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the_grimm_reader's Reviews (242)
After caring for my Momma during her rapid decline from cancer, I find myself isolated in the memories of her pain, suffering, and loss. Nothing prepares one to draw close to the physical, mental, and emotional suffering of a loved one bear the end. The sounds, sights, textures, smells, and actions are not of the sort one experiences in their daily life—I was not trained for this. Still, it was my duty—a duty of love for my mother—that gave me strength during those months and days. “I will not abandon you,” became my mantra and promise. I have found almost no solace since her passing, but in the memoirs and stories from military veterans I found a perspective and language—a raw honesty—that has brought me some comfort, and this book by Roger Sparks lives in that space. The last four chapters were intense, not just in Roger’s raw telling of his experiences as a pararescue jumper in Afghanistan, but rather the power these recollections had to cut deep into the space of my pain, loss, suffering, grief, and memory. I am no soldier or veteran, but Roger has the ability to bring you with him into the desperate, horrible spaces he found himself in, as much as anyone can. Post traumatic stress is real and occurs in a myriad of ways. Combat seems to be the most condensed cause for it—I am grateful to Roger and others like him for sharing the brutal truth of these spaces and their realistic path toward entering the “vacant neon sign” (as Roger put it) of the civilized world. Am I better for having read this? Perhaps, if I’m willing to adopt some form of the Warriors Creed to face each day. At the end of this book I felt relief, which might seem odd to the insulated individual considering the often gruesome experiences retold in Roger’s book, but the relief is real nonetheless. I am very glad I found and read this book, and I am grateful for the heroes—those just like Roger Sparks—that run toward suffering and offer all they have to those in need, seeming to say, “You are not alone—I will not abandon you.”
I started this book on a Friday evening and finished it the following Sunday morning. Page by page, chapter by chapter, the characters of Cooper and Finch became real, and the little universe of their rural cabin became my world too. I couldn’t put the book down, and often I felt the anxiousness Cooper felt deep inside myself as if I were living it with him, just as Finch’s innocent curiosity and wonder excavated my own memories of being a young boy, exploring and pushing against the fences my caregivers set in place. This book is filled with mystery, tension, grief, fear, and love, a tale about how our actions are sometimes steered by our trauma, and what one might be willing to do to protect those they love.
Apocalypse fiction is one of my favorite genres, but it’s often difficult to find something with a new take on it while still hitting the common tropes that make end-of-the-world adventures so easy to step into. The cast of characters and setting are unique, and far enough outside the norms that I was left wondering what exactly each person would do—I was meeting people that felt very real, and I wanted to know more about each. The mystery and circumstances of the “whateverpocalypse” kept me guessing, and without spoiling I’d say the fully exposed answer was a satisfying amalgam of many other genres—it covered all the greats and blended them into an entertaining, comic, sad, and sometimes frightening story of surviving, and maybe thriving, with people untrained and unprepared for the state of the world they must now navigate together.