Nice cover.
(Link)
Description:
"'A lean, intriguing story that packs a real surprising wallop. Ian W. Port builds suspense and delivers with startling results.' – Ralph Pezzullo, best-selling author of Jawbreaker"
Well, that's not really a description now is it? And I don't really trust this review. I am going to ask Ralph if he really said that. Not that I've actually read Jawbreaker.
Well, this story starts out with some guy and his new wife on their honeymoon. I think her name is Calypso or something.
The story rapidly escalates into the territory of the author telling us to be scared (I wouldn't have known otherwise) when Calypso asks what the worst thing he has ever done is and she pins him down and says she killed the hostess he was looking at and her corpse is in the bathroom.
Then she says it is just research on trust and fear for her PhD dissertation. Got to say, I am a doctoral candidate and that is not how you fucking do research. But that doesn't really matter.
Anyway, the guy doesn't check the bathroom, he just goes to the bar and gets drunk, then when he gets back his wife is gone. He calls the desk clerk and there is one of those cliche "I would like to stay for another week." "But sir, you have already reserved for the rest of your life," moments when they are like, "You checked in alone, I show no record of a Mrs. Whateverthefuckyournameis." WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
So then he goes into the bathroom and finds the dead corpse, freaks out a bit (because he obviously killed her) and then decides to get to know the new corpse girl better, maybe even marry her.
Yeah, yeah psychological thriller blah blah.
Ratings:
If Ralph Pezzullo Endorsed This, I am not Reading Any Ralph Pezzullo: 5 out of 5. Again, he said, "A lean, intriguing story that packs a real surprising wallop." Well, lean just means short. Pretty much too short to be any good, because there is no character development to tell us this guy isn't crazy (or is, in case he didn't want it to be a HUGE twist but instead wanted us to believe it). Actually there was a little bit of that, but I'm not really convinced that was intentional so much as bad writing. Anyway, it doesn't so much pack a real surprising wallop because of that, intentional or no. Let me explain in the next two points. See you below.
I Know There is Tension Because You Said There is Tension: 5 out of 5. So here are some examples of the intentionally crazy or bad writing question. His wife pins him down and says she has done real bad things, and he gets all freaked out. Like abnormally freaked out, and instantly. There is no doubt in his mind that she is not joking and has done something terrible and he should fear for his life and try to escape and call the police as soon as possible. This all happens in about a sentence. I had to read back over it to make sure I didn't miss anything, because it was literally something like, "She straddled him and said, 'I have done some really bad things.'" No tone of voice, no descriptions of the way she moved or held him down or anything, just that sentence then, "OH FUCK SHE'S GOING TO KILL ME." Then when she says it's research he just believes her and gets grumpy and goes to the bar. At the bar, some strange lady repeats the same thing his wife said before: "Is it true that men are always cheating on their wives, even if it's just in their minds?" Oh, SPOOKY. Actually, who the fuck cares. I'm not mortally afraid of being accused of adultery, nor should anyone else be, especially mind adultery which is just fucking nonexistent (sorry Christians).
SO, my point is these things make him look crazy, but that's also because the author is like, "I need to raise the tension of this psychological thriller. I KNOW! I'll just tell the reader stuff is tense and psychologically thrilling!"
Repeating and Repeating and Repeating and Repeating: 5 out of 5. So this guy clearly has a really small vocabulary. That's fine, you don't need a large vocabulary to write, but you do need to be creative with that vocabulary. Just look at how many different ways I use the word fuck on this blog. What this guy does instead is just repeat the same words and even full sentences word for word literally right after you read them. This is another failed attempt to raise the tension. I feel like the first time he wrote a lot of these sentences he was like, "This isn't tense enough," because he had written something like, "I have done some really bad things. I am super serious." That's very true--it isn't tense enough--but for his solution he settled on, "I have done some really bad things," she said again. Great work, you just wasted a ton of words in this already too-short story.
Overall: 2 out of 5. I don't know, I like the concept of psychological thrillers, but they never seem to catch me off guard and all the ideas seem overdone. Oh, except Solaris. God damn was that a creepy book. Go read Solaris.
SO, my point is these things make him look crazy, but that's also because the author is like, "I need to raise the tension of this psychological thriller. I KNOW! I'll just tell the reader stuff is tense and psychologically thrilling!"
Repeating and Repeating and Repeating and Repeating: 5 out of 5. So this guy clearly has a really small vocabulary. That's fine, you don't need a large vocabulary to write, but you do need to be creative with that vocabulary. Just look at how many different ways I use the word fuck on this blog. What this guy does instead is just repeat the same words and even full sentences word for word literally right after you read them. This is another failed attempt to raise the tension. I feel like the first time he wrote a lot of these sentences he was like, "This isn't tense enough," because he had written something like, "I have done some really bad things. I am super serious." That's very true--it isn't tense enough--but for his solution he settled on, "I have done some really bad things," she said again. Great work, you just wasted a ton of words in this already too-short story.
Overall: 2 out of 5. I don't know, I like the concept of psychological thrillers, but they never seem to catch me off guard and all the ideas seem overdone. Oh, except Solaris. God damn was that a creepy book. Go read Solaris.
If you liked Solaris, you should check out my completely unrelated writing at amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall.
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