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A review by marcushawke
The Half-Freaks by Nicole Cushing, Jon Padgett, Harry O. Morris
2.0
Clearly the author was going for something dark and twisted here, but far too frequently overdoes it; and I don’t even mean with the subject matter which involves everything from self-immolation to bukkake paper mache.
No, in the sense that the author, herself a first-person omniscient character in the story, indulges in elements meant to be seen as inventive but just come off as clumsy, like naming a chapter with a one-sentence summary of what happens in that chapter. Or by making a point of straying off on a tangent, pausing, breaking the fourth wall – not as the main character mind you, as herself – and practically shaking the reader when something happens as if to say “Hey, you’re supposed to find this disturbing and see me as a horrible person for putting the character through this” which isn’t far off from actual written text in the book. Well, it’s disturbing alright but not in the way intended since all it does is shake the reader out of the story time and again. Too bad, because had it been used with some measure of moderation, it may have allowed the reader to invest fully in the story of a tragic, dysfunctional, unreliable narrator being told between each nudge of the elbow from his unreliable author.
No, in the sense that the author, herself a first-person omniscient character in the story, indulges in elements meant to be seen as inventive but just come off as clumsy, like naming a chapter with a one-sentence summary of what happens in that chapter. Or by making a point of straying off on a tangent, pausing, breaking the fourth wall – not as the main character mind you, as herself – and practically shaking the reader when something happens as if to say “Hey, you’re supposed to find this disturbing and see me as a horrible person for putting the character through this” which isn’t far off from actual written text in the book. Well, it’s disturbing alright but not in the way intended since all it does is shake the reader out of the story time and again. Too bad, because had it been used with some measure of moderation, it may have allowed the reader to invest fully in the story of a tragic, dysfunctional, unreliable narrator being told between each nudge of the elbow from his unreliable author.