What you call pride, I call courage.
quote from "The Serpent King"
Love deserves monuments, and this is the only kind I know how to build.
quote from "The Serpent King"
If you're going to live, you might as well do painful, brave, and beautiful things.
quote from "The Serpent King"
This book is just epic. This book has everything: great story, emotions, truth about life, love, friendship. Between the pages of this book you can find the truth about living in the small community, in the small town, where some rules are ruling and appointing the standards of being. The truth about searching for the own place, own way, about finding yourself. This book shows that every life, every story, every name has own dark side, has own dark secrets, truths, lies and rumors.
There's a lot of moments when you want to smile, laugh, cry, when you want to scream. There's a lot of truth about the life and people. One of them is fact that the closest people are able to hurt the most. And that you can have everything but that everything is nothing if you are not a good person. You can see and even feel what happen to the man who thinks that is drowning in gloomy emotions and wants to give up. You can feel the taste of the fight between light and darkness. You can see what the real love is, what the true friendship is. You can see what the faith is and about effects of having an own rules, visions of life, own opinions.
Life is full of secrets, darkness and the unknown power. You can't escape, you can't forget. Because everything is in your head.... Are you ready to square up to them this time?
Dill, the main character of the story, seems to be a typical teenager who has a future, who has his entire life ahead of him. But there are only appearances, an illusion of normal life. Dill's father is a Pentecostal preacher, known for charming snakes and drinking poison to prove his worthiness to God, but is currently in prison for possessing child porn. Because of that fact, because he has his father name, and because he lives a small town in Tennessee, his life is reminding the hell. The whole town knows him, his story, people are gossiping about him and about his family, criticizing, stigmatizing. They regard him as somebody worse, bad, even though he did nothing. His is just his father's son.
Two friends, Lydia and Travis, are helping him to survive throughout the worst period in his life. He discovered with them all pros and cons of growing up, all good and bad times. They were and they are the best part of his life. They are three outsiders understanding one another without words.
Two friends, Lydia and Travis, are helping him to survive throughout the worst period in his life. He discovered with them all pros and cons of growing up, all good and bad times. They were and they are the best part of his life. They are three outsiders understanding one another without words.
The Three Musketeers against the entire world.
He knows, he can't change his life and his future and that's why decides to remain at home to care for his mother and pay down their enormous family debt. He knows that something like plans, dreams and better days full of sun are for other people, not for him. He wants only survive in peace the next day. But school isn't a good place to have a calm and good time and with hope he is counting days in the calendar to say goodbye to this place full of unfriendly faces. But from the other side - the end of school means the end of some era, the end of some state of his friendship with Lydia and Travis.
Travis is a fantasy book fanatic whom you can not help but love and understand him. The young man who's life isn't easy, who has to fight with demons from the past of his family. Lydia is a girl from a good home, who has plans about her future and who knows she must leave their small town because only then she will be happy and she will be able to make her dreams come true.
They are a three different beings but together they are like a one soul. A material state, status in the hierarchy and rumors are not important for them because they know that the most important is issue: what kind of person is the man, not what he has.
But nothing lasts forever, everyone knows it. One second, one day can change everything. You have to make a decision, choose between good and better good, good and bad. And you have to do it here and now.
One day is changing everything. One tragic thing is a beginning of the new chapter in the life of each of them. After that one day, Dill must choose: life or death, stay or go, change something in his life or leave it, be happy or unhappy, pay for someone's sins or begin own living, light or darkness.
He knows, he can't change his life and his future and that's why decides to remain at home to care for his mother and pay down their enormous family debt. He knows that something like plans, dreams and better days full of sun are for other people, not for him. He wants only survive in peace the next day. But school isn't a good place to have a calm and good time and with hope he is counting days in the calendar to say goodbye to this place full of unfriendly faces. But from the other side - the end of school means the end of some era, the end of some state of his friendship with Lydia and Travis.
Travis is a fantasy book fanatic whom you can not help but love and understand him. The young man who's life isn't easy, who has to fight with demons from the past of his family. Lydia is a girl from a good home, who has plans about her future and who knows she must leave their small town because only then she will be happy and she will be able to make her dreams come true.
They are a three different beings but together they are like a one soul. A material state, status in the hierarchy and rumors are not important for them because they know that the most important is issue: what kind of person is the man, not what he has.
But nothing lasts forever, everyone knows it. One second, one day can change everything. You have to make a decision, choose between good and better good, good and bad. And you have to do it here and now.
One day is changing everything. One tragic thing is a beginning of the new chapter in the life of each of them. After that one day, Dill must choose: life or death, stay or go, change something in his life or leave it, be happy or unhappy, pay for someone's sins or begin own living, light or darkness.
What will be his decision? Will he change his life, will he risk everything what he has? Will he find his place? What will change his life? Will he break free from darkness of the own mind, or will he remain the prisoner of fear and another person's sins?
Why you should read it
This book is just epic. This book has everything: great story, emotions, truth about life, love, friendship. Between the pages of this book you can find the truth about living in the small community, in the small town, where some rules are ruling and appointing the standards of being. The truth about searching for the own place, own way, about finding yourself. This book shows that every life, every story, every name has own dark side, has own dark secrets, truths, lies and rumors.
"The Serpent King" is just perfect from beginning to end. "The Serpent King"is like a dark side of every human mind, like their bright and the dark sides with dreams, problems, emotions, ideas and grey reality.
For a few minutes you can be one of them - teenagers, young adults
- smart people who are fighting for their dreams, for being oneself, for better life,
better tomorrow.
"The Serpent King" is a story not only about life, love, friendship but also about choices because choices can change everything. It's a story about getting to know own border. And also about uniquenesses of moments, that they don't happen twice and that you must risk to taste them.
Things to look out for
There's a lot of moments when you want to smile, laugh, cry, when you want to scream. There's a lot of truth about the life and people. One of them is fact that the closest people are able to hurt the most. And that you can have everything but that everything is nothing if you are not a good person. You can see and even feel what happen to the man who thinks that is drowning in gloomy emotions and wants to give up. You can feel the taste of the fight between light and darkness. You can see what the real love is, what the true friendship is. You can see what the faith is and about effects of having an own rules, visions of life, own opinions.
The last word about the book
Say that this book is just excellent is not enough. It's epic. It's painful and beautiful. This story is like a wonderful autumn - beautiful colors fading somewhere among the greyness and fogs; beauty waiting for coming of the spring and good times.
"The Serpent King" is a great book full of extreme emotions and with incredibly surprising story and ending. Maybe that's why you are reading it quickly and you are pleased with every page, every next chapter. I am sure you will be lost among words of this book. You need only time to think about every fragment, above everything what you will find inside. Above the truth that life lasts only one moment and that you can you can achieve anything but you must want it. You have to make a choice, listen to your heart, do what gives you pleasure. You must be yourself, a unique diamond among millions of colors.
And remember:
Dolly PartonIf you don't like the road you're walking, start paving another one.
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Jeff Zentner is an author, musican and songwriter. Author of "The Serpent King" [2016] and "Goodbye Days" [2017].
You can find more info about Jeff Zentner on his official page, official FB, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads.
