Written in Fire is the third novel of Marcus Sakey’s Brilliance Trilogy and boy does he end this trilogy with a bang. The first book in this trilogy Brilliance ranks as one of my favorite books of all time and although Written in Fire does not reach the heights of the first novel, it comes darn close. Part Science Fiction, action thriller, with a dash of futurism, politics, psychology and military action, the entire Brilliance Saga is a thinly veiled allegory of human nature and society’s innate ability to unite and turn against the metaphorical them. In this, Sakey explores the divisions of our society, exposes the fault lines running through civilization and pokes at them such that the veneer of civilization melts away , leaving the reader with borderline chaos. It is the flirtation of the abyss that makes Written in Fire so compelling, almost like watching a train wreck happen and being powerless to stop it. Coupled with brilliant (pun intended) characterization driving the plot along, Written in Fire accomplishes the impossible and closes an already spectacular trilogy out on a high note.
For the uninitiated the Brilliance trilogy is focused on the appearance of a group of people known as the abnorms or brilliants. Starting in the year 1980, one percent of the world are born with amazing, savant like gifts, ways of thinking, organizing information, cataloging of data, reacting differently to surrounding stimuli etc. They were not born with Xmen like powers, i.e, no one is shooting optic blasts out of their eyes or manipulating magnetism, but the most powerful Brilliants possess the ability to quickly sense patterns in the stock market, thereby crashing the market, or being the tactical equivalent of Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great combined. Others have the ability to recognize body language in others, allowing them to discern hidden motives and intentions of other people. While, others are able to identify vectors in a crowd, effectively shifting to where people are not paying attention, thereby remaining invisible. Some are born just flat out geniuses, able to create new technology, see programing code as if it were a simple song etc. Even though the population of Brilliants is small, only about 1% of the population of the world, they are a seen as a threat to the rest of us, the normal, people born without their great gifts. As a result, and as with any minority group they are both persecuted and loved for their gifts while also immensely feared, and on both sides Brilliant and normal there are voices pushing for War, a way to remake the world order with one group permanently dominating the other.
At the onset of Written In Fire, the first salvos of the War have already been fired. The White House is a smoking ruin, destroyed by a commandeered missile launched from a US submarine by the Brilliants from their sanctuary in Wyoming. Thousands of American troops laying siege to the Brilliant’s sanctuary have also been slaughtered when the Brilliants turned their own weapons against them. (Unbeknownst to the public these attacks where in self-defense after the Defense Secretary ordered the soldiers surrounding the Brilliants Sanctuary to attack.) Madison Square Garden is a concentration camp, riots are breaking out all over the country, the Speaker of the House is the new president, and food shortages and fear are gripping the country. Brilliants the country over are being blamed for the deaths of the soldiers and the attempted decapitation of the Government, lynchings, beatings etc are now common place. To make matters worse, a rightwing militia bent on revenge is now marching on the Brilliants sanctuary in Wyoming seeking to wipe every Brilliant , man ,woman and child off the map. Yes, this world stinks. All the while there is one hope, as a genius scientist has discovered how to make normal people Brilliants, and a race ensues to find this man before his research can be co-opted for nefarious ends.
Whew! The board has been set for a great novel and this one does not disappoint. However great the plot, what drives this novel forward is the well written characters. The author does a great job writing believable and real characters, ones that we all can relate to. We intimately know the motivations of all the main characters, their fears, their wishes and what drives each of them. The heroes in the novel are expertly described, their motivations and desires laid bare for the reader to understand and relate to. For instance, driving the main character Nick Cooper, is the desire to protect his family, every action stems from this, it drives every morally ambiguous decision he makes yet as a father it is a decision I could certainly relate to. Cooper also serves as the moral center of the novel, twisted as that may be, revealing to both sides, Brilliant and Human, that sanitized decisions made at the highest levels of power have real impact on the lives of the people the powerful are trying to protect. Torn between both worlds, all Cooper wants is peace and he will fight to the death trying to avert a war that seems all but inevitable.
However, heroes aside, the highlight of the novel are the villains of which there are many. The villains are multi-faceted each with come with competing yet understandable agendas. The author takes the time to paint a great picture on each of them detailing what motivates their goals, and why they all think the way they do. As with the heroes of the novel, you know exactly what drives the villains and I could easily see their points of view if I placed myself in their shoes. At the onset of the novel, I thought for instance that I was going to hate the leaders of the Right Wing militia leading the charge against the New Canaan Holdfast, the sanctuary of the Brilliants, but I remembered 9/11. I remembered the rage I felt that day when the Twin Towers were hit, the thirst for revenge at times clouding basic reason. Placing myself in that frame of mind, I imagined a world where in a single day the White House was destroyed, the president and many of the cabinet killed, a world where the Stock Exchange was bombed a few weeks before, a couple of American cities lay under siege by Brilliant Terrorists, and to top it all off, I lost both my sons in the Desert of Wyoming to a sneak attack. Putting myself in their shoes, I felt these people, though still deranged, their pain and what drove them. I may not have liked them or even wanted them to win, but I understood them. This was a nice touch.
Even the uber-Villain John Smith, comes across as less a nihilist terrorist but more of a deranged visionary, a man who believes that given human nature the prospects for peace are small, with society’s institutions to corrupt and ingrained to embrace the change needed to instill and maintain peace. In his mind perhaps it is just better to burn the whole thing down and start all over. Crazy, but given John’s background the atrocities committed against his people and what he went through, I understood once again where he was coming from. All of the major characters are written like this, you as a reader know what drives them and why, you know their innermost fears, their wants and desires and this makes for a fulfilling book. The characters are not just plot devices but living breathing people. Great job.
Sakey also does a great job showcasing the downsides of Brilliance, none moreso than the character of Soren, a character who experiences eleven seconds for every one second of our own. Soren more than anything embodies the tragic character of the novel, a person so cut off and isolated from the beauty that arises from simple human interaction such as simple communication and art that it has made him effectively a monster. Imagine living life never able to comprehend music or even simple communication with your neighbor as their every word or musical note are mashed together in incomprehensible gibberish. On the flip side, we have Millie a reader of amazing power. Imagine that you are able to read the thoughts and intentions of the people around you, but you can’t turn off the power. As such, you are always bombarded with the thoughts and intentions of those around you, inundating you with their wants and desires, always in danger of supplanting your own. Imagine how isolating both of these abilities would be, a point brought home powerfully in the novel.
As I mentioned earlier, the Trilogy in my opinion is a thinly veiled allegory about society, and the ability of civilization to turn in on itself and eat its own rather than come together. In the novel we see the brilliants effectively serving as the “other”, a strictly powerful “other”, but an “other” nonetheless. Substitute any persecuted group, in today’s political discussion and you can see how Sakey subtly weaves in the themes of alienation, tribalism, group identification and the human tendency to fear the unknown. Fearing persecution it is only natural for an oppressed or minority group to seek refuge among them, i.e form a minority enclave, which we see happens in the novel, but this enclave ironically only fosters more suspicion and mistrust among the majority. Taking these disparate themes and running with him, Sakey shows that unless we overcome our fear and mistrust of those different than ourselves, we are effectively bringing to past the very future we all claim that we are trying to avoid. We are in a sense rushing towards the abyss with the best of intentions at heart. The fault lines in his fictional society are laid bare and the very idea of community, what it means to be a nation or a country are vividly at stake. Sakey also shows how radical or the loudest voices on both sides of a discussion inevitably drive conflict whereas the voice in the middle, the silent voice in the middle is asking for peace and simply to raise their children in safety. Sprinkling in a little commentary of foreign policy by proxy, Sakey also shows how third party allies inevitably have different goals than their sponsor, a potent lesson for contemporary foreign policy makers the world over. All in all, the themes in this series and book are applicable to our world today in a real and viable way.
If I had to fault this book, I would have to say that the ending of the novel and the final cessation of conflict comes across as simply too easy. I won’t spoil it, but I’m not sure that a moment of appealing to the better angels of our nature would have worked as effectively as the novel portends. Possibly, but I am more cynical of human nature. Likewise, the budding love triangle in the novel is tidied up a little to nicely, but it does work. The epilogue though powerful is a little too open ended for my taste. I would have preferred more closure, but that is just me.
All in all, Written in Fire is an amazing book and a fitting conclusion to the Brilliance Trilogy. I cannot praise this book highly enough and I give it my most enthusiastic recommendation. This trilogy has cemented itself among my favorite trilogies of all time. Thanks for creating and sharing this world with all of us Mr. Sakey, books and series like this are why I love to read.
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Top reviews from other countries
Davide Bertolini
Great writing, too bad it's so US-centric
Reviewed in Italy on December 31, 2018
