‘In Darkness’ tells the story of a young Haitian teenager, Shorty, who grew up in Site Soley.   The story begins with the 2010 Haitian earthquake, which kills hundreds of thousands of people.  Shorty, one of the main characters, is trapped under the rubbles of a collapsed building.  As he lay trapped there, he begins narrating his life story, which is pretty much shaped by the volatile political scene in Haiti.  We are also introduced to their local superstition, namely their iwas, their pwens, the houngans. 

Not long into the book, we realized that something is off, and Shorty starts seeing things from the eyes of a man, who lived in the 1700s, Toussaint L’Ouverture, who would later lead the Haitian Revolution.

I like the way Lake wrote the correlation between the two characters and how they ends up occupying a small part of each other’s bodies, but I feel like the latter could have been more utilized.  I kind of wish that there had been an actual communication between the two.  We have been reading from their POVs, but they never truly converge.  It’s like reading two different books, with how disjointed this book feels.  This book is very educating, and I like that part, but it could also be so much more.   It gets confusing at first, especially if you are utterly ignorant when it comes to the politics in Haiti (like me), but over time, you realize that each and every characters are interesting on their own.

Verdict:  4/5