Books: The Black Arrow by Vin Suprynowicz

Let freedom bleed

By John Ziebell

Say you were to wake up one morning, walk outside and find the streets patrolled by a bunch of self-important security guards in stylish pseudo-military attire, complete with lightning bolt insignia, led by a ghoulish character named Heydrich...no, it's not 1930s Berlin. The scene is actually America, nearly a century later, a crumbling dystopia that provides the backdrop for The Black Arrow, a didactic but energetic entertainment from Review-Journal editorial writer Vin Suprynowicz.

If the title has a familiar ring, it's because part of the storyline is admittedly cribbed from the Robert Louis Stevenson novel of the same name, but the resemblance is pretty superficial. The Suprynowicz version is about fighting the yoke of oppression, but the book has the gritty feel of a graphic novel rather than the charm of an adventure yarn. The Black Arrow opens with a dark vision of the future in which "Homeland Security," an even more amorphous entity than it is now, has grown arrogant and tyrannical in the application of its unchecked (and unconstitutional) powers. Its "Grays" rule the streets in a neo-Brownshirt fashion, using portable scanners similar to airport security gates to randomly search pedestrians.

A dark night, a beautiful female courier, a couple of thuggish guards with bad intentions--but don't worry, this is the kind of book where people get what they deserve. Out of the darkness comes a very lethal sort of superhero, a Batman hybrid with a compound bow, and the truncated rape attempt launches a 700-page fantasy...well, it's a love story, and pays some homage to Objectivism, but it's basically a near-future tale about the triumph of the common American over an oppressive culture of mediocrity, a society rendered impotent by the misdirected efforts of politicians, courts, bureaucrats and other tyrants. By armed revolution, that would be.

The Black Arrow bills itself as "a tale of the resistance," which may initially be a bit off-putting. But it's less a diatribe from the lunatic fringe than a prescriptive effort from the camp of the libertarians, that strange breed of political fellow travelers who like paved roads and streetlights and emergency medical services but carpingly begrudge every penny that is taxed to pay for them. The criticisms presented in the novel might be valid, but are quite narrowly focused. From the perspective of its characters, this is a single-issue world: The DEA is in business simply to prevent doctors from prescribing sufficient painkillers to terminal patients; the only job of the IRS is to seize the hard-earned assets of helpless citizens; legislatures prevent honest homeowners from shooting dope-crazed sociopaths in self-defense; and cops inhabit the book just to kill innocent civilians whenever the author feels the need to push some emotional hot buttons. We get the point, but the novel's lack of philosophical complexity almost demands that you decide if you are or if you ain't a member of the particular choir that it's preaching to.

This book isn't challenging any literary standards, so don't be scared by its heft. The pages turn at a pretty good pace, and readers simply aren't allowed to be bored with a lot of soul-searching or theoretical discourse. Suprynowicz is a conscientious craftsman, and overall the writing is efficient without being glib or clichéd. There are plenty of plot turns, competing agendas, supporting characters and illustrative vignettes in a book of this size, and they all come together by the end. Some of this is fun in a sci-fi kind of way--resistance headquarters operating in the caverns deep beneath Gotham City, for example--and some, like the guns and tactics, buy credibility with fairly accurate detail. Sure, the novel's romances are hokey--so are the love antics in most books or movies of this ilk. The author's prophecy of an overly controlled future may be bleak, but it's also not wholly improbable; his cadre of rebels may be stereotypical, but they're likable. And they've got the Constitution on their side!