for Alexander8/16/2016 c1 SkittleSwagga
The following review is based upon the facts and assumptions that (a) this story is about a man's somber recollection of the eldritch changes that come upon his son after he is given a ventriloquist dummy as a present, (b) that this story is meant to entertain through suspense and horror, and (c) that this story's intended audience are your fellow young adult to adult writers/members of Fictionpress. Please note that I am just an avid reader with no writing credentials whatsoever, so take my opinions with several bars of salt.
The narrator recounts how his innocent gift, a ventriloquist dummy named Alexander II, to his sweet-hearted son Alexander turns macabre when it appears to start having adverse, occult effects, which ultimately ends in what appears to be the possession and flight of his son's body by the doll's essence.
The story triumphs by focusing its simple premise and structure around the lamentations of the vividly emotive lamentations of its nameless narrator. Whether in his descriptions of his boy, of the horror and terror of seeing the oddities of the effects of the doll upon him, or the woe of the resulting tragedy, the narrator's feelings are eloquent and palpable enough to burst off the page, and makes it just as terrifying a thrill for the reader as it is for Alexander's father. Eschewing more details about the setting and more dialogue may have been a gamble; the sentence structure and vocabulary choices evoke Dickensian times, but there are no specific indicators to definitively pin this down. However, the gamble has definitely paid off, in that the evocative narration and bare bones details serves to deepen the mysteriousness and surrealism of the plot and the creepy mood.
All in all, this story is a creepy little horror number that excels mostly due to the silver tongue of the narrator, who manages to make the story all too real thanks to the sheer force of his emotions.
The following review is based upon the facts and assumptions that (a) this story is about a man's somber recollection of the eldritch changes that come upon his son after he is given a ventriloquist dummy as a present, (b) that this story is meant to entertain through suspense and horror, and (c) that this story's intended audience are your fellow young adult to adult writers/members of Fictionpress. Please note that I am just an avid reader with no writing credentials whatsoever, so take my opinions with several bars of salt.
The narrator recounts how his innocent gift, a ventriloquist dummy named Alexander II, to his sweet-hearted son Alexander turns macabre when it appears to start having adverse, occult effects, which ultimately ends in what appears to be the possession and flight of his son's body by the doll's essence.
The story triumphs by focusing its simple premise and structure around the lamentations of the vividly emotive lamentations of its nameless narrator. Whether in his descriptions of his boy, of the horror and terror of seeing the oddities of the effects of the doll upon him, or the woe of the resulting tragedy, the narrator's feelings are eloquent and palpable enough to burst off the page, and makes it just as terrifying a thrill for the reader as it is for Alexander's father. Eschewing more details about the setting and more dialogue may have been a gamble; the sentence structure and vocabulary choices evoke Dickensian times, but there are no specific indicators to definitively pin this down. However, the gamble has definitely paid off, in that the evocative narration and bare bones details serves to deepen the mysteriousness and surrealism of the plot and the creepy mood.
All in all, this story is a creepy little horror number that excels mostly due to the silver tongue of the narrator, who manages to make the story all too real thanks to the sheer force of his emotions.