Broda Jr., Dale: The Old Warrior (2010)

The Old Warrior
Cover art by Christine
I really like this cover

I’ve been wondering for ages what being a soldier for years upon years would do to a person. That is a soldier who is out fighting all the time. It would have to be the close-up kind of soldier who has to make life and death decisions for another person on a regular basis. What would that do to you, and how many of your choices would you find bearing you down?

War is a terrible thing. The Old Warrior has been trained for a life of killing since childhood by people who treated him roughly. His choices have numbed him to the horrors he is part of. In the end that life is catching up with him, but then …

“The Nightmare” appears in the form of a little girl who has lost her mom and dad and wolf to the killers around her. She stands there in the middle of the noise and gore with an empty look on her face. “The Nightmare”. The one who manages to break through to the old warrior and create a chink in his suit of denial.

The Old Warrior was a sad and action-filled story. It ended differently from how I had expected and that annoyed me. But I also find it refreshing (and annoying – did I mention that) when closure is not reached. But life is like that. We cannot always know how things end.


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