Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade by Ryan North (Goodreads Author) (adaptor), Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Albert Monteys (Illustrations)

 Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade

by Ryan North (Goodreads Author) (adaptor), Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Albert Monteys (Illustrations)-192 pages

"So it goes." This is the statement after every mention of death. Whether it's one person or a multitude who has died this is said. Billy Pilgrim is an 18-year-old soldier serving on the European front who gets captured and sent to a German prison camp. He ends up in Dresden, Germany and witnesses the Allied bombings there that kill 25,000 civilians. He also witnesses the death by firing squad of a comrade. This book is presented as Billy coming out of time ("unstuck") at different points in his life. It goes back and forth between these points in time. Slaughter House-Five is the place where Billy and the other Allies end up in Dresden as refugees. He survives because he hid in the meat locker below ground while the bombings raged. They emerged to find Dresden in ruins. This novel, even in graphic form, is thought-provoking on war and the nature of man. I thought of all the wars man has ever fought (as many as I could think of anyway), such as the Peloponnesian War, The Crusades, The Hundred Years' War, The American Civil War, World War I and II, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, and so many more. There's a video game series called "Fallout" and at the end of several of the games in the series the statement is made "because war, war never changes." Reading this work made me think of that statement. Overall, I found this to be thought-provoking and full of dark humor.