PROS: I liked how I was sucked into the story immediately, without a lot of extraneous exposition or unnecessary explanation. I feel like it's the mark of a good writer, relying on their story itself to establish the world, rather than detailing what the world is with paragraph after paragraph of tedious description of both the characters and the world that they live in. This story shows a lot of respect to the reader, placing faith in their ability to understand the situation. I was fascinated by the unpredictable nature of the plot and the authentic relationship between the two main characters. I'll be interested to see how they progress, watching the nature of their interactions. Aidan seems a bit like a child, playing with fire, in that he had no idea how much power he holds. The naming process was a particularly fun section to read, and watching the two communicate made me laugh more than once.
CONS: The ancient amulet. While an amulet is a tried and true mcguffin, it's so cliche, especially when it's found by accident in an antique store. I know it's tempting to use that technique, since it's so easy to explain, but it's been used so often that I almost rolled my eyes and stopped reading. You're an excellent author, and this is totally your story, but I have faith that you could think of something more original than that. Also, and this is something that will work itself out quickly, I have no doubt, I don't know enough about the characters to really engage with them. That point can almost be eliminated, though, since I'm interested enough to want to know more about them.
SUGGESTIONS: I'm not going to touch of grammar or spelling or anything that a good editor would pick up on, since that's really not my place. I would caution you on consistency, though. It's pretty clear that Zoie speaks and understands modern/casual English, but there are times when she slips into an over-dramatic sentence structure, reserved for weak fantasy stories. Since the characters go to Dennys, I'm imagining that this is closer to urban fantasy. With that being the case, there's no reason why modern English shouldn't be used.
If you take anything away from this review, let it be that I sincerely enjoyed this story, and look forward to reading more about the characters.
John:
This was absolutely exquisite! It felt as though I was watching an Alfred Hitchcock movie or, perhaps, reading a tale by Edgar Alan Poe, if Poe were still about to tell us such tales. I appreciated the intimacy that I formed with Andrea and the progression through all the emotional stages that the spider induced. Very artfully rendered.
There are typos and missed punctuations here and there, but that doesn't matter, since an editor will catch those.
My only complaint, and I'm really reaching for this, is that I cannot believe that a woman as self-conscious as Andrea would ever leave the shower curtain open while she was bathing. Also, while I don't find it completely implausible for her to be so absorbed with her shower that she blocked out the rest of the world, I do find it unrealistic that the spider could have completely replaced the shower curtain with it's own webbing in that short of a time. It is insinuated, mid-story, that the water began growing cold after about twenty minutes. The silken curtain was already in place, the spider was glowering down on Andrea, and Andrea had passed through the hysteria and fear into analysis.
It's a horror story, so none of this matters. I mean, I'm not going to over-analyse the scientific properties and dietary requirements of giant spiders, so it's really kind of useless to question the silken curtain. Either way, It's an excellent story, and I'm very glad to have read it. Thank you for sharing!
This was an interesting take on a fairly common trope. I enjoyed Birsha's development, and watching his emotional state drift from depressed resolution to diabolical rage. I wish that this story would have been much longer, since I feel like the characters could have been developed much more than they were. In fact, the only character that was given any kind of depth was Birsha. If this story would have been longer, I feel like we could have gotten to know Chayna better, and maybe we could have gotten some background into her family.
This wasn't a poorly written story at all. I enjoyed the dialog and the authenticity of the interactions. I also really appreciated the details which were placed in order to add texture, and cause me to feel the scene, rather than simply read it. Were I the writer of this piece, I would take some time to develop the characters more completely and expand the story line further. I'm not the writer, though, and I appreciated this story for what it was.
Maybe I just don't understand this style. I have a dream catcher on my wall, and I appreciate it's symbolism. However, I've never been inspired to write a poem about it.
The poem didn't have a rhyme pattern and a nonsensical syllabic arraignment. The imagery was fine enough, but very little of it had spiritual significance. Mostly, I feel that this poem simply symbolizes devotion and misplaced faith in an inanimate object.
The advice I would give to the poet is to focus less on how the dream catcher looks and more on what it represents. The physical holds very little significance in the symbolism of the dream catcher, and the spiritual aspects make for a more gripping analog.
I tried so hard to enjoy this story, but I couldn't do it. I don't like to be the guy who picks on grammar, spelling, and punctuation, since that's an editor's job, but this was so bad that I couldn't even really determine what the story was supposed to be saying. If this was supposed to be an avant-garde art piece with no plot, designed to drive the reader insane, then the writer did a great job with it. After the first few paragraphs (paragraphs? were there really clearly defined paragraphs?), I was ready to pull my hair out.
My advice to the author would be to completely restructure the story. Outline your points, structure your characters a little, and clarify your plot. Write like it's something that you'd want to read. Take time and actually focus on the quality of writing. If the story isn't something that you've invested in, how can you expect other people to invest in it?
Oh, wow, I loved this poem! It was like the poet started writing it with the intention of having a flow and some sense of rhythm, but then gave that up about halfway through, but decided to pick it up again towards the end. All the imagery in the poem is off-point, the points are vague, and the emotional gambit is both confusing and melodramatic. It was so much fun reading this train-wreck!
That's a very interesting, if not rudimentary and fairly obvious, essay on life-- that is to say that this article offers advice for naive individuals, and it does so in an interesting way.
I do question the qualifications of this author. Do they have an education, or do they simply feel entitled to enlighten us feeble mortals with their instructions? That's not to say the points which were listed were bad. On the contrary, most of them are pretty solid. They're also very obvious.
I applaud this philosopher on discovering the long-sought-after formula, the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Here, this whole time, I was thinking that it was 42.
I really enjoyed the mythology that the story built, and the relationship that was formed between the two main characters felt authentic and real, if not a bit rushed. I would certainly enjoy learning more about this universe that they inhabit, and would be interested in reading more adventures on The Chocola. The characters had real personalities, and I can appreciate that.
There are a couple things that bothered me, but not enough to cause me to regret choosing to read the story. The most significant, and really the only one that I'm going to address, was the slang. Cultural references and swear words from our world, used in an alien/fantasy culture, has always been a pet peeve of mine. Simply because terms like "f***" and "s***" are relevant on present-day Earth, that doesn't mean that they automatically hold the same connotations in a fantasy setting. The "getting jiggy with it" line made me chuckle, yes, but (in my opinion) it was out of place in a fantasy space opera. There were other instances where that same rule applied, but that one stuck in my mind.
Like I said, I enjoyed the story, and I'm glad that I read it. Much respect to this author for a well-crafted adventure.
Graphic, emotionally charged, and gripping. This struggle for self-assurance and identity, arguing with the unseen adversary who's only purpose is our destruction and torment, is one of the most captivating tropes in literature. It's something that we can all identify with, since we've all had those conversations, searching for a reason to keep going.
What I feel like the author did best here was texture and personality. Even in this brief trope, I found distinction. Incorporating reflection and inner turmoil make this story a work of art, terrifying in it's realism, poetic in it's design. I look forward to reading more from this author.
It's clear from the passage that the author has limited experience with bondage, and at least some knowledge of human anatomy. That, at least, puts it in a better place than 50 Shades.
Excellent meter, haunting prose! I would argue that it echoes of Poe, but I imagine this wordsmith gets that comparison fairly often. I wish that I could be more precise with my praise of this verse. It's like breathing air again, after being stuck in a coal mine for months, were that "coal mine" stuffed with self-important, Ginsburg-"wanna-be", free-verse charlatans. This is poetry.
I wish that I had enjoyed this story more than I did. I understand what the author was attempting to say, but I don't feel that it was not the right setting, nor the correct characters for an emotional tale such as this. Aaron is a character that we ought to have been able to relate to, with his feelings of isolation and ennui, but Aaron's under-development makes him seem more like a defeatist than a strong protagonist. As a teenager, we have all wanted to escape from our worlds, much like him. None of us (or very few of us, at any rate) have been rescued by a gnome fisherman who magically and instantly takes care of all our problems. Unless, I'm reading this story too literally, and the gnome actually represents the suicide that Aaron had been pursuing, in which case... well, props for going there, author. Still, I think the message could have been made clearer, and the characters ought to have been developed a little more.
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