REVIEW: The Red Labyrinth by Ben Peek
Two god-like monarchs rule two labyrinthine prisons for the living and the dead beneath the earth, and humanity throw their dissidents and criminals down into the darkness for eternity. But the Red King wants out, to reshape the world above as he has the world below. In The Red Labyrinth, Ben Peek uses the short, sharp storytelling required for great novella writing to deliver a story of population control, service without hope, fear of punishment, of falling into line with the horrible status quo, of hopelessness and of rebellion.
Zoja has learned to read and reproduce books of history she smuggles into her home–a highly illegal act in a society of controlled knowledge. She is careful and wary, looking for knowledge and history and not profit. But she is not careful enough, and finds herself thrown into the darkness and beneath the Red King’s eye.
Zoja’s story is a darkly enjoyable one to follow, and as with all the best modern fantasy, draws upon the society of our day to give you a story that’s relatable and meaningful through a different lens. The living serving the dead feels to me like commentary on the people who work retail and service roles living in inescapable poverty while watching the wealthy move like zombies stuck in the machine around them. The Labyrinths are the traps of our society that it feels impossible to break free of. The Red King and the Black Queen are oligarchs and billionaires violently reshaping the world to their image. The city above the labyrinth is the controls we allow on ourselves. And the rebellion is a message.
I really love how Peek uses the storytelling approach of a third party to the main events describing Zoja’s journey to slowly, and often with an almost off handed comment, reveal more detail of the story while retelling the past. When I opened the book and got stuck in, I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy this approach, but halfway through The Red Labyrinth I was keeping an eye out for every little crumb of detail Peek’s narrator left me as the world opened up.
The Red Labyrinth has a suitably grimdark ending for my tastes, with a final twist I kind of knew was coming, but found hit really nicely. Peek clearly understands the shorter form approach as its own form of art versus his longer-form novels (The Children Trilogy, starting with The Godless), and I enjoyed the read all the more for it.
The Red Labyrinth is a beautiful novella where the reader can get as deep as you like into the themes, or just enjoy a cracking fantasy story where the downtrodden and discarded fight back.
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