Review by Michael Sismilich, Audio Editor
\nPhoto courtesy of amazon.com<\/p>\n
\u201cEchoic Memory\u201d is a self-published, short stor y by ACC student and one-time Accent contributor Nathan Bustillos.<\/p>\n
The tale thrusts readers into the dark world of former FBI-agent- turned-hit man Frank Haynes, who is struggling to cope with the loss of his son, and as a result, becomes a cigar-smoking, raging alcoholic.<\/p>\n
Anytime Frank isnotoutona job, he\u2019s drinking. We see him spiral into despair very closely as it\u2019s mag- nified through- out the book.<\/p>\n
Haynes is good at his job, but not immune to the act of killing. Bustil- los gives readers an intimate look into Haynes\u2019 mind as he prepares to pull the trigger. It\u2019s not the typical, ex- pressionless por- trait of a killer of- ten shown on TV or in the movies.<\/p>\n
Although this type of main char- acter isn\u2019t original, the formula works. The characters are well written, the dark, gritty setting provides the ap- propriate backdrop and the underly- ing theme \u2014 loss \u2014 is very relatable.<\/p>\n
The dark night on which the story takes place, the places Frank visits, the\u00a0jobs he takes and even his apartment accelerate his descent into depression. However, because loss is constantly pushed to the foreground as a recur- ring theme, there isn\u2019t much more for the reader to absorb. I found myself wanting more \u2014 more descriptions of everything. How dirty is the life of a hit man? How much care and intensity does Frank put into maintaining his equipment? What does his apartment say about his state of mind? I kept asking these kinds of questions, but never really got the answers.<\/p>\n
Overall, “Echoic Memory” is an interesting read and the characters are worth meeting. \u201cEchoic Memo- ry\u201d is Bustillos\u2019 first published work and is available for Kindle and Nook for 99 cents on amazon.com. Bustillos also plans to have a new series of stories completed by early next year. \u201cI\u2019m actually working on a collection of short stories as we speak,\u201d he said. \u201c It\u2019s going to be 10 to 12 stories including \u201cEchoic Memory\u201d, and it\u2019s going to have a similar theme.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Review by Michael Sismilich, Audio Editor Photo courtesy of amazon.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4015,"featured_media":2461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[224,264,417,421,436],"class_list":["post-2453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-echoic-memory","tag-frank-haynes","tag-michael-sismilich","tag-mike","tag-nathan-bustillos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4015"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/accent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}