Josh B. reviewed on + 16 more book reviews
This is a story about good vs evil.
One man who may or may not be the devil lives for hopelessness, is fueled by misery and suffering. Patiently he waits for the end of civilization. For his party to start. When it does he's stoked. Not only because it's time to party, but he didn't even have to lift a finger to bring it about.
This evil man - the man with many faces, or Doyle Halland or The Man with the Scarlet Eye, whatever you want to call him- expects for there to be pain and suffering, rape, murder, bloodshed, overall inhumanity. And he gets it. Oh, yes he gets that in spades. But what he doesn't expect is for, amidst this chaos, hope to blossom.
On the evil side we have a has-been of a colonel desperate to reclaim days of glory long since passed. This man's name is Colonel Macklin. His second is a young man named Roland Croninger who I despised almost from the word go. He's in evil little twat that I hoped to hell died a painful death. You'll understand why when you read Swan Song yourself. Or, if you have, then you understand perfectly well what I'm talking about.
There are others who are evil in this story, but the main focus is on Macklin and Croninger, along with the man with many faces.
On the good side the main players are Josh, Swan, Sister, Artie, Paul, and Robin. Hope lies with Swan and her amazing ability to heal the land.
Our main baddie - the man with the scarlet eye- first realizes there is something up when he comes upon Sister and a mysterious ring of melded jewels. Sister gets away and so he chases after, searching far and wide for that mysterious trinket so that he can crush it and really kick off his party. In his journey he learns of Swan and her gift. A stark and unbelievably good story gets even better from there. If the pedal wasn't fully to the metal before that then it certainly is from that point on.
Every character - big or small - is fully evolved. Every step they take, sight they see, smell they smell, every bit of pain they feel you feel. The many settings witnessed in this story are brought to vivid life. You're right there. On every single page. There is never a lag, lull, drowsy bit of filling - nothing like that at all.
There are characters you will hate, characters you will love and you will not want the story to end. You just won't. You'll want it to last forever. In saying that, this book is gritty. It's real. It's violent. No one gets an easy path. Terrible things will happen. You will be shocked. For stories like this some people like to give trigger-warnings. I've never done that because there are some books where you should expect bad things to happen, and this is one of them. But in saying that, one thing did happen that I was not expecting and was horrified to read.
-Spoilers-
A very bad, very evil man uses the butt of a gun to crush an infants skull in.
Yes I was shocked. Did it anger me? You bet it did. Did I stop reading? No. I didn't. Because I don't do pc bull. What came before that scene was gritty and real, and what came after was much the same. I was mad the character did what he did. Not for the author for writing it because I understood what he was going for and he delivered a difficult scene perfectly. It was not done for simple shock value.
-end of spoiler-
Every moment is tense.
Every moment is incredibly real.
This is a master class in writing.
One man who may or may not be the devil lives for hopelessness, is fueled by misery and suffering. Patiently he waits for the end of civilization. For his party to start. When it does he's stoked. Not only because it's time to party, but he didn't even have to lift a finger to bring it about.
This evil man - the man with many faces, or Doyle Halland or The Man with the Scarlet Eye, whatever you want to call him- expects for there to be pain and suffering, rape, murder, bloodshed, overall inhumanity. And he gets it. Oh, yes he gets that in spades. But what he doesn't expect is for, amidst this chaos, hope to blossom.
On the evil side we have a has-been of a colonel desperate to reclaim days of glory long since passed. This man's name is Colonel Macklin. His second is a young man named Roland Croninger who I despised almost from the word go. He's in evil little twat that I hoped to hell died a painful death. You'll understand why when you read Swan Song yourself. Or, if you have, then you understand perfectly well what I'm talking about.
There are others who are evil in this story, but the main focus is on Macklin and Croninger, along with the man with many faces.
On the good side the main players are Josh, Swan, Sister, Artie, Paul, and Robin. Hope lies with Swan and her amazing ability to heal the land.
Our main baddie - the man with the scarlet eye- first realizes there is something up when he comes upon Sister and a mysterious ring of melded jewels. Sister gets away and so he chases after, searching far and wide for that mysterious trinket so that he can crush it and really kick off his party. In his journey he learns of Swan and her gift. A stark and unbelievably good story gets even better from there. If the pedal wasn't fully to the metal before that then it certainly is from that point on.
Every character - big or small - is fully evolved. Every step they take, sight they see, smell they smell, every bit of pain they feel you feel. The many settings witnessed in this story are brought to vivid life. You're right there. On every single page. There is never a lag, lull, drowsy bit of filling - nothing like that at all.
There are characters you will hate, characters you will love and you will not want the story to end. You just won't. You'll want it to last forever. In saying that, this book is gritty. It's real. It's violent. No one gets an easy path. Terrible things will happen. You will be shocked. For stories like this some people like to give trigger-warnings. I've never done that because there are some books where you should expect bad things to happen, and this is one of them. But in saying that, one thing did happen that I was not expecting and was horrified to read.
-Spoilers-
A very bad, very evil man uses the butt of a gun to crush an infants skull in.
Yes I was shocked. Did it anger me? You bet it did. Did I stop reading? No. I didn't. Because I don't do pc bull. What came before that scene was gritty and real, and what came after was much the same. I was mad the character did what he did. Not for the author for writing it because I understood what he was going for and he delivered a difficult scene perfectly. It was not done for simple shock value.
-end of spoiler-
Every moment is tense.
Every moment is incredibly real.
This is a master class in writing.
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