Review: Sick as Our Secrets by Jim Christopher

The second title in the Utopian Testament series, Jim Christopher’s Sick as Our Secrets is an action-packed, white-knuckle blend of thriller and fantasy about an epic fight for the life of a boy with supernatural powers.

Hawk is a restrained and mysterious man, employed at Utopia Farms in the rural Texas countryside, a marijuana dispensary, which may be doing something shadier under the table. Hawk does what he can to keep the farm running smoothly, despite having to deal with inexperienced employees who are only in charge due to nepotism. Nearby, a strange woman named Irene and her disabled landlord, Finch, are drawn into the web of danger and secrets associated with the farm.

A majority of Utopia Farm’s illegal activities revolve around a boy named Emerson, who has miraculous abilities – Emerson can literally see a person’s feelings and emotions, surrounding them like a halo, so he can easily tell when a person is being truthful and when they’re lying. Alongside this power is a curative one: Emerson can heal physical ailments, making him a magnet for the injured and highly useful at an enterprise like the farm, where the employees have a tendency to get hurt.

Once Irene and Finch arrive on the scene, Sick as Our Secrets explodes into a violent battle of wills between rival factions, as the real identities and motivations of the main characters gradually come to light over the course of this enveloping story. Author Jim Christopher is an expert writer on multiple fronts; his memorable characters practically leap off the page, and his plotlines are succinctly paced and executed. He knows exactly how to end a chapter on a cliffhanger to ramp up narrative tension, and he has a real eye for when to switch back and forth between different narrative threads without dropping a single one. The novel has many genuinely surprising and shocking twists, none of which seem too convenient or unbelievable.

Perhaps most impressive is the way that Christopher utilizes an unreliable main character without letting the trope devolve into a gimmick. The audience knows some things the character doesn’t, making great use of dramatic irony, but we learn some revelations in real time, as well. This variance makes the technique seem organic, as opposed to a simple trick to keep vital information away from readers until the time is right.

Another profound facet of the novel is Christopher’s focus on working-class characters and their lives. We see laborers operating excavators, job site foremen, and characters like Hawk, who must stay hidden and operate in the illegal drug economy due to his complicated past, mixing together science fiction and fantasy elements with down-to-earth characters and situations. Similar to Benjamin Percy’s Comet Cycle series, Jim Christopher’s Utopian Testament series uses an urban fantasy setting to great effect. Instead of seeing how magic impacts the wealthy or ethereal beings in a made-up land, Sick as Our Secrets effectively shows the real-world impact of miracles on everyday Americans, who are just trying to survive and live their lives, resulting in a truly gripping work of character-driven fantasy.