SciFI/Fantasy Book Review: Daughter from the Dark by Sergey and Marina Dyachenko (Translated by Julia Hersey)

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Daughter from the Dark by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko (translated by Julia Hersey): https://t.co/p8UhMQphbq Short Review: 5.5 out of 10 (1/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) March 27, 2020

Short Review (cont): When a Russian DJ finds a small girl w/a stuffed bear in an alley at midnight, he takes her home to get her away from outside. But the girl won't leave, & the bear may be alive and murderous and little is as it seems. Intriguing but didn't work for me. (2/3)

— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) March 27, 2020

Daughter from the Dark is the latest translated novel from Ukrainian authors Sergey and Marina Dyachenko.  The Dyachenkos were responsible for one of my favorite books of the last few years in Vita Nostra (review here), which even was translated from Russian by the same translator as this novel (Julia Hersey), so I was really excited to hear that this book was coming out this year.  For those who haven't read Vita Nostra, it's an incredibly weird book, filled with seemingly inexplicable events all in the purpose of a plot that ends in glorious triumphant fashion, and so I was not surprised to find Daughter from the Dark to feature similar inexplicable weirdness at its core.

I was surprised however to find that Daughter from the Dark didn't particularly lead to anywhere interesting, unlike Vita Nostra. The story focuses around a main character who begins the story somewhat of an ass, remains an ass mostly throughout despite some moments, and whose growth is....questionable?  Moreover, the questions posed by the weirdness are never really answered in any fashion, at least not in any satisfying way, making the whole thing seem kind of pointless.  Perhaps it works better in the original language, but I suspect not, and just that this one didn't work for me.


----------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------
Alexey is a DJ - known to his city as DJ Aspirin or just "Aspirin" in general - whose life seems pretty settled.  He works several jobs - as DJ for the local radio station and as a DJ for a club - has frequent girlfriends for short periods of time, and lives alone in his apartment for the rest of the time.

Then one day, walking home way late at night, he encounters a 10 year old girl with a teddy bear in a sketchy alley, despite the presence of dangerous boys and their dog with bad intentions close by.  For some reason, he takes the girl home with him to save her....but then the girl, who names herself Alyona, refuses to leave.  And strange things begin happening around Alyona - anyone who threatens her seems to get mauled by a bear like creature and a strange man comes looking for her and declarers her to be Aspirin's bastard daughter, complete with birth certificate.  Aspirin can't help but be frustrated and scared of the girl, who he simply can't force out of his life.

Alyona claims that she's from another place, a perfect place without death, and that she needs to use her music to bring back her brother.  And she proves to be a prodigy at music, able to do things with her strings verging on the supernatural.  But who is she really, and will Aspirin's life ever be the same now that she's arrived?
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Daughter from the Dark centers its weirdness around Alyona and her teddy bear Mishutka, but it's really a story about Aspirin, the ass of a man who first randomly tries to rescue her for the night.  There are no other characters who really get significant development - Aspirin's neighbor Irina comes the closest, except she mostly represents a stable love interest who isn't interested in just sex and basically gets no development (other than her habit of running around the block) outside of her on and off relationship with Aspirin.  It's really just Aspirin and Alyona who carry this story, and honestly it's just not enough.

Aspirin is a total ass, a jackass DJ who spends his days on the radio talking in verbal diarrhea between songs and contests and is known for it, who frequently has girlfriends who come and go, even when he's perhaps in a relationship with someone else, and who frequently responds to others insisting things at him with threats (someone notes he seems fond of threatening to push people down the stairs at one point).  His growth throughout the novel into somewhat of a parent of Alyona frequently feels like it takes 2 steps forward and then one step back, as he grows protective of her only to then freak out with what she's doing next, especially as she provokes him with more actions of her own.  This might work out if there was more to this story than Aspirin's development as a good person, but there really isn't - and he's not really a good person at the end, just protective of the girl he's grown attached to.

Meanwhile, Alyona's strangeness is just......there.  The book seemingly attempts to try to fake Aspirin out into being unsure if she's supernatural or just crazy from a more mundane background, but the reader is clearly aware she can't be natural from the beginning.  Alyona's strangeness does give rise to some funny and weird situations especially as Aspirin tries to deal with it all, but none of her talk about music and her brother ever seems to actually go anywhere, even in its strange finale.  I guess one could talk about how it all amounts to a theme of the power of created music, which can only be done in an imperfect world, as opposed to just arranging music like Aspirin does, but the book never really makes that case.

It's just an awful lot of work in a short book to lead nowhere, with themes (the music) and character growth that just amounted to nothing for me.  Very disappointed in this one, alas.