Highwayman is a series of stories about a man named Lucas traveling from place to place. Lucas can't die, for reasons that are explained late in the book, and so his travels cover thousands of years, as both humanity and the planet gradually die away.
Each chapter is in a different place, at a different point in the journey, and Shadmi uses a different main color for each one. An overwhelming orange-red in Chapter 4, "Sizzle". An orange-peach in Chapter 2, when he hitches a ride with some girls going to an absurd party in the desert. The further the story goes, the grittier and bleaker the colors get. Not necessarily darker, but a sickly grey-green, or just a dull grey of a dead world.
Lucas remains distant from most of the people he rides with, rarely even looking at them while they talk with him. Just stares out the window as the world goes by, as if the answer to why he's like this will be posted on a billboard somewhere. The people he meets are usually awful, indifferent to the suffering of others, so maybe it works out that Lucas doesn't care too much about their fate.
It's not all like that. Shadmi does add a few kinder people along the way, and Lucas does try to help others. But the recurring theme is the kinder people get crushed by the cruel ones, and Lucas ultimately can't help anyone. That's not what he's for.
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