Dafuq Did I Just Read?

It's apparently called "Blue Jackson, A Science Fiction Thriller" by Elizabeth Brown.

(Link)

Hold on, wait, I'm gonna stop you right there. Let me just say, I hope you know that by calling this a science fiction thriller it has to both be science fiction and thrilling. Maybe the answer to those questions will be revealed in the description:

"What happens when a ten-year old girl is abused but also endowed with special powers?"

Wait. Stop. What? FAIL on the science fiction, by the way, and also: What? I don't know what happens when... alright, whatever, keep going. 

"Blue Jackson knows more than most people, but she will never tell. The only one who knows she can talk is her brother, Tory, who is developmentally disabled. Tory agrees to keep her secret, until Blue starts conversing with the squirrels."

I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I must have misread. No? No, I didn't? Okay, keep it coming I guess...

"Blue Jackson is a story told as a flashback, through the perspective of Tory. It ends tragically in a macabre slaughter instigated by one small girl and her army of  rodents."

Uh SPOILERS. Damn. Word of advice: Don't put the ending to your story in the freaking description. Also, What? Well, at least upon reading that there is no way I won't read the story. Good job, I guess.

My first impression of the story is that telling it through the eyes of a retarded- my apologies, developmentally challenged individual- why can't she say like mentally impaired, slow, stupid, or I don't know, I can't find a good word right now but there has to be something more natural an colloquial- sorry, I got off track. Let's just restart. Telling this story through the eyes of what reads as a really thick southern accent, or at least what someone from Canada would think is a southern accent, seems like a gimmick that will get old really quick.

It turns out I was right. The accent definitely seems like something the author only used so that people would be like, "Damn, look how authentic and cool and awesome you are at writing, this is like Flowers for Algernon and a Tony Morrison novel all in one and you are probably better than both of them combined lolz." Yeah, except it and all the other gimmicks came off as well as a vice presidential candidate trying to appeal to young people (and religious housewives in a weird, creepy sort of paradigm-of-what-my-son-should-be-like kind of way) by lifting weights and wearing a backwards red cap. BOOM, DOUBLE ZING! Also, on a  side note Tony Morrison is also gimmicky but nobody can say it because she's all edgy and deals with race and rape and stuff which you can't attack or you look like an asshole. Well, I'm attacking it, so EAT IT, Morrison and everyone else.

I did find out that the rules of formatting were intentionally thrown out because of the narrator, but it only brought up two more problems. First is that if you throw away commas because your narrator is stupid you have to do it so the reader knows what you're doing. In other words you definitely can't use semicolons (although there was one part with a semicolon like directly after another one, which was pretty stupid). Second, the way I found out was the sudden shift in point-of-view midway through the story. Meet me in the next paragraph and we'll talk about why that didn't work out for you, Lizzy.

By suddenly putting a sane person behind your narration you threw your gimmick out the window. Not only that, you also revealed that you were using said gimmick as a crutch because your writing isn't that stellar, but once that crutch became too slow to walk on you threw it away because you got lazy. I still would have gone with it though, I was getting really tired of trudging through the horrible mire of repetitive, thick accent (dem po' readers dey jus' gots to take a rest) and the way you described the nasty backwoods rednecks was more clear without it, but you screwed it all by going BACK to the ret- developmentally challenged point-of-view at the end.

Oh god, the end. I had no idea what was going on there. A social worker and a detective inside the house get attacked by a squirrel then suddenly we're outside the house with two officers that came out of nowhere (and with the laziest names ever. Really? Officer Braxton and Officer White? Braxton? and White?) then the squirrels swarm one officer and the other one gets shot with the specifically-mentioned-as-unloaded-for-the-plot shotgun, the end. Really, dafuq did I just read?

Ratings.

Science Fiction: 0 out of 5. This wasn't science fiction. At all. There was no science anywhere in this story. At the most it was sort of fantasy, but it's debatable whether the girl had any sway over squirrels or not. It's just a weird and stupid thing that happened to some gimmickally abused children.

Unnecessary Rape: 5 out of 5. Oh yeah, did I mention the rape? That was a gimmick too. There was no point for it in the plot. I guess it gave her reason to, like, kill a guy with squirrels, but she was abused by her mom and grandpa anyway, so... anyway this story was all over the place, stakes-wise.

Thrill level: 0 out of 5. I thought the attack-squirrels would at least be funny rather than thrilling, but the description really was the most laughing I got done today and the story was brilliantly spoiled as a result.

Overall: 1.5 out of 5. This story was barely coherent. I wish I had more funny things to say about it, but it just wasn't even half as fun to read as I thought it would be. Pretty much ruined my Christmas.


Have your own Christmas ruined by my stories at amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall.