Sol Invictus
By Soge

Reviewed by Asilin

So long time, no review. Been busy with work, kiddo, bills, and personal projects. Of most importance is the fact that I’m taking the first steps to becoming an official author. If anybody’s interested in following that journey, feel free to follow my blog and/or like my page on Facebook.

Anyway, got to do something to relax from all of that, so here we are! This is a short, sweet piece, perfect for doing a quick relaxing review. It’s even festive, just in time for… well, it’s rather distinctly after Christmas in July. Oops.

Not a crossover this time, but author note does indicate that it’s based on a song. Decided to listen to it while writing this up. Pretty good.

Commentary and Review combined due to brevity.

Quick basic summary: Story’s about how a bunch of humans go and worship the goddess Sol Invictus on Midwinter’s Night. It’s no big secret who it really is, but the story isn’t concerned about making it a mystery anyway. There’s a lot of background on how we got to this particular night, they party, and then the sun comes up.

Yay Solstice!

Anyway, there’s a lot that this story does right. The narrative is easy and enjoyable to read. The descriptions are wonderful. Just reading the introduction to this story is all you need to know that this is an author who knows how to handle his words. The concrete imagery brings you right into the scene, and I love the emotional punch of the opening as we transition from the idea of a misunderstood pilgrimage to the pronouncement of purpose.

The only problem? It drags in the middle. While there is a lot of interesting backdrop and background going on here, after a while, it’s just tedium. It’s reading a history text. It’s infodump. Pick your descriptor. And while it is, again, interesting to a point—particularly to me as a historian and writer looking at how things got altered—as a reader I kept waiting for the story to move on. To show me what the purpose of this piece was.

But all in all, it’s a short, sweet Winter tale that crosses into magical realism very well.

It’s already a fairly strong story but a couple of things could make it better. First, you could tighten it. Instead of detailing the entire history of this pilgrimage, give the salient points. We don’t necessarily need a list of all the dangers or how Celestia’s disappearance really affected the order; you just need to give the impression of danger and highlight the decline.

Another option would be to expand it by giving a proper narrator. You already have a narrative feel, but if you gave it a slightly better frame, like the current high priest writing the history of the group for his acolytes, you open up a world of possibility for further discussion and elucidation. It has the added bonus of giving us early indication that this is going to read as more of a nonfiction style writing than a story.

Ultimately, I rather like it. It’s inventive and has great descriptions as well as a strong narrative voice. So I’m going to give it a

Recommended.

If you like the idea of humans worshipping Celestia or just like magical realism as a genre, you probably want to check this one out.

4616948 Wow, did I really take 1 month to reply to this? Ugh...

Anyway, I know it is late, but thank you very much for the kind review! It is interesting perspective on what worked and didn't, and I could take away quite a few things that I will keep in mind when writing in the future. In particular, about the middle point being boring, since that was, to a point, my intention. I wanted the journey towards the Castle to feel plodding and heavy, in order to make it seem tiring, and to contrast with the much faster return trip. It seems that not only I went way too much in that direction, but that I also kinda forgot about the rest of the story in the mean time. That is something I will keep in mind for the future.

If you like the idea of humans worshipping Celestia or just like magical realism as a genre, you probably want to check this one out.

Hey, thanks for identifying that! Magical Realism was a major influence when writing this, and I am glad that it was recognizable.

4703584

No problem :)

Might I suggest an alternative to plodding writing, since that was your intent? Steal some conventions from poetic prose. Repetition, alliteration, reflective structures, etc. can be used to weigh down a story and give it more gravitas without actually slowing the story down. Plus, it sounds really cool when you do it right, and you can use some really creative 25 cent words :)

4703593 In other words, copy Tolkien? Sure can do .

But seriously, while I think that is solid advice, I end up avoiding doing that stuff because I am afraid it I will make the writing overly pretentious. Then again, maybe I could try finishing something in that vein...

4703803

It's only pretentious if it's overdone :) Or overwrought. But deft touches make poetic prose, like any poetic form, sing and emote and unify a piece like none other.