The Absence of Sparrows

The Absence of Sparrows by Kurt Kirchmeier

This book took me forever to get through. I came down with a cold halfway through and I hate reading when I'm sick. But, this book didn't help that at all.

It's like, this crazy unexplainable thing happens, everyone freaks out... and everyone kind of just keeps freaking out. Oh, and pepper in poorly managed mental health issues.

Here's an amazon summary, "In the small town of Griever's Mill, eleven-year-old Ben Cameron is expecting to finish off his summer of relaxing and bird-watching without a hitch. But everything goes wrong when dark clouds roll in.

Old Man Crandall is the first to change--human one minute and a glass statue the next. Soon it's happening across the world. Dark clouds fill the sky and, at random, people are turned into frozen versions of themselves. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and no one knows how to stop it.
With his mom on the verge of a breakdown, and his brother intent on following the dubious plans put forth by a nameless voice on the radio, Ben must hold out hope that his town's missing sparrows will return with everyone's souls before the glass plague takes them away forever." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE

There is a worldwide epidemic of people turning into black glass. Dark clouds cover the sky and a couple people turn into black glass. Ben and his mother are avid bird watchers. His brother becomes obsessed with learning what's going on in the rest of the world, and his Dad is checking on Ben's uncle (his brother).

There's just a lot going on. You still have the regular life stuff with the family, the brother's relationship, the mom having mental health issues, the dad trying to kind of keep it together to try to protect his family from this threat no one understands, and the uncle kind of comes across as bonus family member.

I'm just kind of mad at this book. So whatever, let's just go into spoiler land. 

There's not really a proper explanation of anything that happens in the supernatural sense, and there really isn't anything resolved between the characters either. It's kind of this weird book that people "died" in because they turned to glass, but like some people also shattered, and some people came back but had lost their mind. There's an implication that they were called away to fight in some kind of holy war. There's also an implication that the sparrows could have brought people back to life.... maybe???

Whatever book. Keep your secrets. I'm no longer interested nor am I entertained. The pacing of the book was also disjointed and confusing. Sometimes food was SUPER important to be worried about, but then a vague mention of weeks passing and suddenly we don't care about food at all during that stretch? huh.

.....yeah. 

So happy reading. I guess. Boo.