By: Ann Kingsley

Ben “Doc” Askins’ book, Anti-Hero’s Journey: The Zero With a Thousand Faces, offers something audaciously different—and decidedly unsettling—in a culture obsessed with self-improvement, hero worship, and the search for meaning. This isn’t a roadmap to victory or valor; it’s a controlled demolition of ego, identity, and the myths we cling to for comfort. It promises no tidy revelations—only unflinching honesty and the possibility of something real emerging from the wreckage.

Why Should Anyone Read a Book That Promises to Destroy Them?

“I’m not selling nihilism—I’m offering a wrecking ball to the shaky scaffolding you’ve built your life on,” Askins explains. The metaphor of emotional demolition captures the essence of the book’s mission. When the labyrinth of beliefs, identities, and illusions collapses, space opens up for something sturdier to rise.

“It’s explosive, a bit terrifying, but ultimately liberating,” he says. “Most books want you comfortable. I want you uncomfortable—in the good way.” The breaking down is a prelude to feeling more deeply—doubt, grief, laughter, pain—and that feeling triggers clarity.

He doesn’t offer answers or neat solutions. Instead, he provides “brutal honesty and tough questions—about courage, fear, and meaning.” The choice of what to build next is left to the reader. “The slate’s clean. You build the next version of yourself.”

Is This Book Spiritual or Anti-Spiritual?

Askins’ answer is a paradox wrapped in a punch: “Yes.” The book is spiritual like “a fistfight in a church,” or “laughing during your own funeral.” It defies conventional spiritual categories, refusing to affirm traditional faith while still touching deeply on meaning born from trauma.

“If you bring traditional faith looking for affirmation, you might feel offended—or liberated,” he says. “If you come as a skeptic, you may get touched in places you didn’t realize still bleed.”

At its core, Anti-Hero’s Journey doesn’t promise salvation but might resurrect readers by forcing them “to believe nothing, so you can choose something real.” The refrain from the book’s Zeromyth theme is that “everything’s sacred and everything’s nonsense.”

Askins learned this lesson in war, holding “communion and cynicism in the same fist.” So yes, the book is spiritual — but only for those brave enough to find holiness in the wreckage, while burning every altar along the way.

What Will Readers Actually Feel?

The emotional ride Askins offers is intentionally disorienting. “You’ll feel disoriented. Seen. Punched in the psyche. Then suddenly, disturbingly free.”

He describes the book as a “controlled demolition” of the self. Between the humor and horror, readers are called into deep reflection, grappling with questions like, “What am I avoiding?” or “How do I reconcile pain and purpose?”

“If you’re paying attention, something in you might shift,” he says.

The feelings readers should expect? “Unsettled. Unlocked. Undefended. Unapologetically human.” Askins warns, “Bring your emotional armor—but be ready for it to shatter. That’s the point.”

Who Should Avoid This Book?

The author doesn’t mince words when advising who might not be ready for this raw and unflinching narrative. “People who like being lied to. People who think trauma is a personality trait. People whose Amazon cart is full of crystals, vision boards, and ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ decals. Stay away.”

The book “eats hope for breakfast.” It includes graphic battlefield scenes—blood, fear, trauma—rendered in brutal detail.

If you’re looking for medals, clear victories, tactical maps, or an “us versus them” story, you’ll find none here. “This isn’t about heroism or patriotism—it’s about human wreckage and how we attempt to rebuild it.”

If you want a polished, uplifting war memoir or safe spiritual balm, Askins recommends looking elsewhere. But if you’re curious about a laugh-tinged excavation of trauma, resilience, and messy humanity—welcome aboard.

How Does This Book Change People?

The transformative power of Anti-Hero’s Journey is not in changing people, but in stripping away the illusion that something about them needs to be fixed.

“It doesn’t change people. It strips away everything that thinks it can be changed,” Askins says. Readers expecting a tidy wartime valor story instead find “raw wounds and honest admission of fear.”

This initial shock cracks the veneer and opens the door to rebuilding meaning from the ruins. The book teaches that real strength is vulnerability, that courage means noticing the masks you wear and being curious about what’s underneath.

“Most books don’t smash your assumptions,” he says. “Anti-Hero’s Journey does.” The result? Readers walk away “uncomfortably more honest, more empathetic, more willing to hold everything and nothing at once.”

And that, Askins insists, is the only kind of change worth writing into your bones.

Final Reflections: The Invitation to Wreck and Rebuild

Ben “Doc” Askins invites readers to a journey that is anything but comfortable. He offers a brutal, funny, and deeply human path to unmaking and rebuilding the self, shattering heroic myths to reveal the raw core beneath.

Anti-Hero’s Journey is a call to courage, to laughter and tears, to embracing the absurd and the profound. It promises no safe harbor—only the freedom found in burning the old story down and daring to build anew.

For those ready to face the wreckage with eyes wide open, it’s a rare and necessary gift.