Those Beyond The Wall by Micaiah Johnson

Book Review

Stpehen Frame

The blurb on the back cover of Those Beyond The Wall doesn’t do it justice. Reading it might lead you to think you were starting on a straight-forward sci-fi thriller. What you find between the covers is more of an intricate story of an outlaw and her extended family, friends and enemies, engaged in a struggle with shifting alliances and an existential threat to their society.

The story is centred around the cities of Ashtown and Wiley and the desert between them. Wiley is a closed city, run by the rich, for the rich. Ashtown is a lawless outpost in the desert. Added to this are the Ruralites, who live out with the cities. For those who like a story grounded in solid world-building, this book is maybe not the best choice, as little time is devoted to how these communities manage to survive and thrive in a desert where the environment is described as being lethally hot at times.

However, for readers who enjoy a narrative based on ever-changing relationships between the key characters, with bridges being built as often as they are broken, this might be the one. Those Beyond The Wall is intricate and densely written. It brings to mind those long-running, heavy-weight, dynastic drama series that US TV is so good at. Sons of Anarchy might be a good comparison.

It can be a slow read at times. There are long paragraphs of introspection by the main character, Scales, one of the gang of outlaws working out of Ashtown. Much of the book is devoted to Scales navigating a path through her many difficulties with her immediate friends and family. So much so, that what starts out as the main thrust of the story, the inexplicable murders of people in both Ashtown and Wiley, soon becomes submerged in the recounting of Scales’s complicated family life, only to resurface and submerge again at intervals throughout the book. The effect is to make the book feel much longer than it actually is.

When the action does pick up, it can feel too much like happenings and connections are dropped in without much in the way of build-up. This makes for a bumpy ride, and a sense that the main story is not really the main story at all. This isn’t quite the disadvantage it might be, as Scales’s tale is worth telling. It’s a story of brothers and sisters, friends and near-lovers, loyalty and bitter hatred. It’s a story of a driven young woman dealing with all of these things, and it is engaging and satisfying, with plenty of discoveries, complications and reversals. If you’re after a family saga in a Mad Max setting, this is the book you want.