Wildly suspenseful and impressively innovative.
When a person is unsure of what he is or how much he is truly capable of, how can he ever trust himself? How can he love himself? For Thomas, these questions form the violent storm swirling in his troubled mind. After a nuclear explosion at an underground testing facility, he is left on his own for the first time in a long time. As he wrestles with his first taste of freedom, Thomas meets a lonely farmer with a kind heart. Steven, a compassionate man bearing his own heavy load of loss, welcomes the young man without reserve. Testing out the waters of trust, Thomas commits to Steven his damning trigger words, a series of seemingly harmless words that hold untold potential when used sequentially. After a reassuring heart-to-heart, Steven speaks the words aloud. “Head. Boulevard. Six. Park. Right. Flower. Worn. Ciao.” As the farmer looks on aghast, he can only ask in shock, “What are you?” The truth is almost too terrible to admit: “I’m the first human atomic bomb.” A weapon of destruction, Thomas finds little to smile about in a cruel world, but sometimes, even in the darkest moments, you find light. Holding onto that light is another vexing problem.
From bombs to bombshells, Destroy Creation: Phase II is the thrilling second installment in The Destruction Series. A focused blend of fiction and poetry, this clever story will grab readers from the opening stanza. Even without the benefit of Phase I, there is more than enough depth to support itself. The poetic arrangement makes it easy to get lulled into a rhythm, but be forewarned! There are twists and turns that will sting audiences as much as the characters within. The eponymous themes of destruction and creation are fully realized throughout Thomas’s journey, while other expected notions, such as love, loss, guilt, and consequences bolster this lyrical odyssey. The use of metaphors, similes, anaphora, and other literary devices give this provocative sci-fi tale a poetic atmosphere, yet the story retains a linear arc. Though none of us have been engineered into nuclear weapons, Thomas’s struggle with control is profoundly relatable. Wisdom swirls about and takes different shapes in the form of meaningful conversations as the plot evolves, building toward an inescapable conclusion. Wildly suspenseful and impressively innovative, Destroy Creation is a highly successful union of science fiction and poetry.
