Book Review: Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman and Andrew Winegarner

Book Review: Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman and Andrew Winegarner

Quote: I call myself a warrior--a Peaceful Warrior--because important battles we face happen inside us. And even now, as we speak, invisible forces--forces of light and darkness--are fighting a great battle.
But what does always have to do it-- A great work and sometimes we won by a single battle. The battles been fought right now, Dan . . . Inside you.

A book picked up in a mad frenzy called Bookfair. I bet I fell for the cover and the words graphic novel and didn't bother reading the blurb. Three years later it is haunting me.

Adapted from apparently a famous book of the same name, which has been dubbed classic. This book is a part autobiographical and fictional story of spiritual coming of age story of a young athlete called Dan, who meets a weird old man in a gas station who changed his being.

Karate Kid plot meets Robin Sharma spiritualism meets Paulo Coelho's language meets White Man's idea of eastern philosophy meets armature art in a poorly constructed storyboard.

Dan loses his father, he does poorly at the gymnastic finals, dreams about an old man, with whom he has a chance meeting when he goes super biker mode and runs out of gas. Finds him jumping from roof to ground in seconds, Dan ends up calling the old man Socrates. Meets a lively girl called Joy who serves nothing to the plot beyond romantic interest and vanishes from Dan's life without an explanation and with a sunset goodbye.

Art is amateur, the pen and ink needed more balance, some panels were beautiful when they were drawn around nature, the athletes performing were drawn well, but overall it was very schoolbook oriented art. It didn't help the story anyway.

If eating vegetarian and fasting, running, abstaining from sex made one a peaceful being, the whole world would've been a better place. The sycophancy of self-help authors with cosmic harmony, and fighting evil within is nauseating. From fighting imaginary samurai to sewing to maintaining a journal to calm one's mind in graphic novel form was torturous. But I ain't no quitter, so I finished the book with an angry mind and sadly not with a peaceful heart. This was borderline a bad reading companion.