>We Burned So Bright

[cornerofmadness]

We Burned So Bright by T.J. Klune

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'd like to go back in time a few months to figure out why I requested this from Netgalley. I'm sure it was that the protagonists were mature (in their 70s in fact) but I probably should have given it a pass and that's all one me, not on the author. It was hard to separate out my feelings from things I thought didn't quite work for me in this. On my end, I don't like dystopic horror and that is essentially what this is at its core. Also I would have DNFed it if I hadn't had an arc. Not because it's bad. It's not. At all. It's just I have depression and this was not helping. Klune has a word of warning at the beginning to take care of your mental health if you don't think you can read this. Heed that. I powered on because I do feel like in being given an arc I've entered an understanding. Authors rely on reviews and I would want an arc reader to do the same for my books.

Don and Rodney have been together for decades and now as the world is ending (and it is, make no doubts about that) they have one last thing to do before they die together. I didn't think it took much to figure out why this last road trip was so important to them (I'm not sure it's meant to be a mystery mind you) but we don't get the full impact of why and what went wrong until the last chapters. They get in their RV and drive from Maine to Washington while the black hole is sucking up one planet after the other.

It's a road trip story giving us glances at other people as they go, young couples in love, parents facing a terrible choice do they let their kids burn when the end comes or handle it themselves, people half mad with fear etc. It occurred to me I am not sure I know what a black hole will really do to a planet? Will it catch fire as one family fears? I have a lot of degrees in science but physics isn't among them.

Here is where I had some world building issues: where is all the gas coming from? Yes they are carting some gas with them but I do know enough physics to know you can't cart enough to power an RV across country. About mid way they do stop to gas up and I'm still there thinking, wait, how? why? The world is ending. Who is coming to their crappy gas station jobs? Gas isn't easy to procure. It has to be drilled for, refined, transported. Is this really happening when the world is ending and everyone knows they're going to die for months? (Me, i probably would have been one of those looters knocking over a grocery store then sitting back to read all my books until the end or I run out of food and then checking out on my terms) I know, I know, suspension of disbelief. I just couldn't make that leap.

Also I felt like too many people were way too calm for the end of the world but I suppose it wasn't about them. It's about Don and Rodney and their love, their pain and their regrets and that was well done. They are flawed humans, as we all are. You feel for them. That said, this novella is under 200 pages but felt like it was 500 because it's so weighty with misery. Klune usually writes things that are more upbeat and hopeful. This isn't that. If that's what you're after, skip this novella. It's only going to hurt you.



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