The Culling

The Culling

By Steven Dos Santos (2013)

I’m a big fan of a good twist ending, but I can’t say that was something I enjoyed reading. Not that the story isn’t good, or that it bored me, but the raw emotion of betrayal stung. The emotions that are conveyed almost all too well through simple text in a book are almost too much to handle. Being that Lucky and his little brother Cole are living in a fantasy world doesn’t mean their world is anything fairy-tale like. A world of poverty, starvation, filth, disease and then only to be put through rings of mental and physical torture, on top of the mind games people, that are supposedly close to you, play. I’m excited to read more, and hopefully read about Lucky taking down that S.O.B. Cassius. I almost feel like in a way I saw it coming, because it was just too good to be true.

 I can see how this relates to humanity in the sense that there are actual countries living like this. Third-world, dictatorial countries that live in these conditions meanwhile, just like Cassius, the rulers of the country live lavishly.

 This story reminds me of two movies I’ve seen recently that are pretty good, the first is a comedy called “The Interview”, how lavish the leader of North Korea is living meanwhile his people are starving, how manipulative he was, compared to how manipulative Cassius was to Lucky.

Another movie, “Machine Gun Preacher” which is sadly based on true events about one man trying to make a difference against the Rebels in Africa. In a sense I can see a similarity in the situations of the book and situations that kids in other parts of the world unfortunately face today.