SPSFC3 First Phase Mini Reviews
Darkness Calling
by Joe Coates
My Vote:
No. But I loved it and will keep reading in my own time.
Note on Votes: A Yes/No vote is just my own. The other judges in the team might vote differently. Undecided usually means I think it has potential but I still have others to read before ranking them by personal preference.
Summary:
At ~19% read.
Again, a bit difficult to summarise at this stage. We follow two characters. Archie, a hitman/assassin character. And Val a detective who has just returned to work after a traumatic car accident of some kind. Both characters have their trauma, and it seems (at this point in) like a set-up for a cat-and-mouse detective chase. Clearly, these two will have some form of relationship as it revolves around them but I don’t know at this point if it moves beyond your classic detective story or if there is a joining of forces.
The story is set in the near future. Sounds like it’s post-nuclear fallout, but it’s not post-apocalyptic like other nuclear stories. Society goes on much as it is going on now. And everything seems relatively normal, in Britain anyway. Clues to the past disaster are pretty much only summed up in the existence of American refugees. (at 20% anyway)
Overall impression & Criticisms:
If I’m being honest, this doesn’t quite feel like sci-fi to me. Much of the new tech we are privy to is stuff we’ve seen being developed but not rolled out. I feel the assumption is that this developing tech will work as intended and is used in the story to give that sense of futurism. But that’s it in my opinion. This society feels very much the same as now so we’re not immersed in possibilities like a sci-fi should be. And there’s not enough of a divide to explore a social or cultural scifi setting. It just feels like a modern thriller with some fancy gadgets added. – If we were to move the setting from near future to today I don’t think you’d have to change anything at all in the core tale. There is nothing exploring technology or the cultural and psychological side of being in this different world. And that’s the defining aspect of scifi for me. If we look at Bladerunner we are presented with the question of what makes us human. If we look at Cyberpunk 2077 we see what would happen when technology collides with what we define as a soul. They all explore something that you couldn’t really do in today’s society.
I don’t want the author to feel down. I am very much enjoying the story despite this uneasy feeling surrounding whether I consider it scifi or not. I enjoy the descriptions and the characters. The two protagonists we follow are well-rounded and have dialogue and actions that work well. They themselves have gripped me.
I really enjoyed how the hitman, Archie thinks and how he avoids talking about his real job even in his own thoughts, despite us all knowing exactly what he means. It’s a nice touch of his personality, to be so careful that he doesn’t just choose his words out loud, but has everything normalised internally so nobody could accidentally discover his real job from the way he speaks alone. I loved following him around for his “work” excited to see what would happen next.
And the detective as the jaded and seasoned officer tired but still hanging in there. I know I stopped reading just as she came across one of our male protagonists ‘Meetings’ but I can’t help but be excited by the chase that has to happen.
I do find the creative choice of one character following first-person narration and the other in third-person a rather strange and slightly unsettling choice. Everytime we switch to the other character I am momentarily yanked out of the story and have to settle again. I personally feel the author should’ve just stuck with one. I think I get why they did it. It makes a unique situation where I know exactly whose POV I’m following. Or perhaps the writer wasn’t confident in creating distinct voices. I’m not averse to it. I find it intriguing, but for me personally, it does take my focus away from where it should be.
Editing is a bit all over the place too. The writing itself was very enjoyable but feels like it needed more time being ironed out before being published. Usually editing issues don’t bother me too much, as we’ve all been there (some of us more so). It doesn’t matter how many times one looks over their work (or has other people look over it [or even pay people to look over it]) things slip through. But I kept stumbling on minor issues and awkward sentence structures. It’s hit me enough times that it did make me think this novel was pushed out into the wild too early.
I also found the novel suffers from Philosopher Stone Syndrome – Ie, it’s filled with words bearly used in everyday English language. This is probably the layman in me but I’ve never really liked that in my fiction. The odd word, sure, but not a whole series of things that force me to a dictionary every so many pages to know what the hell the writer is trying to say … Now, because of how it’s written I think some of these are actually the male protagonists thoughts. He is a clever man. If this is the case it doesn’t bother me so much, but truth is, I don’t know if that’s the case or not. It’s never been clarified, so as such it feels a bit like the author showing off his vocabulary or just clicking the [Synomyn] option and chucking in something he likes … Trying to recall if such instances happen in the third POV characters writing, not sure if it does. If it doesn’t then I recant that complaint.
Overall I feel this is a high-tier piece of writing. And the only reason I voted no was because I legitimately don’t see this as a sci-fi novel.
