Return of the light

IT'S BEEN two years, almost to the day, since Chaz Brenchley's excellent Dead of Light was reviewed, and two years in Benedict Macallan's life since the disturbing death which marked the climax of Light Errant's precursor Dead of Light.

After travelling the length and breadth of Europe on his late sister's motorbike, Ben finally returns to his home town to find that the tyrannical hold his family had held over its inhabitants has been shaken.

The Macallan men always ruled the town with supernatural powers of telekinesis, mind control and pyrosynthesis, powers which manifested itself only at night and appeared in the dark as cold flame.

Of the Macallan men only Ben, the black sheep, seemed to lack this ability, considered little better than the everyday "cattle" until his own abilities emerged during the disturbing events related in Dead of Light.

But the "cattle" have rebelled and kidnapped a handful of the powerless Macallan women. The women are being held hostage and are being killed one by one in brutal retribution for any further acts of aggression on the part of the Macallan clan.

Much has changed, but much has stayed the same, and much comes flooding back -- to Ben and to anyone who read and enjoyed Dead of Light -- as the prodigal son, who has squandering his unique gift of dayfire when it could have been used to herd the unruly cattle, is forced to confront the unresolved issues from which he has been running -- his unrequited love for Laura, his jealousy for his blood brother Jamie, and the undisguised antagonism between his family and him.

Now there's the new conflict -- between blind loyalty to the family, doing what he knows is right, and just getting the hell out of a situation he fled two years before.

On the bright side he's finding new applications for the prodigious power which burns through his veins, new channels for the energy his body absorbs from the sunlight.

Light Errant is an intimate first person narrative (though never as impregnable as stream-of-consciousness writing) constructed from all the insecurity and insight which makes up the character of Ben Macallan. The reader is privy to his mental ramblings, the kind of odd ideas and connections which we all find in our minds.

It's a worthwhile sequel to Dead of Light and it stands as an interesting read in its own right, if a little self indulgent at times. But moments of self indulgence can easily be explained by the fact that the reader is at all times inside the head of an admittedly flawed hero.

And the book's flaws are easily outweighed by its entertainment value.