To Dust You Shall Return by Sean Melican

[kailhofer]

I have to admit I slipped up and didn't realize I'd missed a story until Jaimie posted his critique. Apologies to the author.<br><br>Like he did, I was struck by the second person. I've never even considered writing a story in that manner, making the reader the main character. A truly unique treatment.<br><br>Now, Jaimie found things "stark and real, full of imagery and colors, a painting formed with words". No disrespect intended to my esteemed colleague, but I disagree with this assessment. <br><br>If I'm the main character, I'm going to perceive things in all the detail I can, using all my senses. While I liked the gray sky and the red eyes of the birds and demons, I never noticed a description of the demons that went beyond a vague, bony, man-like shape, all black, with flapping clothes or maybe skin and all red eyes. There are demons throughout this story, including some that come close enough to bite the main character in the neck. If something's that close, you think you'd get a good look at it.<br><br>They climb aboard a ship of some kind of design, but they only thing I knew of it was that there were oars & benches and seaweed between the boards to keep them wet. I didn't know if it was a galley only, or more like a Norse sailing ship that can also be rowed, or something entirely other. They travelled to a some fortress of unknown design beyond that it had a gate and corridors. I was really quite lost over what exactly they were laying seige to and how they were fighting.<br><br>Furthermore, there was a host of character names (more than I could keep track of) and scarcely little description I could use to try to keep them all straight. In fact, I became so befuddled over the names, I didn't catch on that the demon kidnapped the son until they were confronting him at the end.<br><br>The plot was mostly hack & slash, with an underlying theme of conversion to one god from many. I have a hard time saying that just converting as she fights on really constitutes character growth and a proper character arc. In the end, I thought the main character largely wooden and one-dimensional. The priest was less so, but I never got the hang of him, either. Everyone else seemed pretty much an extra.<br><br>I guess in my gut I couldn't say that this story had enough forward momentum to satisfy my tastes. I wasn't driven to read on because I wanted to see what was going to happen next. Instead I kept reading to see if I could figure out what was going on.<br><br>Also, apart from the occasional Latin bit, I thought the priest should have had a distinctly different sound to his dialog. A Roman-educated priest in a Celtic land... Well, he just didn't sound right to me.<br><br><br>All in all, I was gripped by the second person, but not by the characterization or plot development. Obviously, as an editor at a respected magazine, this author may have skills that I am unable or unworthy to perceive. In either case, it just didn't strike home with me.<br><br>Nate