The Story That Ate My Week

This week (and last week) I read an English author, Thomas Murphy, writing about the American Civil War. What? Yeah. The story was called "The Vine That Ate The South" (Yeah, fine, let's just capitalize everything).

(Link)

You got rights for that picture, bro? Well you might think from the cover, the fact that it's about the Civil War, and the title being a reference to Kudzu (the vine that actually ate the South) that this is a non-fiction, historical account. You thought wrong. Did you really expect a British author to write a factual account of the Civil War? Here is the description:

"A story told from multiple perspectives of a fateful decision taken during the darkest days of the American Civil War. Including a cast of characters including President Abraham Lincoln, a mysterious war photographer and an ardent genius biologist; this alternate history sci-fi tale tackles the lengths good men will go to to prevent evil happening in the world."

Well my first impression of this story has to do exactly with that description. "Cast of characters" in a short story isn't a good thing. He had like a paragraph from one person's POV then went on to the next like some sort of fiction version of Debbie Does Dallas. I mean that his fiction whores around, not that Debbie Does Dallas was a true story, although it might have been, you never know. This schizophrenic switching of inner dialogue serves the much  needed purpose of letting us feel every step the painful experience of this guy trying to drag a story out of his ass after getting high and watching the History Channel and hearing them dramatically say, "the vine that ate the South" and thinking how like totally badass would it be if he wrote a story about a vine that literally was like scary as shit. It's pretty apparent that he got a couple words in and had no idea where to go next, so he decided to just throw in another character.

I think he kept watching the History Channel too, because this story reads like an equally uninspired special of theirs. He lists off things regularly that make it pretty apparent he looked at that Wikipedia page, which is actually probably the same method History Channel uses. On the upside he could probably submit this story to them and they'd pick it up immediately. This post seems to be veering in a certain direction, so let's just bring it back to how the story feels like a fucking awful, half-assed, fictional, shitty network tells history. It's just pretty dry and flavorless overall; it's like the scones of stories (take that British! HA! Your cooking is bad too and I forced a joke about it!) I mean, there's a war going on, but all the action is just referenced coldly like a bunch of old East India Company generals playing snooker and chatting about how to put down those Indian dogs. Alright, again there seems to be an agenda happening, let's get back to the story. Sorry.

This guy did a pretty good job at writing in American English, but the first time he said "realise" or "theatre" or whatever, I definitely noticed. And yeah, if you're British and writing a story set in America it definitely needs to be combed and put in American English. The same goes for knowing the history of the Civil War in order to write an alternate history. YES, it's tedious, especially if you're British, that's why I have no clue why this guy tried it. What's the point, man? But if you're gonna half-ass it also, that's like telling me you will tell me how many jelly beans are in that jar then counting like half of them and doubling your number for a stupidly educated guess. Now I'm pissed at you for making me wait while you counted all those damn beans.

That brings me to the actual story. It's an alternate history about a technology that killed civilians as well as armies. First, dude, that's not very original, you just got the time wrong, it's called World War II and the atom bomb. Second, you put all this effort in trying to make Lincoln look like he was noble and shit not knowing that civilians would die. But in the real history if you would have looked shit up beyond "union losses civil war" there was a guy called Sherman, and he like fucking invented killing civilians as a means to winning.

Rateses:

Badassery: 1.5 out of 5. Throbbing red vines didn't do it for me, but I'm not gonna judge. The part where people clawed at their throats until they bled was cool. Everything else was boring.

Points of View: 1 out of 5. So many POV changes. Damn, dude. And this will inevitably lead to slip-ups. Like when he thought of a cool description of a fat man walking in a funny way and put it in during the same man's point of view. What, is he having an out of body experience or something?

Ending: 5 out of 5. I knew he was gonna pull the "I'm going to Ford's Theater!" mindfuck or whatever you want to call it, but it was hilarious that his dramatic ending somehow made it though with Lincoln's wife calling him a woman. Literally: 'Mary, where can we be reached?' 'Fords' Theatre, Miss.' Oh yeah, and dude, quotation marks look like THIS: ""

Overall: 2 out of 5. I didn't hate reading actually, it was just almost completely a waste of time. I do appreciate him trying to put in the effort to not misrepresent my country though.

Submit your complaints to amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall.