Sorry for not posting a review in a while. Yes, it’s only been like a week, but I count that as ‘a while’ because of my usual upload rate. Stocks go down. I’ve just been dealing with some rather personal stuff on my end, but I’m working my way back into the swing of things. What better way to do it than with a review!

So today’s story is about… well, I don’t really know what it’s about because it has one chapter in which not much happens. I’m not even sure if the author wants to finish this story, or if they even remember they submitted it to be reviewed. The author describes the story as an ‘isekai,’ but because I live under a rock I have no idea what that is. Google tells me that isekai is an anime genre in which a ‘normal’ person finds themselves transported to another, usually fantasy, parallel universe. So basically to me it sounds like an HiE story.

You probably know I’m not a big fan of these types of stories, but I picked this one up because I am a fan of experimental writing, or writing with self imposed challenges. In this case, the author is letting the comments drive the story… or that was their intention. I don’t really know what happened here, but let’s try and unpack what little we have. Let’s hit it.

This story only has one chapter and it comes in at about a thousand words. As such, I really have no idea what’s going on, and that makes it extremely hard to score such a piece. Because the only plot I have to work with so far is the protagonist is hit by a car and killed. And I know this isn’t supposed to be the central point of the story, but it’s all I’ve got to work with.

The plot itself doesn’t seem to even really exist, because the description of the story tells us the protagonist has died. So the thousand words really just do a bunch of setup and explanation that unfortunately leads nowhere because the story is incomplete. I really don’t feel like I have enough information to really say much about this story, since a second chapter could very well nullify all of my criticisms. But as it stands, so far, nothing at all really happens. 

Same issue as plot. I have next to nothing to work with, besides assuming the protagonist is a male. The potential is for sure there, and I’m guessing the author plans to introduce more information in later chapters, but it makes me wonder why this work was submitted at such an early stage.

Now here’s something I can delve into. This work seems to have the hallmarks of an early author trying out writing for the first time in their lives. And I mean this in no offense to the author, because as I read his work it strongly reminded me of my own early writing style in the first iteration of Said the Sky.
There’s a central problem at play here, and that’s purple prose. In my notes, I said:

I am very hesitant to call this ‘purple prose’ but I feel like it almost is. You use a lot of nice description and detailed words, but it really doesn’t feel like it’s moving the story along at all. In fact it’s almost turning me off because the plotline feels so buried underneath all of this flowery stylistic writing. Plus, having read the description, I think I already know what’s happened, so I don’t know if keeping it vague and mysterious is the right move if the reader already knows what happened.

So what is purple prose? Wikipedia says

In literary criticism, purple prose is prose text that is so extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw excessive attention to itself. Purple prose is characterized by the excessive use of adjectives, adverbs, and metaphors.

The plot as I said earlier is pretty hard to find, and even more so because it feels almost buried underneath the sheer amount of description the author uses. And even then, not much description is attributed to things like character or setting, leaving me feeling like this is a very muddled piece that is hard to navigate through.

Let’s pull an example from the story.

A flash of light impaired your vision, forcing you to block the light with your forearm as the sound of screeching rubber started its treacherous path towards you. As your eyes adjusted to the light, it all became clear after that point. The inevitable death barreling towards you was all that filled your field of vision while you stood in the middle of the street like a deer caught in headlights, frozen by fear.

The feeling of gravity left your body, being replaced with the sensation of flight. Everything was moving so fast, yet, it felt as if your awareness was heightened. Probably due to the sudden adrenaline pumping through you. The bright city lights above blended with the night sky, as if the night was a giant canvas for the God(s) above to do with as they pleased. It put a small smile on your face, for the short moment that it happened, your kind of glad it ended this way.

As gravity wrapped it’s gentle arms around you, the ground felt a little less firm on your body as it boar into the concrete road, performing several brutal, chaotic spins on the ground. Before your body lay still, you were once again met with a blinding light. This one contradictory to the first as it was the light one might see at the end of a tunnel.

For the few seconds you could feel anything, before you drifted away, you didn’t feel any pain, only the warm embrace of fate. Death was giving you mercy by taking the pain away and you thanked it for that.

The calming sound of rain pelting puddles, concrete, and your broken body, made you feel at peace, like nothing else mattered. In the span of several seconds, it was all over and your body finally fell limp.

This, in a whole lot of words, pretty much tells us that the protagonist has died. I’m not sure if the author intends for this passage to be vague and allow the reader room to picture how the protagonist dies through implication, but even then I don’t see how this would help the plot at all.

I talk a lot about ‘show don’t tell,’ and I guess this falls under an extreme example of showing. Yes, you are showing us more than you’re telling us, but you’re showing us so much that it’s hard to figure out what matters, and there’s so much ornate, flowery detail that I can’t help but feel that I’ve lost the plot completely underneath all of this prose. 

I said this feels like an early work, and I don’t mean this offensively. It truly reminds myself of my own writing style back when I first started, in that I too used a lot of descriptive, flowery words. The author seems to have a good idea at play here, but the execution of it is quite strange, and as it stands, the incomplete nature of this story makes it hard to draw any solid conclusions from it.

I think there could be something interesting here, but again, I have so little information that I really can’t say. 

Well, that about wraps it up for this review. On deck is going to be Moonshot’s Can’t Get Enough. 

Deuces.

I have a hard time recommending this story to anyone solely because of its incomplete nature. Should the author come back to this work this may change. 

I don’t know if you’re still trying to write this story, or if you actually are a newer author, but if you are, don’t be discouraged! My central problem is really that I don’t have enough to work with to give you a good comprehensive review. I suggest you work on your style and refine it a bit to address the purple prose problem, but other than that keep it up!

I do have my reading notes for your fic, if you would like to see them let me know.

Plot: 3
Characterization: 3
Grammar: 3

Average: 3