Description:
"'THEY' is a short story by Vincent Hobbes. It was first released in January, 2010 in the anthology, The Endlands.
A relaxing road-trip becomes madness as two couples find themselves trapped in a blizzard."
So the whole time I was reading this, I was like, "I have totally been trapped in a blizzard in Colorado and it made me want to write a snow zombies story." And then guess what, at the end it turns out this story is a zombie story set in a blizzard in Colorado.
Stole my idea.
But mine was better, of course. In this white-out, I was creeping along when I saw the silhouette of a cop materialize and he got out of his car and started screaming, "Go back! Go baaaaack!" That was creepy on its own. I feel like I could do much better with the shadows of figures slowly appearing only for the main character to gradually realize something is not right about the slow, stumbling gait of the creatures.
Still, this story did pretty good as far as suspense goes. The group slowly runs out of gas and they are not sure if they see lights ahead in the distance and none of it is rushed. I liked that part. But the end was kind of abrupt. Like, I won't give it away entirely, but the part that was supposed to be the most tense was the least tense, and instead of using the blizzard to obscure the zombies and make them more terrifying, he just constantly used the words they and them. Anyway, it wasn't bad, but it was nothing surprising or exceptional. And I wouldn't bitch about that except for the guy's author page saying: "Mr. Hobbes writes with elegant prose, has unique plot-lines and great character development. His work is mind-boggling, his characters life-like, his ideas fresh in a dull market."
How I wish it were true.
Ratings:
Mastery of English: Shaky at best. Some sentences just didn't make any sense. Others used the wrong verb--"And then he bleeding to death." Shit like that. That's just fucking lazy, especially considering this was supposedly already published in an anthology. At times when I reading this I crying.
Pick a Character: 5 out of 5. He switched between the thoughts of the four people so much I started to hear voices. This, too, is a lazy tactic. Instead of describing peoples' facial expressions or giving them interesting dialogue, he just cheated and immediately said what they were thinking. I think it would have been much more interesting if we could feel the tension from the way the characters acted rather than him constantly being like, "'Yes,' she said, but really she was all like, Fuck, I'm so fucking nervous! What if I have to do a shit on the side of the road?" All of this was pretty unnecessary too, because by the end of the story he actually ended up with a single protagonist that was more competent and exciting than the rest of the dumbasses who all immediately got themselves killed.
Pick a Character: 5 out of 5. He switched between the thoughts of the four people so much I started to hear voices. This, too, is a lazy tactic. Instead of describing peoples' facial expressions or giving them interesting dialogue, he just cheated and immediately said what they were thinking. I think it would have been much more interesting if we could feel the tension from the way the characters acted rather than him constantly being like, "'Yes,' she said, but really she was all like, Fuck, I'm so fucking nervous! What if I have to do a shit on the side of the road?" All of this was pretty unnecessary too, because by the end of the story he actually ended up with a single protagonist that was more competent and exciting than the rest of the dumbasses who all immediately got themselves killed.
Overuse of THEY: 5 out of 5. I was pretty pissed off at him substituting they and them for any actual descriptions of the zombies or emotions or tension or, well, anything entertaining. He probably used those two words 1,000 times in a 4,000 word story, and I'm sorry to say it was NOT as cool as he thought it was. Maybe use it once, then the reader can be all like, "Oooh shit, that's the title. Neat," and move on to reading the parts where there was actually effort put in. And the most disappointing thing, as I mentioned earlier, is the fact that there actually was effort put into the first three quarters of the story. I felt the tension, I wanted to know what happened next. Then, it was just over. All foreplay and no payoff, and now I have to change my sheets. Well, the sheets thing is kind of unrelated to me reading this story.
Overall: 3 out of 5. It was okay. I want this guy to try harder, for the sake of everyone who bought a kindle and doesn't necessarily feel like reading erotica EVERY time they turn the damn thing on. And, also, this doesn't have much to do with anything, but here is his picture. Enjoy.
If you want to find out what happened to my sheets, go to amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall.
No comments:
Post a Comment