The Human Cost by Jon Wesick
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- kailhofer
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The Human Cost by Jon Wesick
Epsilon Eridani IV... Wasn't that one of those Robotech planets?<br><br>As I read this story, I couldn't stop myself from picturing it as a cartoon, with animation in the same style as Robotech. It had that "feel" to it, at least, as I saw it.<br><br>I think this story was a bit unfocused, and I think that the way the story was structured lead me to this conclusion. That is, the POV shifts worked in this story until about three-quarters of the way through, when the POV stopped shifting. One more look at things from Tanaka's perspective could have kept things in "overview mode," but shifting and staying in Arjuna's ("Matt's") POV at the end made me wonder why I was shown the Colonel's view if the story was really going to be all about Arjuna.<br><br>In those terms, I would have preferred everything to have stayed from the Arjuna perspective. For his storyline, he didn't need to know how or why Tanaka and Hanako escaped. Or perhaps he could have "discovered" it as he was working toward finding out their location. In either case, I think that would have improved the story.<br><br>I'm big on world-building when it is used to make the sets vivid and three dimensional in my head by authors describing them with all the senses. I'm not big on world building that tells me about layer after layer of political intrigue. This story, IMO, had too little of the first kind, and too much of the second. A complex, politically dark world is good stuff, but I prefer to discover or interpolate it on my own, as I read.<br><br>A question: as Arjuna is showed the photos of the infected woman, he says she looked healthy with "glowing olive skin". Was this meant as healthy, except for the glowing green skin?<br><br>At first I thought Arjuna was an unfocused character. He didn't know what or who he wanted. Later, I realized that this was on purpose, and no wonder his wife left him. After finally giving up on a lost love and finding another, the first turned out to be not dead yet, and that would just plain unravel some folks. I thought that bit of characterization was exceptionally good, in hindsight.<br><br>In terms of the other characters, I thought they needed some work. Imagine poor Tanaka, tossing it all for a woman who turned out to be not his daughter. I wanted to know how he felt about that, and why he went through with saving her instead of doing his duty. After all, he volunteered to die. As for Hanako, I thought she took things remarkably well for a person who just found out she was a prisoner for twenty-seven years and infected by a lethal virus. I would have become much more unglued than that, I promise you.<br><br>I wondered about Arjuna's motivations at the end. If he loved Hanako so much it was ruining his life, why did he let her get caught? Weren't there any deserted islands he could have smuggled to where she could have lived? I missed the scene where he figures out his emotions, where he chooses to let her go. Or even if he had given in to that she had to die, would he really have wanted some anonymous lab tech, a servant of a corrupt government, to drop the needle on her, when he couldn't be there to so much as say goodbye? It may have been a moral dilemma, but given the options, would he have chosen to end it himself?? I don't know, but I think it's worth thinking about.<br><br>I would have liked to see some differentiation in the voices. I like dialogue where you recognize the speech pattern of the speaker even without the character tag. By this I mean you know who's speaking by moderate use of catch phrases, accents, etc. <br><br>I'm pretty sure I had to read at least a part of the Mahabharata for a class in college, but I've failed to miss the literary parallel here. Clearly, if he gives up the name Matt for Arjuna after mentioning it, it was important. Could someone fill in that gap for me?<br><br>All-in-all, I thought this was an all right story, but that it could have benefited from further characterization and a more narrow focus of the plot.<br><br>Nate
Last edited by kailhofer on February 27, 2005, 07:39:47 PM, edited 1 time in total.
- kailhofer
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Re: The Human Cost by Jon Wesick
<br>Ooooh. Well, I guess that shows I'm not as worldly as I ought to be. This part of Wisconsin wasn't a great source of diversity when I was growing up. Around here, "olive" as a color was always accompanied by "drab", and you used the two words to describe your dad's old army clothes.<br><br>(But if you ever want to discuss the nuances of cheese curds and varieties of bratwurst--I'm your man.)<br><br>Olive skin commonly describes certain people of Mediterranean or Asian descent that have darker skin coloring. It's a different shade than that of someone Latino or Native American. Although tinged with "green", there is nothing unhealthy about having olive skin. Glowing olive skin would equate to that person having a healthy, olive complexion.
<br>I'll have to take your word for it. My World Lit. Prof. was big on the Ramayana instead.<br><br>NateAh, the Mahabharata, the great Indian epic. Greater than the Iliad or the Odyssey, in my humble opinion.