We Burned So Bright

The Earth's days are numbered, but Don and Rodney have one final task to complete.

When a "rogue black hole" encroaches on Earth, leaving the planet less than a month before annihilation, people are forced to confront how they might spend their final days. For Don and Rodney, it's clear they have one last thing to do, but it's a task kept secret from the reader for much of this 176-page novella. We know that it requires them to travel to the Cascade mountains in Washington state. There are additional hints—a savvy reader will see them and be able to guess the planned final act—but for the most part we are just along for the ride.

With air travel long since grounded and major cities under military lockdown, the two old men, both in their seventies, get in their RV and begin taking backroads west from Maine. Along the way, they encounter a variety of humans dealing with the end of the world in their own individual ways. While there's some variation, there's also an underlying alignment of belief among many, something akin to "humanity is a cancer and this is the universe's way of fighting that infection." Don and Rodney are sweet and decent men, still in love after 40 years together, but few they meet rise to their standards. It's a bleak take on humanity, which grows progressively bleaker as the novel moves toward its pre-determined conclusion.

Interestingly, the somewhat closely guarded secret of the men's journey to Washington is one I think should have been revealed sooner. The last quarter of the novella is devoted to this, and I think it would have been a more powerful book if the "secret" was unveiled at the start The story surrounding that was far more powerful than most of the events of the westward trek, and a more thorough incorporation of it would have added depth to the novella.

TJ Klune books always carry an emotional heft. There was a time when they oozed sweetness, and they came with a positivity that chased the darkness of bad actors away with its light. That time seems to have passed. At some point around In the Lives of Puppets, his stories got darker, and they have stayed that way. We Burned So Bright follows that descent into darkness, and while one could scrape figments of positivity from things like the shared love between Don and Rodney, for the most part the novella is a morose reflection on humanity. It's a short, bleak look at the end of all life on our planet, and while some characters cling to slivers of joy, those are effectively consumed by the black hole of darkness surrounding the novella. It's a sad premise made even more depressing as one gets deeper into the story—a satisfying read, but one from which I was hoping for more.