Dark Tracks by Philippa Gregory - OPTIONAL

Dark Tracks (Order of Darkness, #4) by Philippa Gregory, 307 pages.  Simon Pulse, 2018.  $20.  

Language: G; Mature Content: PG-13; Violence: PG-13.  

BUYING ADVISORY: HS - OPTIONAL  

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE  

Luca and his friends go about Europe trying to explain odd happenings that the Order of Darkness believes signal the end of days.  There is an odd dancing disease that is taking over small villages, but when Luca tries to solve the problem he loses one of his friends to the sickness.  Luca tries to convince the local landowner to help him, but the landowner is prone to violence and has little patience for those lost to the dancing.  When a community of Jews finally allows Luca’s friends a sanctuary he doesn’t realize the hardship that he has brought down on their village.  

I usually really enjoy the Order of Darkness books, but this one was slow to start and never really had a satisfying reason for why the people were dancing.  The history of how Jewish communities were treated throughout medieval times was interesting and heartbreaking but was the only interesting element in this story.  The characters’ actions were also inconsistent from the other books in the series, which made them less likable.  The violence is brutality and threat of rape and the mature content is descriptive off-page sex.  

C. Peterson