'The Boy can see lost souls. He has never questioned the fact that he can see them. He thinks of them as the Dark Chorus. When he sets out to restore the soul of his dead mother it becomes clear that his ability comes from within him. It is a force that he cannot ignore – the last shard of the shattered soul of an angel.
'To be restored to the kingdom of light, the shard must be cleansed of the evil that infects it – but this requires the corrupt souls of the living!
'With the help from Makka, a psychotically violent young man full of hate, and Vee, an abused young woman full of pain, the Boy begins to kill.
'Psychiatrist Dr Eve Rhodes is seconded to assist the police investigation into the Boy’s apparently random ritualistic killings. As the investigation gathers pace, a pattern emerges. When Eve pulls at the thread from an article in an old psychology journal, what might otherwise have seemed to her a terrible psychotic delusion now feels all too real…
'Will the Boy succeed in restoring the angel’s soul to the light? Can Eve stop him, or will she be lost to realm of the Dark Chorus?'
The Dark Chorus is one of those books where you begin to question what you're reading. As soon as the book begins we discover the Boy, a thirteen-year-old who has spent his whole life in orphanages and care homes since his mothers death; a teen who believes that he can see the spirits of the dead all around him. He uses his ability to find and trap the soul of his mother, and transfers this into a woman. When this doesn't go well he ends up killing the woman in a ritualistic way in order to free his mothers soul.
This act ends up with the Boy being found by the police and sent to a young offenders institute. It's here that you begin to question if what you saw in the first few chapters was real, as the book now seems to be grounded in reality, and healthcare professionals point at all the different ways in which the Boy is delusional and dangerous. As the reader you begin to suspect that this isn't a book about souls and magic, but about a deeply disturbed individual who needs to be stopped from causing more harm. But then other characters, people outside of the Boy's 'delusion' start to see and experience things, and you realise that the book is actually blending the fantastical with the real, and that it's keeping one foot firmly in each camp.
This is the fine line that Ashely Meggitt manages to walk across the entire book, and uses two differing narratives to do so with great effect. For the majority of the novel we follow the Boy, with the story being told in a first person perspective as he sets out on his deadly mission. However, there are times when the book jumps away from him and we join Dr Eve Rhodes, a psychiatrist helping the police with his case. These parts of the book are written from a third person perspective, and take a much more grounded and analytical view of events; and much of it is presented more as a police investigation procedural as Eve helps the police.
The mixing of these two narrative styles is very well done, and ends the book a unique feel as one moment we can be spending time with the Boy, who literally sees souls and can stare into the very heart of what makes people tick with his powers; whilst the next page we could be seeing police examine a crime scene and talking about paranoid delusions and motives. The Boy's parts bring the fantastical to the mundane, whilst Eve's help to anchor the rest of the book in the real world, leading to the fantastical nature of the story never feeling too weird to be accepted.
Over the course of the narrative the Boy ends up recruiting two other teens into his mission, the first is an Asian boy names Makka, a psychotically violent young man who's goal in life is to find the racist criminal who raped his mother; swearing to kill the man for destroying his mothers life, even though it led to his birth.
The two of them also come across a girl names Victoria, who they manage to save from being raped by one of Makka's father's Nazi friends. She's a young girl who's been sold into child sex by her wealthy and well connected father, but has bee on the run for some time.
Not only do these two characters help the Boy, but they end up being connected as we learn that Makka's father and his friends have been hired to track down and recapture Victoria by her father. It does feel at time like it's fate, rather than random chance that brings the three of them together, and connects them in these ways; which is somewhat fitting as we learn more and more about the Boy and the powers he's connected to over the course of the story.
It should be noted before jumping in to read the book, though, that it is an incredibly violent narrative. Meggitt doesn't shy away from including physical violence, and some pretty brutal murder scenes. For the most part these feel somewhat acceptable, as the Boy and his friends target people whose souls are beyond redemption. Their victims end up being rapists, child molesters, racists, and thugs. They go after people who prey on the weak, who hate others for being different, the kind of people that most would look at and say shouldn't be a part of civilised society.
This means that The Dark Chorus can feel incredibly dark at times, and I'm glad that when I was asked onto the blog tour I was made aware of some of this via content warnings, as if you were to go into in unprepared for the racist language and violent killings it'd probably take you aback somewhat; even though you'd probably get a sense of satisfaction in seeing bad people getting punished. One thing that I was not warned about before reading, and that I feel I should make potential readers aware of, is a small moment of casual transphobia that's thrown into the book. It's a single throwaway line, where Meggitt is describing how run down and illicit a certain part of London is, and mentions a 'fashion outlet for transsexuals'. This might not seem like much, and it's not really, but it was enough to throw me out of the book for a moment; and it was something that I kept circling back to thinking about. It felt completely unnecessary, and in all honesty I did contemplate not continuing the book; but then I'd have missed out on what is a pretty decent read. Yes, it's only one moment; but it's one that can harm, so to those reading this who might be considering picking up the book please be aware that this is something that happens.
On the whole I really enjoyed the book. I found that Meggitt was able to craft a really compelling and layered story; one where I was never sure what to expect and that I was eager to find out what happens next. The characters were interesting, and I'd have liked it if we could have spent some more time with them in the quiet moments between the big beats of the story, as I'd have loved to have found out more about them. Especially Victoria.
The Dark Chorus is a brutal book, one that takes it's readers to some dark places, yet manages to include some beauty too. The descriptions of the souls that the Boy sees, the Dark Chorus as he calls it, are some beautifully described moments that offset the often depressing banality of the real world places these child vigilantes are forced to stay in. The book walks a fine line between horror and police thriller, and will have you guessing and wondering a lot of the time; but it's a book that I really enjoyed, and am glad I read.
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