End Times by Rio Youers
IUniverse, 2007
ISBN: 0595437869
Available: Hardcover, paperback, audiobook, MP3 CD

Scott is a man who has lived a hard, sad life. He suffers from an addiction to heroin. He is missing all of the fingers on both hands, and has to make do with only his thumbs, a fact that is disturbingly presented throughout the book. He is working as a journalist with peers who he doesn’t really like, and who don’t like him. The only thing good in his life seems to be his friend Sebby, a quadriplegic that Scott met at a drug rehab program. Then Mia, a mysterious Indian girl, steps into his life and changes everything. She sees him as he is, and still seems to love him. Mia becomes like a drug to his troubled mind, an addiction that he just can’t quit thinking about. Everything seems to be going his way until he finds out who Mia is– a dangerous mystery from his past that has come to the present with the purpose of making him pay for what he did to her. The story follows Scott from his life as a bum, trying to eke out an existence on the hard city streets, to his joining a dangerous and twisted cult that requires horrible sacrifices for their god, Voice, and then to his life as a writer and his journey into self-discovery and destiny. The story is written in first person, and is filled with pain and longing. At first I couldn’t stand the main character, his world and views being a far cry from my own, but as the novel progresses, he seems to change, becoming a character that I began to relate to and sympathize with. All of the characters are created with the utmost depth: they are dark and believable. This book touches on all the emotions. As I read Scott’s tale I felt his pain, love, hatred, longing, fear, and humor. End Times is a brutally unique work that surely deserves a place in any library, whether public or private.
Contains: Violence, Sex, Self Mutilation

Review by Bret Jordan

(Note: End Times is now in print available at Amazon.com)