A Neon Darkness by Lauren Shippen
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Sci-Fi: A teenager with mind-control powers tries to make friends
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Sci-Fi
Key topics/tropes: Superpowers, found family, mental health
Grade: Young Adult
Series: The Bright Sessions #2
Published: Sep 29, 2020
Length: 10 hours, 38 minutes
Format Read: Audio by Charlie Ian
POV: First; third for short sections
Content warnings & important topics (More listed in Spoiler section)
Drug use
Violence
Links
Summary
Eighteen-year-old Robert Gorham’s superpower is making other people want whatever he wants. He roams the country on his own, getting everything he wants, until he lands in LA where he meets a group of superpowered friends who call themselves “Unusuals”. Robert finally feels like he belongs, but when the Unusuals encounter a man who’s immune to their powers, Robert’s power threatens to destroy the first family he’s ever wanted.
📍 The greater Bright Sessions universe uses the term “Atypical” to describe a superpowered individual (including the first book in the series: An Infinite Noise), but since this book uses “Unusual”, I’ll stick with that for this review.
Review
Reading from the perspective of a narcissistic teenager who basically has mind control powers is infuriating. Robert is clearly meant to be unlikeable, but Shippen adds just enough nuance to his character development scenes that you don’t just drop the book entirely, out of frustration. You hold out hope that he’ll grow as a person in some way.
The core cast of characters was well-rounded in terms of identity, personality, and what they add to the development of the story.
Neon is a Black woman who works as a mechanic, with the power to control electricity. She’s free-spirited and tells it like it is.
Indah is an Indonesian woman who works as a bartender. She’s not considered an Unusual within the group, but she has the ‘power’ to sense if someone else has an ability. Her personality is more patient and ‘mother hen’ at times.
Marley is a veteran, with the power to see into someone’s past. He’s reserved and takes time to open up to people.
Blaze is an Asian kid, with the power of pyrokinesis. He’s a bit of a wild child and the rest of the Unusuals tend watch over him.
The book is told from Robert’s first-person perspective, but there are a few sections that felt like third person, where he’s narrating what’s happening to other characters in scenes he’s not present for. This was only confusing for me because I listened to the audiobook and there’s no auditory cue to indicate the narration style would be changing. Maybe print/ebook versions have a visual cue on the page?
The plot meanders a bit and sometimes feels aimless. There’s no clear path of events for the reader to anticipate when it comes to the antagonist (dubbed The Tall Man). Honestly, the true main antagonist usually feels like Robert himself anyway. The Tall Man is more of a B-plot, with the focus on Robert’s power and how he grapples with the impact it plays in his relationships.
Ultimately, the main reason I enjoyed this book was because of how strongly I felt the emotional turmoil of each character. Robert sucks, a lot. He’s young, has a lot baggage, and because of his powers, doesn’t know how ‘real adult life’ works: how to make friends, how to keep them, how to connect with them in an authentic way. His ‘wants’ just seep out of him and shape the world in his favor. And he doesn’t yet know how to control the power of his wants so that they don’t infringe on the autonomy of people he cares about.
The Unusuals understand his naivety and try to teach him the basics of friendships and people in general, but Robert’s not mature or ‘life-experienced’ enough to take the constructive criticism to heart. So no matter how much they want to be able to love him, he’s not in a place to receive their messages about boundaries or what it means to be truly accepted into the family. All around, it was a tangled, emotional mess for everyone involved, including the reader (but in a good way, because it was written in a very compelling way).
I think how Shippen chose to wrap up Robert’s story was a good decision (More in Spoilers). The Bright Sessions podcast came out before A Neon Darkness, taking place years after the events of the book and Robert is a major part of the show. I think you could read/listen in any order and still enjoy him overall universe story, which is a nice plus.
Author Rep Notes
Lauren Shippen is bisexual and experiences panic attacks (SGN interview).
Character Rep Notes
Race/Ethnicity
Neon is Black, Indah is Indonesian, and Blaze is Chinese.
Sexuality
I can’t recall if specific labels are used, but Neon and Robert express romantic interest him both men and women.
I believe Indah expresses romantic interest only in women, and she and Neon are in a relationship.
Other
Robert is described as chubby, which plays a minor factor in how he feels about himself overall.
Also by Lauren Shippen:
The Infinite Noise (The Bright Sessions #1)
Some Faraway Place (The Bright Sessions #3)
🚫 Spoilers ahead
Also includes slight spoilers for The Bright Sessions podcast.
Additional content warnings:
Murder
Emotional abuse
Suicide attempt
Thoughts on the ending:
It was the type of sadness you feel in your bones. Robert’s all alone again and a worse person than he started as in the beginning of the book. The Unusuals are sitting in the wake of trauma after Robert forced Neon to kill The Tall Man. Robert ‘wanted’ them to forget it even happened and so they’re just waiting to see if his ‘want’ will take, to see if they’ll forget they were all party to a murder.
You know their group is forever fractured and they may never recover. Robert will only go on to hurt more people, truly believing that everyone else is the problem, and anything he does to others from now on, he’ll justify in his mind. In the podcast, we see his mindset hasn’t evolved from this, as it takes places years later and he continues to use his power against others and justify his decisions to do so.