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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A meaningful read, March 19, 2010
This review is from: The Last Summer Of The Death Warriors (Hardcover)
At seventeen, Pancho has decided the last thing he needs to do with his life: kill the man he thinks responsible for the death of his sister. It's not so simple, though...first he has to figure out who exactly the man is, how to find him, and how to get past the annoying, aggravatingly happy D.Q., another teen boy with a mission of his own: live life to the fullest in his last months...before he dies of brain cancer. And...honestly...I can't do justice to the plot here. Throw in some conversations about life, death, faith, love. Mix up with heart-wrenching backgrounds, wise children, foolish adults, and sucking every drop of marrow from life. As my little synopsis probably makes clear, The Last Summer of the Death Warriors is one of those fathoms-deep, meaningful stories that you rarely come across in YA lit. It is also an extremely subtle story--almost too subtle for my taste (the ending didn't feel wrapped-up enough for me), yet I love the way it left me thinking after I finished it. I can guarantee that it will make you question the way you're living your life, embrace the beauty of every day, and appreciate things you never thought to notice. You will never forget Pancho and D.Q. or the friends they make on their journey--Francisco Stork is a master at character and relationship development, and these aspects of the story are truly what make it shine. Even every description, although technically all of them are extremely basic and simply worded, serves to develop character--and does so perfectly. As a bit of a warning, this is a very difficult book to read...certainly not in actual pacing or readability, but simply because it delves into topics and a world that are hard to be in. This is not a story to be read casually, and it is certainly for mature readers who can handle its issues. Yet it is a beautiful book, and it is an important book.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a profoundly moving, uplifting, funny, heartbreaking read, June 24, 2010
This review is from: The Last Summer Of The Death Warriors (Hardcover)
Wow. It has been a long time since I've come across a YA book with as much depth as this one. Frankly, it completely floored me. The Last Summer of the Death Warriors is a modern day adaptation of Cervantes' Don Quixote. But you don't need to be at all familiar with that work in order to appreciate this novel. Pancho is a robust young man (17 yrs old), driven by the desire to avenge the murder of his sister. D.Q. is also 17, but seems ageless, wise beyond his years, and is dying of cancer. On the surface they have nothing in common: Pancho is all brute strength and bitterness; D.Q. is passionate, optimistic, eerily intelligent, and desperate to live life to its fullest, even though (or perhaps because) he doesn't have much time left. They meet in an orphanage, and D.Q., sensing something special about Pancho, immediately recruits him to be a Death Warrior. What is a Death Warrior? The concept is inspired by Henry David Thoreau's famous declaration in Walden, "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life." According to the Death Warrior Manifesto that D.Q. has been writing, "Anyone can be a Death Warrior, not just someone who is terminally ill. A Death Warrior accepts death and makes a commitment to live a certain way, whether it be for one year or thirty years...Once you accept that life will end, you can become a Death Warrior by choosing to love life at all times and in all circumstances. You choose to love life by loving." I finished the book last night (eyes still red this morning from the weeping...happy weeping as well as sad weeping), and I can already tell this is going to be a book that stays with me for a long time...one that I will be harassing friends and family to read asap so I have someone to discuss it with. The philosophy of the Death Warrior is simple but powerful. Who hasn't felt the haunting sense that we're wasting the limited time we have on this planet? It's easy to ignore that sensation and just carry on with our daily routine...but The Last Summer of the Death Warriors gives you a righteous sense of shame for doing so, without being preachy. No small feat. The book has a bit of everything: action, romance, poignancy, humor, villains, heroes, life philosophy etc. Come to think of it, the only thing it's lacking is vampires. Just kidding! READ IT!!!!
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Characters You Won't Want To Part With, January 3, 2010
This review is from: The Last Summer Of The Death Warriors (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
It's easy for a plot-driven book to beguile its readers, but a character-driven book? That's much more of a rarity, not to mention a blessing. Francisco X. Stork's THE LAST SUMMER OF THE DEATH WARRIORS is just such a book -- you reach the last page despite yourself because, truth be told, you hate to bid farewell to the characters he has created. Pancho is an angry young man whose fury with life becomes confused by circumstances. He's a tough 17-year-old kid who knows how to fight and even loves the release of hitting and being hit. Worse still, in the course of the last year he's lost his father to natural causes, his mentally-handicapped sister to murder, and life as he knew it to an orphanage that he longs to escape. Enter the "Death Warrior": Daniel Quentin (D.Q.), a precocious 17-year-old with one year to die (because we're all dying, he insists) due to brain cancer. D.Q. meets Pancho's anger and cynicism with unrelenting optimism and hope to the point where Pancho becomes confused and, yes, even more angry at times. It's no small task, but Stork creates D.Q.'s character with deft strokes which dodge sentimentality and embrace gritty, realistic humor. The exchanges between these boys are typical of teenagers with insults, brutal honesty, and grudging respect. In a reverse of expectations (something this book offers in spades), it is D.Q. telling Pancho to stop his whining. Writing a manifesto about "Death Warriors," D.Q. creates a fantasy world of ninja-like goals where death must be accepted, invincibility must be dismissed, and love must be used as a weapon until the Grim Reaper's embrace can no longer be dodged. Pancho has to listen to this nonsense because he is paid to serve as D.Q.'s assistant. This job is one major headache for Pancho, whose less-ideal goals include hunting down his sister's killer, vigilante-style, and murdering him in cold blood. Stork weaves in compelling complications. There's the beautiful Marisol, whom D.Q. idealizes as a romantic lover who might accept him despite the cancer. When Pancho starts to fall under her allure as well, he meets an opponent he has more difficulty in knocking out -- a love which can only make him "soft" and distract him from his murderous mission. And, at the children's hospital in Albuquerque where Pancho has traced his sister's murderer, we meet Josie, an irrepressible girl with leukemia who says unfiltered whatever she thinks and figures out, and she thinks and figures out a lot -- most of it embarrassing. Meanwhile, there are tense episodes of violence as Pancho cannot seem to quench his thirst for fighting. At times you wonder if HIS days will be shorter than D.Q.'s, whether from mixing it up with lowlifes on the city streets or from his doomed mission to murder a murderer. This is a rare treat in the YA genre: a novel that blends philosophy with pugilism, cancer with candor, and anger with attraction. The ending is unflinchingly realistic and the book destined to become a classic character study in its field. Highly recommended for mature middle school, high school, and, yes, adult readers.
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