Sometimes a story ends with the death of the main character. This one starts with the death of an average, and some may say boring, man named Francis Parker as he goes on a self-discovering journey from the beyond as he tries, with some unfamiliar help, to discover what happened to him. However, time is not on his side as he might be running out of it to figure out the answer if there was one.
Sometimes a story ends with the death of the main character. This one starts with the death of an average, and some may say boring, man named Francis Parker as he goes on a self-discovering journey from the beyond as he tries, with some unfamiliar help, to discover what happened to him. However, time is not on his side as he might be running out of it to figure out the answer if there was one.
There was nothing grand about my death. There was no light at the end of a tunnel. There were no dark angels or light ones for that matter. There was no heaven or hell either. Not even a purgatory. There was just darkness. It was just me or the idea of me and nothing else. I felt like a camera that suddenly closed its lens on life because its battery died . . . literally. My life did not go by my eyes like a movie as people claim. Not that there was anything special about my life.Â
            I always thought it was interesting how when someone died in a film, the camera seems to fly up looking down imitating the soul’s journey as it leaves the body. Unfortunately, the movies were wrong once again. My soul did not fly, hover, or flutter up and I did not look down on my dead body. The moment I died, my eyes closed and suddenly, there was nothing. That was it. I was not there anymore. I was nowhere. I am not sure how long that lasted but the next time I was aware that I existed again; it was all dark around me. I did not feel a body weighing me down. It was very freeing to say the least.  Gradually, I was aware of a presence around me. I was seeing shapes, but I did not know how I could see. They were moving. They were silhouettes. They were other people, tens, hundreds, and maybe hundreds of thousands all moving aimlessly like a herd of zombies. Now you are all caught up.Â
Francis is dead. But instead of going to heaven or hell, or simply ceasing to exist, he finds that his consciousness has moved onto a new plane. While he is struggling to adjust to his new reality, he is greeted by a seemingly-omnipotent bodiless voice named Xeno. Xeno and Francis begin to discuss the complex ideas of life, afterlife, and reality. Throughout it all, Francis relives his memories from before he died. He meets his wife, has his first child, and more. Follow Francis as he learns the truths of the afterlife and Lisa as she grieves the death of her husband.
I would rate Nothing Grand by Miller George 1 out of 5 stars. The first few pages were so promising, but sadly the book just kept going downhill from there. The dialogue was choppy and awkward. George also didn’t use contractions at all, which led to very robotic sentences. He also kept bouncing around between the perspective of Francis in the afterlife, Francis during his life, and Lisa’s diary entries without any pattern or connections. The premise was interesting, but the extremely poor execution made this book an extremely painful read. There was also one point in the book where the narrator worries about “weird” scenarios like their child being autistic, trans, or “the next Hitler,” and it came across as very tone deaf.Â
I would frankly not recommend this book to anyone. I had to force myself to finish it in order to give a fair review, but it was not a pleasant reading experience. I believe that if this book went through a few more rounds of editing to improve the flow of the writing and clean up the story line, it could be very interesting. However, based on the way that it is now, I sadly do not think that it is a book any audience would enjoy.Â