A review by scottshepard
Dark at the Crossing by Elliot Ackerman
2.0
The moral of the story is: don’t try to join ISIS. It won’t go well for you.
In Dark at the Crossing we have the story of an Iraqi translator who becomes a US citizen, but can’t stand the drudgery of working as a janitor in Michigan and so goes to fight Assad’s regime in Syria. The entire story takes place on the border and follows Harris as he attempts to cross from Turkey into Syria and make his way to Aleppo. Along the way he encounters refugees, abandoned children, ISIS insurgents, Turkish police, foreign NGOs and one grieving and sexually confused married couple. It’s a story about the futility of ideals and less about the war itself, which plays only a cursory role. Harris could be trying to do anything futile and it wouldn’t necessarily matter.
The book drags in the first third with a lot of flashbacks to Iraq and the United States. But when it picks back up I was surprised at how little of the revelations stuck to the character. Harris is essentially a blank slate at the beginning, doing this task only because he has nothing else to do. By the end we’re supposed to understand his motivations, but he still remarkable boring. Everyone around him is dynamic and interesting but he remains an empty void. I did not like nor did I understand almost anything he did. He has a remarapkle apathy and predilection for self destruction.
The setting was my favorite part of the book. Ackerman clearly has an intimate knowledge of the area and peoples. I loved reading about the nebulous territory that is the border region, I just didn’t like the people described.
In Dark at the Crossing we have the story of an Iraqi translator who becomes a US citizen, but can’t stand the drudgery of working as a janitor in Michigan and so goes to fight Assad’s regime in Syria. The entire story takes place on the border and follows Harris as he attempts to cross from Turkey into Syria and make his way to Aleppo. Along the way he encounters refugees, abandoned children, ISIS insurgents, Turkish police, foreign NGOs and one grieving and sexually confused married couple. It’s a story about the futility of ideals and less about the war itself, which plays only a cursory role. Harris could be trying to do anything futile and it wouldn’t necessarily matter.
The book drags in the first third with a lot of flashbacks to Iraq and the United States. But when it picks back up I was surprised at how little of the revelations stuck to the character. Harris is essentially a blank slate at the beginning, doing this task only because he has nothing else to do. By the end we’re supposed to understand his motivations, but he still remarkable boring. Everyone around him is dynamic and interesting but he remains an empty void. I did not like nor did I understand almost anything he did. He has a remarapkle apathy and predilection for self destruction.
The setting was my favorite part of the book. Ackerman clearly has an intimate knowledge of the area and peoples. I loved reading about the nebulous territory that is the border region, I just didn’t like the people described.