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MY ⭐️ RATING: 4/5
Format: Kindle Whispersync
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Hig’s wife is gone, his friends are dead, and he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, Jasper, and a mercurial, gun-toting misanthrope named Bangley.
But when a random transmission beams through the radio of his 1956 Cessna, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled perimeter. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return and follows its static-broken trail, only to find something that is both better and worse than anything he could ever hope for.
MY REVIEW
I stumbled upon this book a few weeks ago when Amazon had it on sale for $1.99. I saw the title, read the synopsis and said, yeah, this is something I’d like to read. Then when I saw that this was soon to be a major motion picture by Ridley Scott, starring Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Guy Pearce and Benedict Wong, I really wanted to read it.
But here’s the thing, that synopsis is a bit deceptive and I’m going to give a SPOILER and a WARNING to those that don’t want to read about dog deaths. My 9 year old boxer passed in December that I had since a puppy, so reading this in February, after that was not easy for me, it hurt A LOT, it’s not a brutal scene, but still hurts and I wouldn’t not have read this book so soon had I known that. That’s your spoiler and warning.
The story is told in a first person point of view of Hig, Hig is a very likeable character and the people he meets throughout the story are very likeable as well. However, the beginning is pretty slow, like it felt like I was just trudging along, since I did Whispersync (read and listen), I sped my normal speed of 1x up to 1.2x just to make the pacing feel better. The second half does move better, but that first part can be hard to get through.
“Is it possible to love so desperately that life is unbearable? I don’t mean unrequited, I mean being in the love. In the midst of it and desperate. Because knowing it will end, because everything does. End.”
The plot is compelling, and it has its moments where it’s themes of love and loss really shines, as well as its thought provoking insights, keeping you wanting to read more and more, but the amount of times that the pace stalled, hurt my overall experience. What made it feel like it dragged the most was that there is a lot of inner dialogue with Hig, and that’s where most of the poetic like prose comes in to play. I didn’t mind it, but the inner dialogue is a big part of it.
The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where a flu pandemic killed just about everyone. This written in 2012 is actually crazy considering what happened to the world in 2019 where this could’ve become reality. This story is based around Hig and his search for meaning, which is a bit unusual for a post-apocalyptic novel. I would compare this to Last Man on Earth without the comedy or I Am Legend without the vampire-like darkseekers or Book of Eli without the gangs and biblical story. I think it’s worth the read, but also worth knowing that you do kind of have to fight through the slow beginning.
The narration by Mark Deakins was pretty phenomenal. He was able to evoke the emotions of Hig in a way that felt raw and realistic, just the way Heller meant it to be. There was even a voice that made me giggle a bit when I heard, only because of who it reminded me of. If you’ve ever watched The Big Bang Theory, one of the voices sounds exactly like Penny’s father, and I mean exactly! With all that said, I would still recommend this as a read as long as they hede my warning, and are able to fight through the slowness of the first half.
Wolfmantula.com 