MM Reviews: Bone Echoes

Title: Bone Echoes
Author: CementFeatheredBird
Type: Original Fiction
Genre: Drama | Tragedy | War
Rating: PG-13

As I stumbled through the trees, following blindly behind the troops I saw nothing, but a blur of bloody faces – some of which were unrecognizable from the bullets that had penetrated through and left gaping holes to be remembered by. Fear laced my veins.

War: defined by some as a necessary evil, defined by others as a way of torturing men and women into a lifetime of fear. Whether your stance on war is a positive or negative one, it is impossible to deny the long-term effects it can have on a person. Many soldiers will tell you that you never really come home from a war-zone in one piece — you lose a part of yourself there. For those that fight on our front lines, their lives as they know them will change forever.

In Bone Echoes, the unnamed narrator recounts a time that he was involved in bloodshed. Only a young man at the time, he tells of the war-zone as a place of terror; a forest where many men met their grave. He survived that day, but only as a shell of his former self. The war has torn his resolve and destroyed any hope he may have had of keeping his life as it was before he had left.

Throughout this story, CementFeatheredBird has done a wonderful job of exploring the effects that war can have on a person, both during and after the fact. With haunting descriptions, readers are transported to the same battlefield that the narrator stood upon all those years previously. As he discusses more and more of the effects of his time in battle, more and more questions are raised to the reader — is war really worth the pain it puts people through?

Whether you agree with the concept of war or you abhor it entirely, Bone Echoes paints a very real and painful scene of what veterans go through. With only one chapter consisting of 650 words, this is a quick read, but one that will resonate with you long after you’ve let your eyes linger on the last word.

Special thanks to losing control. and Audrey T for editing!