The Nameless Evil, Part I

Tell us what you thought about the September 2005 issue!

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kailhofer
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Re: The Nameless Evil, Part I

Post by kailhofer »

I have to say that this one was nothing like I expected, given the title.<br><br>It's a very clever notion.<br><br>In acting, "breaking the 4th wall" means the actors go out into the audience. This one breaks the wall in a differing way, bringing the audience into the world of characters as they're being written.<br><br>This reminded me of two other Aphelion stories in the last year & a half that also broke the wall, by Jaimie and Claude Hopper, and even a bit of my own Mare story:<br>http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/shorts/ ... ><br>While I was very into this story at first, trying to figure out what the sam-hill was going on, as the reality of the characters became apparent, my level of enjoyment dropped off remarkedly. <br><br>As I said, I enjoyed the cleverness of it. However, the characters are constantly changing, being rewritten, in a constantly changing environment. Therefore, (1) I had to keep re-learning what the setting was and who the characters were, and (2) because they changed who they were, I needed a steady set of new reasons to become emotionally attached to these "new" people over and over. <br><br>The change removed the endearment I had just built up. Stu, for example is first a friendly trekkie nerd dressed like Scottie. He's easy to like. Then he changes into a handsome devil in black pants & a white cotton shirt, which plays differently.<br><br>Sure, there were other things to like, such as the friendly spoofing of all the crazy notions fantasy writers throw in to stories, like hordes of hairy midgets, or a warrior in Japanese armor guarding a bridge in the middle of a forest nowhere near Japan, or mermaids and water dragons. But after that... I didn't have the sense that what was happening to the characters, the "story" within the story, had a momentum of its own. I wasn't filled with the feeling that the underlying story was carrying things on toward the conclusion, whatever that may be. That is, in a really good story I can feel the momentum, and the pacing as much as the plot events will let one know if the story is building to a climax or is instead on the downhill slide. Regardless of what causes, the reader has no doubt that such a story is going places, so to speak, and I just didn't feel that.<br><br>That being said, I am very interested to see where this is all going in part two (assuming there really is a part two, and it wasn't just a clever device in the title). I am quite willing to find that I'm off my nut, and the second part is just brilliant, making it all perfectly sensible.<br><br>Until then, hope this critique is helpful.<br><br>Nate
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