He Who Reads Lives A Thousand Lives

Disclaimer: This post may contain spoilers. I have omitted character names and the title of the book I will be discussing, but there are some facts in it that may or may not give it away. Just a heads up. ;)

This summer I have been participating in my local library's reading challenge. Complete the challenge and you get a free book (or a $5.00 fine waiver, whichever you prefer). They are also throwing in a free pass to the Natural History Museum (totally stoked!).

Anyways, I decided to finish reading a book that I had started  a couple of years ago but stopped because I just wasn't in the mood for it at the time. And let me tell you, it was one heck of a ride.

The book was the last in a series of spy novels. As the story has progressed and led up to this final mission for the main character, the missions have become more and more intense. Which is totally cool with me by the way. I love when an author can get me glued to a book. It tells me they have done a good job.

In this book a criminal organization that the main character has defeated twice before in previous books decides they are going to take another shot at bringing him down. Several things take place and he ends up in a foreign country undercover. As he is underage (only 15) he is accompanied by his housekeeper and legal guardian, who has essentially become the only family he has as his parents were killed when he was a small child.

However, the mission turns out to be a ruse, a trap designed to lure the main character to the very organization that wants him dead. He nearly gets blown up while on a boat and then comes close to drowning after the explosion. He also ends up a prisoner at an old fort in the middle of the desert. A fort that has a scorpion infestation.

That's not even the worst part.

The two key players in this plot to take him down want nothing more than to cause him pain. The first is a gentleman with an odd fascination for pain. He tortures people for the mere "scientific benefit" of it (can anyone say, crazy??). The second is a boy his age who, by unfortunate happenstance and as the result of another crazy person's plot to take over the world, has the main character's face. This boy loathes the main character with every fiber of his being. Ever since the two faced off against each other in a previous book this crazy kid has dreamed of nothing more than to kill him, slowly if possible, and in the most cruel and painful way he can think of.

Unfortunately for these two nut jobs, the greater plot of the criminal organization that hired them both prevents them from causing him any physical pain. Their plan requires that he not be harmed or else it all falls to pieces. So how do they break him? How do you hurt someone you can't touch?

Attack his family. And they did.

I cannot begin to tell you of the emotional turmoil I fought as I realized what they were going to do. I kept telling myself it couldn't happen, they wouldn't kill the closest thing he has to a family. They wouldn't. They couldn't. I silently prayed that somehow, someway, she would make it out, that she would get away. But it didn't happen, and I found myself forced to set the book aside as a I wept.

They had broken him, this character that I had come to care about and love over the past few years. I had experienced his pains and his hardships as each mission became more bleak, more deadly. I watched as he grew and I saw how the weight of each mission pressed down on his spirit and I kept telling myself there had to be some kind of happy ending. He was supposed to leave the country with this friend, his family, go somewhere safe where the people responsible for throwing him into the world of espionage could not get to him. Where he could heal and be a kid, like he was supposed to be. Instead he was pulled into it again. She was killed and he watched it happen.

After her death I struggled to keep reading. There was still a good hundred pages left of the book, and he still had to stop whatever was about to happen. He still had to take down the two people responsible for her death. He was successful, of course, but at a great cost. The light had been extinguished from his eyes. The life that had been in him was gone. He was a broken child, forced to grow up by adults who cared only what use he could be to them.

It was a great book.

I know what you're thinking. "What the heck? How is that a great book? Didn't you just say it caused you emotional damage to experience? How is that good?"

The truth is, life is full of painful experiences that we have to endure. Experiences that are meant to make us stronger. It may seem odd that I am drawing such wisdom from an experience so seemingly insignificant as reading a book, but I have learned a great deal from the adventures this author has allowed me to take part in.

First of all, I've learned the importance of taking care of children. Children are meant to be that, children. They should not have to deal with the pains, pressures, and disappointments of the grown up world until they enter into it. Does that mean we should shelter them, keep them hidden from the big bad world until they are 16, 17, 18? Of course not. We want them to be prepared to enter the world, but we don't want to thrust it upon them before their time.

Second, no matter what bad things you have experienced, no matter how bleak, or how awful the world is, there is always a light. In the final pages of the book the main character is at last freed from his bondage of the spy game. He leaves his home to join the family of one of his closest friends who are now his adopted family. While he is not 100% and he will never be the same person, he is healing, and in time he will move past it.

Lastly, and this is more of a lesson in writing, sometimes the story isn't meant to end with a fairy tale "Happily Ever After". There were a number of ways that the story could have ended, one of which being that the housekeeper didn't really die, or that it was never believed she was dead in the first place. However, that wasn't how it was supposed to end. As mush as it saddened me to see how the series ended, to see the results of this final mission as far as the main character's well being, I was satisfied with the ending, because I knew, as a reader and as a writer, that was how it was meant to end.

As a writer, you don't always know how the story is going to end. I mean, sometimes the ending will come to me in the early stages and I can build up to it. Sometimes, however, as I write, I may come to learn that the ending I have planned, the one I am leading up to, isn't how it's supposed to end.

And what do I do in that situation? What do I do when I realize that the story isn't going to end in the happily ever after way that I originally wanted? I keep writing. I work towards that end that I know is the right one because, in my heart, I know it has to be that way. I know that changing it would take from the story's integrity, and I would never be satisfied with it.

I guess that could be more than just a writing lesson, couldn't it? Sometimes in our lives we are faced with situations that we do not want to accept. We try to tell ourselves "No, that isn't how it's going to be" and we try to force it to change, try to will it to be different. Like the family whose loved one is brain dead but the body is functioning with the help of machines. Maybe he or she will wake up and everything will be fine, but what if that's not how the story is supposed to end? Yes, the family can choose to keep the machines on, keep the body "alive", but will that really be enough? Are they truly satisfied and happy with that?

I love how this started out as a book review and became a deep philosophical post... Lol.

I encourage you all to read a book. I've heard it said that he who does not read lives one life. But he who reads lives a thousand lives. I know this to be a true fact, and I am grateful for the opportunity I have to read. It is great blessing to me.

Thank you for your continued reading of my blog, and for your support. As I have said before, I would love to know more about my readers, so feel free to leave a comment below. Maybe tell me about the last good book you read, or the book that has impacted you the most in your life.

Thanks again!