Checkmate – Malorie Blackman

Callie Rose is fifteen and conflicted. A halfer, she’s the product of the union between her singer/songwriter Cross mother, Sephy, and her dead nought father. Though too light to be accepted by the dominant culture and too dark to pass as one of the subjugated, Callie Roses’ childhood was protected by her mother and paternal grandmother. But now she’s starting to grow up, to question her history, her family and her culture. And she’s been exposed to the harsh realities of the racially conflicted society she is part of.
This is the final part in the Noughts and Crosses trilogy – parts one and two told the Romeo and Juliet story of Callie Roses’ parents, privileged Cross Persephone (Sephy), daughter of wealthy politician Kamal Hadley and his alcoholic wife Jasmine, and nought Callum McGregor, whose father Ryan was killed as a terrorist and whose mother Meggie worked as a servant for the Hadley’s. I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll just say that Callum died before Callie Rose was born, and Sephy has never explained any of the detail of their relationship, or the convoluted relationships she has with either family, to Callie Rose, leaving her vulnerable to the machinations of Callum’s fanatical brother Jude.
Checkmate opens with a prologue from Jude’s perspective, then intersperses Callie Rose’s story (which is comprised of significant events from her childhood onward) with a linear narrative from the points of view of Meggie, Jasmine, Sephy and Jude. We discover how the mistakes of the past echo down to the life-changing act of terrorism that Callie Rose feels is her only choice, and we are witness to the redemptive, sacrificial power of love.
This is a powerful series that manages to illuminate the fundamental inequalities of contemporary Western culture by creating a society that mirrors ours in all but degree of segregation (think South Africa in the 1980’s) and colours of the oppressed and the oppressors. The lesson does not overshadow the plot or characterisation, and the ending is resolved in all the ways that are satisfactory without being pat or facile. I have looked forward to the conclusion of the series since I first read Noughts and Crosses, and Checkmate delivered. – Alex