To Hell and Back by Joshua Scribner

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To Hell and Back by Joshua Scribner

Post by kailhofer »

Was the Organization the Republican party? :)<br>(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)<br><br>This reminded me of one of those Hitchhiker tales from old HBO. (Skinamax? I forget which.) Things go bad for a bad guy & the error of his ways is shown in graphic detail... A gritty morality play, if you will.<br><br>There were no mechanical problems with this story that caught my eye. It was not lyrical or flowery, filled with just the meat and potatoes of description.<br><br>As I often suggest, I'd love more description which employs all the senses to build a more concrete universe. A lot of people don't agree with me on this, but I'm sticking to my guns. [Provide your own derisive noise HERE.]<br><br>As a character, Will certainly learned the error of his ways, and chose a new direction. I think if there were a way in which he could have been made more sympathetic or charismatic, it would have added to impact of the "fall." I would have cared more about his lessons in death, and they would have seemed more shocking.<br><br>As plot goes, things are pretty straightforward. Willie's past is repeated for him with a "clean up your act or else" style warning.<br><br>One thing about the internal monologue that bothered me is that Willie sounded very intelligent, and he reasoned well. We knew that he was not overly educated, and the language patterns of his "crowd" would have been brusque and blue collar. It's not given that he had to speak that way, of course, just my opinion.<br><br>The other side of this is that for having morality surface inside him for the first time in years, none of that emotion got in the way of his thinking. For that matter, he was detached from his emotions to an extreme degree. That may have been meant to be an offshoot of the conditioning, but if he broke loose that morning, I'd wager that getting a handle on his new reality would preoccupy his mind beyond everything else.<br><br>Nate
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