Spoiler Alert! Don't read if you don't want to know the end of Kira Argournov in Ayn Rand's We the Living.

An incredible book, well worth reading over and over.

We the Living was overall an incredible book. It described the struggles of an individual versus an overpowering state during the post-Russian Revolutionary times. Kira, a fragile yet deceivingly strong female lead reminds the reader constantly of human resilience through the direst of circumstances. It stuck me personally as I was reading this during a precarious health situation I was in at the time and it inspired me to keep pushing on; nothing was as bad for me as it had been for her. Of course I grew to love Kira as if I knew her personally, or even more so, as if she were me. The disappointment came not in the manner in which the book was written or the decisions made by the characters but rather was in the ending. Throughout the book, Kira triumphed even ever so slightly but during her last battle for life she lost. She lost by the hand of a witless soldier carrying out a monotonous task on the frozen plains of Russia as Kira attempted to flee. The manner in which Ayn Rand described Kira's blood stain the white snow where otherwise she would be invisible because of her white fur coat was as if I myself was dying in the snow alone. It gave the lasting message that no matter how hard one fights, no matter how many trials they overcome, it has nothing to do with whether they live or die. The surrounding world has much more power than one would like to admit...