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A review by dtaylorbooks
Curfew by Philip Harris
3.0
Eh. It’s okay. I’ve definitely read worse.
CURFEW is set in a non-descript post-apocalyptic world in Anywhere, Planet Earth with a never-ending war and people dying and being orphaned and bloodshed. But apparently there are still cameras and TV stations and the focus of this short story decides, after losing his mother, to pick up a camera and document his world.
He gets stuck outside after curfew and that’s when the creepy crawlies come out. Literally. The concept of the monsters here is interesting and definitely creepy, especially how they operate. But I think the lead-up to it did the suspense a bit of a disservice. I just don’t think the story built for the reveal in the way that it should have.
I mean no way, after 160 years, is this secret being kept. People are going to know. Whether they would know specifics or not, I don’t know and that can be left up for debate. But people would know something. The army isn’t going to be that good in cleaning up after itself. And neither are the monsters. So that was a bit much for my suspension of disbelief.
But I guess because this was such a well-kept secret there was no trickle-in effect through the rest of the story. Yeah, war is bad and everything’s ugly, but does a story about war need actual monsters too? And if it does, there should be some threading in there. In CURFEW there wasn’t. So the ending ends up being a bit of a dump, these things getting sprung on you almost out of nowhere. Maybe that kind of jump scare works in movies but it doesn’t translate very well in writing, I don’t think.
CURFEW wasn’t necessarily a bad story. It just wasn’t great. It lands in the okay realm.
3
CURFEW is set in a non-descript post-apocalyptic world in Anywhere, Planet Earth with a never-ending war and people dying and being orphaned and bloodshed. But apparently there are still cameras and TV stations and the focus of this short story decides, after losing his mother, to pick up a camera and document his world.
He gets stuck outside after curfew and that’s when the creepy crawlies come out. Literally. The concept of the monsters here is interesting and definitely creepy, especially how they operate. But I think the lead-up to it did the suspense a bit of a disservice. I just don’t think the story built for the reveal in the way that it should have.
I mean no way, after 160 years, is this secret being kept. People are going to know. Whether they would know specifics or not, I don’t know and that can be left up for debate. But people would know something. The army isn’t going to be that good in cleaning up after itself. And neither are the monsters. So that was a bit much for my suspension of disbelief.
But I guess because this was such a well-kept secret there was no trickle-in effect through the rest of the story. Yeah, war is bad and everything’s ugly, but does a story about war need actual monsters too? And if it does, there should be some threading in there. In CURFEW there wasn’t. So the ending ends up being a bit of a dump, these things getting sprung on you almost out of nowhere. Maybe that kind of jump scare works in movies but it doesn’t translate very well in writing, I don’t think.
CURFEW wasn’t necessarily a bad story. It just wasn’t great. It lands in the okay realm.
3