This book was complicated to read and is even more complicated to rate. I am stuck between wanting to admire it and hate it. Hate it because going through this book was borderline torturous. The lack of character names, quotation marks, and dialogue tags made it painful to figure out who was saying what. I had to re-read the sentences and count them to place the dialogues to its deliverer. And calling them dialogues is an overstatement. They were just mere statements with a combination of half a dozen words. I would have given up in the beginning if not for the mystery of the road. Even the ending seemed abrupt, convenient, and unfulfilling. Out of all the reputed, overrated authors that I've read, Cormac McCarthy's writing style is the worst.

But you know how even bad books leave you with a long-lasting message or two. It did wash me with those empty, hollow waves after I finished the book. It made me rethink things, habits, and perceptions. I felt the urge to embrace changes. And to me, when a book does that, it cannot be the worst of the kind, hence the 3 stars. The contrast between the darkness of the world and the goodness within the boy was worth engaging with, even though it seemed indigestible at times.