Reviewed by Kate
October Showers
Reviewed by Kate
Here we have another apocalyptic tale from Simon Yergeau, our resident killer of beautiful female lead characters. This time our victim is the hapless Natalia, denizen of an extremely dark future era, who is in search of revenge for a brutal gang rape she endured at the hands of twelve men. She has already killed eleven of them, and the last one, Matt, is close at hand.
Before reviewing the story proper, it should be pointed out that Simon originally wrote the story in French. Reading the original, it becomes apparent that some of the technical mistakes were caused by translation rather than just sloppy writing. The story reads much more fluidly in French. "A rude day" means quite a different thing in English, for example.
I can't make up my mind whether there is not enough explanation about the state of Natalia's world without Light, or just too much. Either making the explanations more plot-centred or cutting some out would work better than the current hodge-podge of Light, Dark, War and some cloudy visions of Natalia being the key to the return of the Light. Apart from the explanations, the world is quite well-described, and the story has a grittier feel than "A Cold World" by the same author. I'm not sure why Natalia needs to smoke so much, once or twice would probably serve the purpose of making her a tough character.
The problems with plot logic remarked on in "A Cold World" are lessened to some extent here. Natalia's need for revenge is understandable, but Matt's reaction to her fate is a bit out of character. If he is as demonic as the author would like us to believe, then he wouldn't care what happened to Natalia. And the ending led to some inevitable questions. Which I will discuss with Simon, to avoid spoiling the ending for the rest of you.
I agree with Mick, who said in his review of "I Must Go" that Simon has potential, but I still think he should do a bit more careful plotting before committing his stories to paper. Getting Simon to send you the French version is worthwhile, if you'd like to read it as it was first created.
Reviewed by © Kate
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