Rating: WARTY!
This black and white line-drawing graphic novel with text that is far too small to be read in an ebook, was about a fire-fighter named Terwilliger, who suffers an injury and has to figure out how to continue his life when he can't do what he loves, and what he was professionally trained for. I had some mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I was impressed that this was a kind of real-world story, but on the other, it was so full of cliché and stereotype that it seriously made me cringe. The idea behind it is a really good one, but the title alone is far too overdone to be used here.
The fire-fighters were universally presented as though they were rejects from the movie Backdraft - rejected because their behavior was too over-the-top, crazy, machismo-infested, and un-pc and genderism-soaked to get into the movie. I didn't appreciate this. I didn't like that all the fire-fighters were essentially the same person in this story, with the same attitudes and points-of-view. I didn't like the trope "we take care of our own" undercurrent, especially not when it was seasoned with the over-done "we're underpaid and starved of finances, yet we battle on gamely being heroic."
For me that spoiled the message the story was trying to transmit about Terwilliger, and it's for that reason that I can't recommend this novel. How nice it would have been instead to have had the machismo guy screw up and someone dies and he's rejected because of that, as well as his resultant injury? Why not get off the beaten hose and put your ax through a door that hasn't been opened yet?
