Year of the Black Rainbow (novel)

Year of the Black Rainbow is a novel written by Claudio Sanchez and Peter David. It was released on April 13, 2010 in a deluxe bundle of the album of the same name. It was later released in paperback and eBook formats.

Plot Summary
This chapter in the series focuses on Leonard Hohenberger, a scientist with a specialty in biology and bionics, and his family. His wife, Pearl, is also a scientist with a focus on animal biology. At the beginning of the book, we discover that it is, in fact, Pearl who creates the syringa dragonfly. The book opens with a kind of summary of The Mage War, a long battle between newly appointed Wilhelm Ryan of Sector 6 and his main foil, Covent Marth of Sector 4. Marth has the ability of premonition and immediately calls out Ryan for being scheming and says he will ultimately be the downfall of The Fence. After Ryan's victory and the subsequent death of Leonard and Pearl's son, Joseph, the couple vow get justice for him. A Black Rainbow appears in the sky, and most people are actually pretty happy with Ryan's rule viewing the phenomena as a sign from God.

Hohenberger is visited by Paranoia who tells him he's been chosen to fix things. He's not sure how, so she grants him a "creative spark," in which he thinks of a way to produce three super beings. Using DNA from himself, his son, and Paranoia (though he conveniently forgets her and how he got the DNA), he makes the first IRO-bots. He gives them code names: Inferno (his clone), Beast (using Joseph's DNA), and Knowledge (using Paranoia's DNA). They go by the team name KBI, with Inferno keeping to the skies in a ship and Beast and Knowledge doing the dirty work. Hohenberger sends the group on various missions, thwarting Ryan's schemes and giving the people a new perspective; changing minds. But with this exposure, Hohenberger is found out and Pearl is captured.

Hohenberger is forced to give up Beast and Knowledge (the only two Ryan's side knows of) and to create a deadly virus that will wipe out anyone and everyone. Feeling guilty that he would be a shadow hand in billions of people's deaths, he devises a plan to circumvent the demand. He put one half of the virus in both Beast and Knowledge. He explains that Ryan will have to figure out how to extract both halves without killing them as that would only be devastating for Ryan. Frustrated but keeping his word, Ryan returns Pearl who had been driven insane and brainwashed into believing Hohenberger was the cause of all her problems. Upon her return she and her husband fight, and Leonard is knocked out, while Pearl, in a bit of a mental break, slips and falls, killing herself. When he comes to, Leonard decides he's had enough. He puts the final touches on his solution to the virus and sets out to shoot Ryan himself. At a celebration, he tries and fails to shoot Ryan only to be shot in retaliation.

Inferno, hearing of Hohenberger's death, goes back to the doctor's house and discovers Josephine, a newborn IRO-bot that did not receive any of the biological or mental accelerants that IRO-bots like KBI received. Named after Hohenberger's late son, her body was meant to cultivate a cure to the virus as she grew. Inferno was also told how to revive Beast and Knowledge and how the virus worked within their bodies. Inferno hatched a plan to retrieve the pair, and after a long, grueling battle, he planted false memories in them and placed Josephine with them as their daughter. With a new lease on life, he hid them and did his best to stay away and watch over them from afar, lest Ryan and his forces find them before Josephine was ready. At this point, finally after about a year, the Black Rainbow disappeared.

Publication History
The novel was originally published as a hardcover book bundled with the Deluxe Edition of the album with the same name on April 13, 2010. A limited paperback version was also sold separately, and included a digital version of the album for download. Lastly, an eBook version was available on major retailers such as Amazon's Kindle, and B&N's Nook. It is still widely available through these eBook retailers for roughly 10 USD.

Creative Team
Brent Elliott White is an illustrator and designer who has done dozens of album art for a variety of artists including Trivium and Megadeth. He also did the original concept art for the original Watchmen movie, and is working on his own graphic novel.

Album Comparison
"" The events of the book can be matched with the album, but in comparison, the album tells the story out of order. A "proper" track order would be "One", "The Broken", "Guns of Summer", "Far", "The Black Rainbow", "Here We Are Juggernaut", "World of Lines", "Made Out of Nothing (All That I Am)", "In the Flame of Error", "Pearl of the Stars", "When Skeletons Live", and lastly "This Shattered Symphony".

(You can add "Chamberlain" after "The Broken," "The Lost Shepherd" before "Here We Are Juggernaut," and finally, "Hush" after "The Lost Shepherd," if you want to include all the bonus tracks.)

Another point to be made is that while the novel switches perspectives between Leonard, Pearl, Ryan, Deftinwolf, and even Marth, the album seems to focus solely on Leonard's perspective with a few switches to Ryan.

Many of the chapter titles are taken from the song titles, or even direct lyrics (such as "Here We Are Juggernaut"). Of the 21 chapters (excluding Prologue and Epilogue), only one chapter is not directly related to the album in this way: Ch. 1: Obscurity Has No Hero, Ch. 2: Cleanse This Useless Identity, Ch. 3: Guns of Summer, Ch. 4: The Worst These Worlds Will See, Ch. 5: Torn to Pieces, Ch. 6: The Black Rainbow, Ch. 7: Give Us the Monster, Ch. 8: A Wretched Design, Ch. 9: The Same Old Story, Ch. 10: Magicians, Ch. 11: The World of Lines, Ch. 12: Pearl of the Stars, Ch. 13: Made Out of Nothing, Ch. 14: Everything You Love, Ch. 15: While You Were Sleeping, Ch. 16: All Falls Apart, Ch. 17: In the Flame of Error, Ch. 18: This Shattered Symphony, Ch. 19: New in Town, Ch. 20: When Skeletons Live, and Ch. 21: I'll Be Your Ghost. (Also interesting to note is that "Hush", while a bonus song, is the only bonus song to have lyrics related to the titles.)

This could very well mean that the songs have a dual place in the timeline of the book, or contain flashbacks/foreshadowing. After all, the prologue essentially conveys the events of "Here We Are Juggernaut" when in the timeline, this takes place more towards the middle.

Trivia

 * Though the title neglects to mention "The Amory Wars" in it, the Amazon page has "The Amory Wars Book 1" in parenthesis. Similarly, on the spine of both the hardcover and paperback versions there is a roman numeral one before the title.
 * All the Chapter titles have some correlation to the album's titles or lyrics, except Chapter 16 "All Falls Apart."
 * Of the bonus songs on the album, "Hush" is the only one to actually be included in this. This may be because the other two songs are simple demos, and thus weren't worked that closely into the story.