Rachel Churcher’s Darkest Hour

Now into the third novel of the Battle Ground series, Churcher takes a different tack on the key players of the first two books.

The story of Bex Ellman, the middle-class heroine of the first book who also leads a band of conscripts into the rebellion and into hiding, alternates with that of Ketty Smith, the lead recruit who brutalizes the conscripts with ‘iron fists and steel toe caps’.  This raises the reader’s anxiety quotient even though the two are only in the same room once in the book (not a spoiler – that’s on the opening page).

They represent two different kinds of self-discipline – Bex’s is borne of a sincere desire to help others. Ketty derisively calls her Mummy Ellman, her own mother having abandoned her to an abusive and alcoholic father. And that’s the source of Ketty’s own discipline – keeping out of her father’s way until the day she could enlist in the military and be away from him for good. The fact that Ketty finds herself dependent on Colonel Bracken, another alcoholic, to whom she’s essentially an ADC adds some extra drama to the story.

As Ketty makes it to London to learn prisoner interrogation and to try to track down Bex and those who escaped with her, Bex and her friends try to keep hidden and make their way to the Opposition in Exile in Scotland. Both are trapped in similar ways. Ketty is bound to Colonel Bracken, must keep him out of trouble, and advance her own career at the same time. It’s a weird juxtaposition and with each chapter, we find ourselves deeper in their respective plights.

At the same time, Bex finds herself, oddly, at the mercy of those trying to help her. The Opposition In Exile (OIE) are keen to use her as the Face of the Resistance – a different kind of Front Line Doll. They also want to use her as the symbol of the war they’re conducting.

While I really don’t want to like Ketty, and I find her lack of pity problematic (something her colleague Conrad also notes, even though they’re ostensibly on the same side) to say the least, played against Bex’s increasing self-pity, she starts to take on a certain honor. I really like how the two women become doppelgängers for one another. Bex lacks Ketty’s self mastery whereas Ketty lacks most aspects of human compassion – or submerges them so effectively she may not actually have any at all

No, it’s not that she lacks compassion – she channels her compassion for Jackson (the comatose colleague from Camp Bishop who was shot in the chest by Bex’s friend Dan at the crux of the previous books) into revenge – and this is why in the grand scheme she’s unsuccessful. She needs to be able to see through Bex’s eyes but she can’t because it was Bex’s crew that incapacitated her only friend. Every bit of love she can muster is for Jackson, and her tragedy is that she can’t get out of that trap.

If you enjoyed the first two, you’re in for a different kind of treat with this one. It has more of the feel of a cinematic thriller with the hero and antihero fighting their own battles as they close in on each other.