False Flag Signals Greatness
The Red Rain series by Rachel Newhouse has covered a lot of stylistic and thematic ground, from the eerie minimalism of the original novella, to madcap action, to intensive recomplication, to sympathetic backstory for a villain, to romance, to suspense … and I could go on. In my review of Blue Fire, “#5” in the series, I wrote:
I’d say she’s again “added another string to her bow,” but at this point it’s better to say “how many strings does her bow have?”
But for False Flag, released today, the question is more “How many strings can she use in one story?” There’s suspense, action, politics, arguments, conviction, repentance, forgiveness, and oh, so much more …
Mrs. Newhouse has, a few times in the past, written stories that felt “in the moment” like they weren’t significant, but that left me with a feeling of substantial themes as I closed them, a feeling I first put words to when I met it in Meet the Austins by Madeline L’Engle. But I think that False Flag is the first time that the thematic weight has both been palpable at moments during the story and left me saying at the end, “Oh. Ohhh!” Her alternate-history novel Peter’s Angel (now out of print for revision) had a similar “weight” in its pages, but less cohesively, conclusively, and effectively.
As (almost) always, Mrs. Newhouse continues to demonstrate mastery of compelling narrative voice, making this yet another story I didn’t want to put down and stayed up far too late finishing. There are perhaps some touches of advanced characterization to distinguish the two point-of-view characters’ voices, which are (as I’ve noted in reviews of previous entries) on the whole far too similar, but regardless, the narrative gripped me from beginning to end. Mrs. Newhouse is the one author who can overcome my severe dislike of dystopian fiction, and in this story she again does not disappoint.
I hesitate to mention specifics of the plot, both to avoid spoilers of either this book or previous entries, but I will say that False Flag both brings the greatest deepening of character development (in both senses of that term) the series has seen yet, and a level of “intensive recomplication” that may be nearing that of Andromeda, and a series of logical but unexpected twists even greater than the madcap adventures of “Prisoner 120518”.
As an example of this character growth, in my review of Crook Q I wrote, to explain why I thought that novella was lacking compared to “Prisoner 12058”:
In Crook Q, we see Philli again caught up in events she did not initiate, she does not understand, and the text does not (yet) explain, mostly facing choices of whether and how much to go along with others’ plans outside her control that present (at times complex) challenges to her morality.
Much of that is technically true in False Flag, with “the text does not (yet) explain” as the notable exception, but here she knowingly chooses to, at times, act in ignorance; her innocence has grown from childish naiveté to mature (or at least maturing) humility.
In my review of the previous entry in the series, Queen Sacrifice, I mentioned concerns about that novel’s handling of “increasingly explicit Christian themes”. One of my two primary concerns there is not really an issue here: this story does not contain any instances of questionable characters making theological arguments, whether of a “plausible but unsound” variety or not. The conflict comes either between characters whose loyalties and backgrounds are sufficiently known (and in one key case spelled out in the pages here) but which give them different perspectives, or from characters arguing with or consciously trying to resist God. The latter, however, do illustrate my remaining concern: For both of the point-of-view characters, it is “normal” to have verbal conversations with an unheard “Voice”, and the only time this is ever questioned it is by a minor character who thinks it might be a sign of mental illness. Setting aside the question of whether God ever does converse with Christians in the modern world in this way, I feel that the more knowledgeable characters (and quite possibly even Philadelphia by this point) should be aware that other more hostile spirits exist that are capable of misleading the unwary.
On the other hand, just about everything else in the themes and religious aspects of False Flag (that I noticed) is both appropriate to the story, appropriate to the times, appropriate for the nominal audience (more than some of the superficial “content” would be judged to be by a reviewer who was legalistic about the standard guidelines), and masterfully handled within the story. Some of the themes (it would be a spoiler to be more specific) feel more like delightful modulations than mere repetitions of themes that earlier stories already explored extensively—“from a certain point of view” it could even be argued that this is essentially the same story as the original novella at more than twice the word count, but to me this makes False Flag all the more satisfying.
I hesitate to say that False Flag is the most enjoyable story so far in the Red Rain series: the series grew so large so fast, and then slowed again, that my impressions of the early-post-hiatus entries have begun to blur together in my memory. But with False Flag, in my opinion, the Red Rain series has begun to take on the sort of lasting thematic “weight” that I’d seen glimmers of in Peter’s Angel and more telling signs of in her Erde worldbuilding, but not in this series previously. Brava!
I received a “free” electronic copy of *False Flag as a supporter on the author’s Patreon.*
