Revolver- book review

Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Alaskan gold rush killed many a man. Unlike California, where people tended to settle down and enjoy the very nice climate, the Alaskan climate turned deadly for the uninitiated for about 6 months every year. This is a story about a man that brings his whole family to Nome for gold rush, what he does to protect them, and how it comes back to haunt them ten years later.

This is a love story. Not between a boy and girl, but between man and gun. Specifically the colt revolver. We are told that it is not a weapon, but an answer. The book makes this true, just not in the way you might initially think. Apparently the author did a lot of research on guns when he decided to put one in his book and surprised himself with how fascinated he became with them. It is not surprising then, to find that guns are a major theme of this book.

The story is divided in between two time periods. The first being the Nome gold rush and the second being ten years later in a town called Giron in Russia (may be a fictional town). We don't quite find out everything that is going on in Nome until the story in Giron requires it to unfold. The author does a good job of showing how dangerous the cold is and what it takes to live in it.

This book is very short already at about 200 pages, but then some chapters are only a couple pages long and look to be split up for the specific purpose of making the book longer. It is a very quick read. It is a YA book, but adults will find it enjoyable as well. The book does include violence and the threat and allusion of sexual violence, so I would suggest upper YA (12 and up).

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