An impressive feat—Awakened Horror by Quill Holland is a gripping story of pain and justice. Reviewed by Maxwell Gillmer. The post Book Review: Awakened Horror appeared first on Independent Book Review.
Awakened Horror
by Quill Holland
Genre: Science Fiction / Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9780473676957
Print Length: 328 pages
Reviewed by Maxwell Gillmer
An impressive feat—Awakened Horror is a gripping story of pain and justice.
Trauma haunts not just the soul, but the body as well. It follows people in their lives — they see it in their reflection in the morning, they feel it in the shiver of their skin when a breeze feels too familiar. It is inherited; it is locked deep; and no matter how much one attempts to eradicate it from oneself, the trauma remains.
Raith is reminded of his trauma daily. He witnesses it in his scars. It has been five years since the Insurgency, a group of rebel fighters, won freedom over the Empire that had been ruling over the galactic colonies. The Republic of Humanity assumed governance over the colonies, bringing peace to the former citizens of the Empire—those terrorized by the rule of the tyrant Emperor Tynan—at least in a political sense.
The people of the former Empire colonies live in the lasting pain of their trauma, and Raith, inextricable in his ties to Tynan, cannot escape it. Raith is, after all, the previous Emperor Tynan, only with a wiped memory. He may now operate as a new person with a new set of morals, but this change does not prevent those around him from looking into his eyes and seeing the suffering that Tynan had inflicted.
Now the Governor of the planetary colony Gaia, Raith embarks on a diplomatic mission to the neighboring planet Akka. The people of Akka had recently sent an emergency broadcast upon identifying a massive unknown object that appeared to be threatening the colony, sparking Raith’s concern that the Empire might return. But before Raith reaches Akka, his worst nightmares come true. The Empire, having now recouped its power, captures Raith and places him through a series of tortuous experiments to develop a monster: a clone of Tynan through Raith’s genetic code. Raith now faces the difficult task of both freeing himself and his people from the growing wrath of the renewed Emperor and also saving the Republic from an alien superweapon that threatens to destroy all of humanity.
Awakened Horror is an inventive exploration of the manifestations of trauma. The reverberations of pain become amplified with the creation of an entirely new human being born of one’s past. As the original Tynan was washed away using a mind conversion device, Raith’s mind was scarred—a physical indicator of everything he once was, everything Tynan had done. The Empire’s senior councilors reconstructed Tynan by analyzing these scars as a sort of blueprint for Tynan’s actions, motivations, and wrath.
This Tynan is more than just a final step in the Empire’s reconstitution—it is a walking devotion to the trauma that still inflicts harm. Both the psychological remnants of Tynan’s previous actions—the actions, still of his body—and the physical replication of his literal past torture Raith.
“His was a fresh, cloned face – one that’d spent its life in a vat, free from all harm. Nothing to break bones, nothing to form scars. The body was a blank slate. But his mind was, too. This wasn’t the original Tynan … this was a reconstructed Tynan, a personality built from interpreting scar tissue in my brain.”
Holland superbly underscores a conundrum of trauma and consequences: how does one atone for one’s mistakes without succumbing to the terror that begets them in the first place? Raith wakes every morning, trying to push himself to be someone better, to be someone different, but Tynan’s resurrection places him at odds with his goals of retribution. He is stretched thin to a point where his culpability in the actions of the past—even though divorced from his current state of mind—cannot be entirely eradicated.
Awakened Horror is Dantean in this process of retribution. Raith cannot simply will away his errs. As Raith witnesses Tynan’s ongoing wrath, he becomes intimately aware of his part in harming others and how that harm persists. He looks inward to seek forgiveness in himself and in those he loves.
Of note: While enjoyable as a standalone, Awakened Horror may be best suited to be read in conjunction with the first book in the series, Forgotten Evil. The relationship between Raith and Tynan is difficult to piece together in its complexity to a point where a reader’s processing of the text may be hampered by a lack of context.
In a time when people’s mistakes are scrutinized to a heightened degree thanks to an increasing trend of moral absolutism resulting from sociopolitical polarization, this story provides hope for how one can move forward. Awakened Horror highlights the importance of self-reflection and what it means to contend with the consequences of one’s actions. Even when plagued by the lasting effects of trauma, retribution is possible.
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