Dusk and Ember
by Robert Jacoby
Can a life come apart and be rebuilt in one night? 19-year-old Richard Issych is about to find out. One friend is dead—murdered by another friend—and all Richard wants to do is get to the wake, come home, and start a new life. But for one life to begin another must end.
Since graduating high school the year before and not knowing how to live, or even if he wants to live, Richard has wandered into the graveyard shift at a local foundry, a hellish world of molten metal, rote work, and no prospects. Drawn into a downward spiral of motorcycle gangs and easy drugs, he finds himself on the cusp of a decision that will change his world forever.
Part road trip, part boomerang into past and back, part wrestling with the forces that make us and break us, Dusk and Ember is a hard truth coming-of-age tale in dark Americana. This night, Richard grabs hold and hangs on for the strangest car ride of his life with his oddball friends on their way to the wake.
Dusk and Ember is a prequel to There Are Reasons Noah Packed No Clothes, which Kirkus Reviews called “a confident, strongly voiced portrait of despair and the flickering light at the end of the tunnel.”
Since graduating high school the year before and not knowing how to live, or even if he wants to live, Richard has wandered into the graveyard shift at a local foundry, a hellish world of molten metal, rote work, and no prospects. Drawn into a downward spiral of motorcycle gangs and easy drugs, he finds himself on the cusp of a decision that will change his world forever.
Part road trip, part boomerang into past and back, part wrestling with the forces that make us and break us, Dusk and Ember is a hard truth coming-of-age tale in dark Americana. This night, Richard grabs hold and hangs on for the strangest car ride of his life with his oddball friends on their way to the wake.
Dusk and Ember is a prequel to There Are Reasons Noah Packed No Clothes, which Kirkus Reviews called “a confident, strongly voiced portrait of despair and the flickering light at the end of the tunnel.”
Momma Says: 2 stars⭐⭐
Between the cover that subtly suggests something sinister and the intriguing blurb, I was drawn to Dusk and Ember. Unfortunately, those things turned out to be the best of it for me. The story is at times convoluted and at other times just plain confusing. We often get our main character's thoughts, and whether it's due to the drugs Richard uses or its done that way for other reasons, it feels disjointed and makes it hard to stay in the story. I did push through to the rather abrupt ending, and maybe this one just went over my head or I wasn't in the right frame of mind for it, but I really never got it. The whole thing just left me confused as to where it was supposed to be going. It is a prequel, so maybe I should've read that original story for some of the answers, but Dusk and Ember just proved too easy to set aside and too hard to pick back up, which doesn't give me a strong desire to go further.
❃❃ARC provided by NetGalley and Cloud Books
Between the cover that subtly suggests something sinister and the intriguing blurb, I was drawn to Dusk and Ember. Unfortunately, those things turned out to be the best of it for me. The story is at times convoluted and at other times just plain confusing. We often get our main character's thoughts, and whether it's due to the drugs Richard uses or its done that way for other reasons, it feels disjointed and makes it hard to stay in the story. I did push through to the rather abrupt ending, and maybe this one just went over my head or I wasn't in the right frame of mind for it, but I really never got it. The whole thing just left me confused as to where it was supposed to be going. It is a prequel, so maybe I should've read that original story for some of the answers, but Dusk and Ember just proved too easy to set aside and too hard to pick back up, which doesn't give me a strong desire to go further.
❃❃ARC provided by NetGalley and Cloud Books
No comments:
Post a Comment