Review: Knights Of The Borrowed Dark

There seems to be an unwritten rule of literature that the protagonists of Young Adult fantasy/sci-fi novels must always have the weirdest names possible, especially if they are female.

I’m looking at you, Katniss Everdeen (Hunger Games), Tris Prior (Divergent), Clary Fray (Mortal Instruments), America Singer (The Selection) and Tally Youngblood (Uglies). For the love of Harry Potter, why can’t we have a main character named Sarah Jones or Chan Mei Ling?

Knights Of The Borrowed Dark (KOTBD), by Dave Rudden, gives us a rare male example of this trope: meet Denizen Hardwick (good God, imagine going to a Malaysian secondary school with that name). He’s a young lad who’s spent most of his life rotting away in Crosscaper Orphanage, with only his best pal Simon to keep him company.

Things change, however, after his 13th birthday. A man named Grey turns up at Crosscaper, saying he is there to introduce him to his long-lost aunt. Denizen is understandably nervous about meeting this long-lost relative… As it turns out, however, that’s the last thing he should be scared about.

Soon, Denizen encounters the Tenebrous, a horde of monsters made of shadow, led by the sinister Endless King. They’ve seeped into this world from a darker place, their dark presence akin to “the world having ripped along a seam”.

Our young hero soon learns he must join forces with The Knights of the Borrowed Dark, a secret order of fighters that are sworn to keep them at bay. These Knights combat the Tenebrae by utilising ancient Cants, a powerful ancient magic with a heavy price: sinister things happen to those who cannot control it.

What results is a dark, gripping, coming-of-age tale, featuring a horde of wonderful monsters that would probably give your nightmares nightmares. If you’re expecting a whimsical, fun-filled, Harry Potter-style adventure, then you should maybe look elsewhere: KOTBD is a rather unsettling tale, with a sinister tone and an unrelenting atmosphere. The threat of the Tenebrous constantly hangs over our heroes’ heads, with disastrous consequences if they make any mistakes. It’s not completely grim, though: Rudden’s book does have nice bits of humour here and there, with Grey having some of the story’s wittiest lines.

On the surface, the plot of Rudden’s book may seem over-done: orphans enlisted into a secret organisation that fights evil? Where haven’t we seen that before? But Knights Of The Borrowed Dark succeeds due to its almost flawless execution: Rudden takes common story elements and tweaks them skilfully, resulting in a gripping story that feels comfortingly familiar yet refreshingly different.

Rudden shapes a wonderful, believable world: the magic and monsters of his world are both believable and fascinating. The book features a host of wonderful characters. The Knights of the Order are a fun lot: particularly captivating is Fuller Jack, the rough-and-ready blacksmith, and Corrinne D’Aubigny, a “petite switchblade of a woman” who turns out to be a capable fighter. Also cool is Denizen’s aunt Vivian, the stern, no-nonsense hammer-wielding Malleus (commander) of the Knights, who is so ferocious in combat, she makes Thor look like MC Hammer. And Simon, who faces his share of monsters in Crosscaper Orphanage, is a plucky young hero you can’t help rooting for: you wonder sometimes why he isn’t the protagonist of this book!

The book’s biggest stars, however, are perhaps the nightmarish Tenebrous. Denizen encounters some really terrible foes in this book – whether it is the sinister Pick-Up-The-Pieces, who appears as a misshapen parody of a horde of cats, or the nightmarish Clockwork Three – and the author does a great job of mesmerising the reader with memorable descriptions of them.

As if you’d been asked to sculpt an angel, Rudden describes one of the first monsters that Denizen encounters. But you’d never seen one before, and there were people to tell you what one looked like … but they hated you.

Rudden also has a way with words, and a lot of his descriptions (particularly in the book’s opening chapters) capture the imagination. Where else can you find a woman “with a spine curved like an old coat hanger”, tunnel walls that “ended raggedly before him like the gaping collar of a headless man”, or a character with “hair and eyes that were knitted from storms”?

His storyline moves at a quick pace, and there are twists aplenty: one major plot development towards the end is introduced perhaps a bit too abruptly, but that is a minor flaw in an otherwise very well-written story. The ending is also open enough for a potential sequel: let’s hope our adventures with Denizen are not just a “one-knight stand”!

KOTBD may be aimed at older children, but I daresay quite a few adults will be creeped out by its horrors. Those with a nervous disposition might want to invest in a good night light after encountering this book’s menagerie of menacing monsters.

Knights Of The Borrowed Dark

Author: Dave Rudden
Publisher: Puffin, fiction

Source : Star2.com