone paths feel as lonely as the skeletal remains of an unseen creature no one ever discovered is a prime example or Her British accent is like a mouthful of pine cones is another.
I also felt the characters were very one dimensional. Apart from coming from different countries, they were all interchangeable – and the hint of romance lacked any real spark. The book has a high page count – I think less detail about the games and more character building would make the novel more engaging.
However, Pessl sometimes surprised me with her insight. Dia explains to her new friends about the importance of old possessions (she works in an antique shop): These old things, they don’t look like much, but they bookmark our lives. They have a silent permanence that people and places do not. Something to carry with us. Always. They were there when no one else was, looking on without judgment when all of these wonderful and terrible things happened to us. And still, they are there. They survive. And somehow, they remember. The worry is, if they’re gone, we are gone, too.
I can see that this book will be popular with YA readers who are into gaming, and like their books tinged with a dark and brooding atmosphere.
The publisher recommends this book for readers over the age of 14 years. They also categorise it as horror – which I would dispute! There is nothing seriously scary or offensive in this book and if a strong reader of 12 asked me if they could read it, I would have no reservation in saying yes, they could.
Reviewed by Gaby Meares