Scan barcode
A review by koshpeli
Sleepless by Charlie Huston
3.0
I stumbled on Charlie Huston's Hank Thomas series because they were offered free on Stanza. They were a little too dark for my taste but I ended up reading all of them. And that's how I felt about Sleepless which I also stumbled on. It grabbed my eye in the library as I was looking for Khaled Hossani and I thought it'd be interesting to see what Charlie Huston has gotten up to.
It's a depressing book. Not dark, but heavy. There's no one to root for except the baby although both narrators are likable enough and I did care what happened to Park. I have to admit I sort of wished Jasper would die horribly. It was a little much that he was a super killer, rich and powerful, cultured, and slept with everyone he wanted to. Even his tales of failure were perfect. On the other end of the spectrum Park, who is trying to do right, never seems to get a break. And for most of the book you are led to believe this is the story of how Jaspar will kill Park with a piece of string and a puppy, while Park is inside a Grumman tank loading his AK-47 after exploding a nuclear bomb. So the book is deeply depressing and it moves slowly, covering all the aspects of a dying and corrupt world: terrorists, shortages, corrupt police, drug addiction, video game addiction, dead and dying babies, decadent billionaire sons, amateur militias, everything but Mad Max.
I like how the world was realistic and not duly post-apocalyptic but decaying. You never know if this is the end of the world as we know it or the darkest dawn. Even at the end you do not know what will happen to civilization.
In the end it was an absorbing airplane read that probably won't stick with me but I will definitely dabble into sone of his other books.
It's a depressing book. Not dark, but heavy. There's no one to root for except the baby although both narrators are likable enough and I did care what happened to Park. I have to admit I sort of wished Jasper would die horribly. It was a little much that he was a super killer, rich and powerful, cultured, and slept with everyone he wanted to. Even his tales of failure were perfect. On the other end of the spectrum Park, who is trying to do right, never seems to get a break. And for most of the book you are led to believe this is the story of how Jaspar will kill Park with a piece of string and a puppy, while Park is inside a Grumman tank loading his AK-47 after exploding a nuclear bomb. So the book is deeply depressing and it moves slowly, covering all the aspects of a dying and corrupt world: terrorists, shortages, corrupt police, drug addiction, video game addiction, dead and dying babies, decadent billionaire sons, amateur militias, everything but Mad Max.
I like how the world was realistic and not duly post-apocalyptic but decaying. You never know if this is the end of the world as we know it or the darkest dawn. Even at the end you do not know what will happen to civilization.
In the end it was an absorbing airplane read that probably won't stick with me but I will definitely dabble into sone of his other books.