The Oldest Story: The Darkness Against the Light

Okay, so the premise here is that in the future, soldiers are broken down into light in order to get them to the front lines faster, where they rematerialize (or not) in almost literally no time at all.

I, for one, thought that was a pretty sweet premise.

What I like about The Light Brigade is that almost right from the beginning, it just opens up this giant question mark and not only does that first question mark not get answered until the very end, but there are lots of little question marks popping into existence throughout the whole story, which turns out to be a rewarding reading experience.

I’m sure you’re familiar with writers jumping off into tangents and then forgetting to tie up loose ends. It’s annoying, and everyone hates that, right? Well Hurley seems to have more respect for the reader than that, which is nice. She balances this respect with a kind of demand that the reader make a bit of an effort to wrap their head around this crazy, winding plot.

The main character, Dietz (we don’t find out Dietz’s first name until the last few pages), starts experiencing the “jumps” differently than the other soldiers, and begins to suspect that the war is being fought on false premises and that Dietz’s side may not be the good guys after all.