(Link)
And let's go straight to the description:
"William Markin is both an world renown pastor, and an atheist. Having taught people about the ways of God for years, he is now retired and ready to live in peace. But when a mysterious angel appears to test his merits, he finds that he will have to answer for the actions of his past, and fight, for the future of his soul."
The descriptions of these things always seem to be the most interesting part. From this I made a lot of assumptions. 1: This guy doesn't know English. "An world renown pastor"? And I really feel like I'm beating the comma horse dead with these authors. 2: This is going to be a story where the guy comes to Jesus. To my relief, both of these assumptions actually turned out to be wrong.
My first impression was a powerful one. The very first sentence sort of punched me in the face, so I'll throw it down right hmeah: "'I said you're going to Hell!' the modestly appareled neo-hippie screamed at me as her self-righteous saliva fell onto my coincidentally exposed forearm." Damn, that's a lot of adjectives and adverbs. It's immediately apparent that whoever wrote the description from before was either a hired immigrant, the author has a well-paid editor, or he was drunk when he wrote it. I had to read this sentence like three or four times to really get it, and I'm sure that wasn't the dude's intention, but let's deconstruct it anyway, it's fun!
"Modestly appareled." Just think about it, you get the oxymoron in there? It's a weird thing to say. This lady has some "meek glamour" about her, some "muted pizzazz." Let's just give him the benefit of the doubt and say he used a thesaurus to complicate some words, I guess. "Neo-hippie." Fine. Whatever that is, I'm sure it exists, but would you be able to spot one if they were "modestly appareled"? Alright, I'll accept that I'm just being an asshole until this: "Self-righteous saliva." Her saliva is self-righteous? And it fell on your "coincidentally exposed arm"? Come on, you don't fucking need that adverb. That's like saying, "I flipped the switch, and the light coincidentally went out."
And wait until you find out why she is yelling at him. He A: went on an asshole athiest rant when she said, "Bless you," when he sneezed (dude, the appropriate response is thank you, not "FUCK YOUR GOD!") and B: he ordered a caramel latte without caramel and she put caramel in it. I have mixed feelings about this. It does display the dude's weird character pretty well, and it makes me as the reader hate him--he is a douche. It just sort of feels like this situation actually happened to the author, and we're supposed to sympathize with him and think he's cool for being an outspoken athiest. If that's the case then really dude go to hell, but if my dislike for the character is intentional, which does theoretically add to the story, then good job. But on the other hand I also hate the narrator. Actually, the narrator is the main character so that's pretty obvious, but I don't just hate him, I hate the narration. It comes off as really arrogant. And this entire situation is so pitifully summed up by the words: First World problems.
After the intro, the author stops using so many unnecessary descriptors and actually falls into a good pace. A demon/angel character is introduced and says he will give him three wishes and it takes on the feeling of a 1001 Arabian Nights type story. I can dig that, there are only a few things that I didn't like about it. First is that I immediately knew there would be a "be careful what you wish for" sort of moral or lesson, and it's up for interpretation (a plus) but nothing surprising really happened.
Second, angel/demon characters always come with a certain level of cheesiness. You have to really do it right to pull it off. It can so easily take on the feel of a Brendan Fraser movie (you know the one). It might work if you add in comedy, like Dogma, but even then the shit monster was just like, "Whaaat?" The believability just didn't come through for me, especially when the dude who is such a skeptic that he tears a knew asshole into the hippie coffee shop girl for reflexively being polite starts wondering if the angel is telling the truth. Like immediately. For example, the angel has to set up the rules of his being there real quick for the reader, which sort of crushes the disbelief, and says nobody else can see him. Then when the angel stands up and he's freakishly tall the guy suddenly thinks about the fact that if he is invisible he will look like he's talking to the sky, but that's normal because he's a former pastor blah blah. It's out of character (the guy has been established to not believe that shit), irrelevant, and pretty much just cheesy. It was a cool thought, but authorman, sometimes you just have to axe the "novel" stuff that don't work.
Ratings:
Onto-theology: 1 out of 5. This made me think about the nature of god and whether he exists like zero percent. The "clever" ending could have been in a story about a literal shepherd and his totally normal, non-religious flock. No souls were searched today.
Surprisingly Good Writing: 4 out of 5. The dude knew English pretty damn well after all AND his voice was pretty good, even though I hated the narrator. I will give him the benefit of the doubt and say that was completely on purpose and that he did an effective job. I am not speaking to the plot, just the writing style, minus the weird adjectives.
Plot: 3 out of 5. Yeah, not a very exciting category, but this story was good enough I don't really feel the need to shit all over it... much. The plot was coherent, and the dude gets a lot of points for not having the expected come to Jesus ending I thought it would. It sort of does a little bit, but it's ambiguous. The angel/demon and the ending, however, were just sort of played and cheesy. I so want to spoil it for the sake of humor, but I'll just find a substantially unrelated but relevant analogy instead... It's like if I made a movie where Leonardo DiCaprio goes deep into his dreams to investigate a bunch of dead inmates on an island prison and in the end he's really... Fuck, what am I talking about, that would make TONS of money.
Overall: 2.5 out of 5. Middle of the road. It wasn't bad, it wasn't great, what more can I say?
Read and laugh at my stories at www.amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall.
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