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An Elephant by Julian Gilmour – A review

I think the prologue was a good choice and I can almost close my eyes and imagine this as a Danny Boyle movie. The prologue was definitely a step in the right direction because I can already tell by the pace of the first chapter that this is a slow burn type of story, culminating into something larger.
The description and the characterisation are superb, with a few little hiccups, I felt like some of the dialogue didn’t fit the impression I was getting of dog as a total meat head. Just some of the things he’s saying about movies sound more like the authors voice than his own. He sounded more like a film critic than a bodyguard but I understand you’re going with a tough with the heart of gold type of trope.
The writing style works well, I’m English and I find it hard to write about English people in general haha. But this handles it well. Some of it seems a little choppy, but overall it’s written well.

My only criticism I save for last, I realise I’m making a first impression of the first chapter and the prologue, but in a first chapter ‘stuff’ has to happen. And I think you realise that due to the implementing of the prologue injecting a little action but you also have a lot of time where you’re telling when you should be showing.
There are parts where we see dog’s thoughts and I thought that was a little lazy in a third person narrative. And particularly at the end of the chapter I felt an urgency to develop a plot when previously in that chapter it was just a couple of guys chatting about films and not a lot else.

I just really felt the bit where he thinks to himself about the bodyguard job it was a little shoehorned in and could have been worked into his dialogue a little bit easier than it was delivered right at the end of the chapter as an attempt to hook.

Overall it’s a very competent read and I enjoyed very much. I could see this being professionally published.

If this review sounded complimentary enough for you to do Julian a solid head on over to inkitt with the link provided and reserve a copy of his book.

An Elephant By Julian Gilmour

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Review of The Ballad of Reston Riggs By Diane April

I really liked the tone, not much happens in the first chapter and it’s fairly typical of a zombie apocalypse story, it’s not so much a story as a framing device for a bunch of stuff happening, this coming from someone who’s written a zombie story before and am just as guilty of this.
But I really liked the perspective, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a zombie story told through the perspective of a mentally handicapped person. At the start it almost read like noir. Very terse and direct and detail orientated and I really enjoyed that but I felt it wasn’t always consistent.
It’s almost like there are parts where it breaks character, certain words or phrases seem to break the illusion you’re seeing it from Reston’s perspective. Like the analogy to the Jackson Pollack painting and I’m thinking ‘Does Reston know who Jackson Pollack is?’. Sure he could know but it seemed out of place. It was a good analogy don’t get me wrong. I know what a Jackson Pollack painting looks like but it took me out of it a little bit and I became very aware I was reading a story as opposed to the third person recitiation of a mentally challenged person’s thoughts.
I think maybe even this story could have benefitted from a first person narrative as opposed to the third to help keep the story in character per se. It could be like a zombie version of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, which is this neo-noire mystery told from the perspective of a boy with learning difficulties.
The description was great, not over the top just clean, the grammar and punctuation is strong and the writing style is competent.
Overall I liked it, it definitely has potential and I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.

Read it for yourself here.

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Review of Chapter one of Slayers by Waywardknight3 on inkitt

Slayers: To kill an undead is a fairly light hearted monster killer story, I would put it in the same vein in tone alone just from the first chapter as something like Hellboy. Not doom and gloomb but fun and a little funny, a very fun read. Something very similar to something I would write, just not taking yourself too seriously and just having fun writing something you want to write.

I really enjoyed this first chapter, the start is really good, I loved the restrained style. I enjoy slow starts, I enjoy when people promise intense action from the title and the description but then take their time building up to it so I thought that was great.
But there is very little going on in the story so far and some of it is a little cliché’ despite that I realise that that obviously was the intended goal.

Plot I have to give props to just for the pay off of the chapter, this slowly building frame work for what they’re talking about. Dealing with this stereotypical condescending new age douchey guru passive aggressive psychiatrist trying to use your brain as a chew toy. I liked the line about the government, that sort of classic almost bitchy innuendo that if anyone says anything bad about the government you infer that they’re the next Oklahoma bomber haha. That annoying way of talking to someone who picks up on unintentional things in what you’re saying and uses them against you to get you riled up.
I thought the main character hammed it up with the tough guy/petulant child routine, maybe you could tone it down, maybe not, it was a little cliché’ but the whole scene for me centres around that comedy pay-off at the end so it still works.
The dialogue is very good, flows well, makes you want to punch the psychiatrist in the face too and it keeps it’s card very close to it’s chest and I really respect that in a first chapter.
I utterly loathe when a first chapter just sort of ham fists you right into the action with no thought or pause, I think you handled it delicately and in fact the exact same way I probably would have done.
I actually think we have a similar writing style, very pithy and sarcastic, I thought some of your description was great, overall I found it very easy and enjoyable to read despite nothing really happening.
The pay off at the end makes you want to read more and get more information, the subtlety surrounding them talking about his job and you having no idea what they’re talking about because you’re just this fly on the wall and you want to know more and then the pay off I thought was pretty funny, it worked well.
It sucks that grammar and technical writing comes last because I have to give it to you, there was a spelling mistake in the first paragraph, that’s not a great start haha. It’s ‘were’ not ‘where’, so quick go change that before someone reads it haha.
Also you commit my own personal pet peeve of grammar errors, this fucking drives me nuts, it’s ‘then’ not ‘than’, makes my skin crawl haha.
Other than that, I thought it was a lot of fun, it was well written, very interesting and I would recommend it.

If this sounds up your alley, give it a read on inkitt Slayers: To Kill an Undead.

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Review of E W Hemmings ‘Talking To Gravestones’

I read over the first chapter because really I feel like first impressions are the most reliable when it comes to inkitt. The first chapter is where you decide to read on or not.
I like the start, it’s nice and steady with a great deal of emotion and it really pushed that feeling of lose and melancholy onto me. That feeling of wishing that nothing was real and I really enjoyed that.
Other than that, not a lot happens in the first chapter, it’s quite short so I didn’t expect any great developments and the first person narrative is notorious for focusing on emotions and subjective interpretations over actual substantive events.
The writing style is very emotive, I liked it a great deal, very easy to read and not a cringe so far. A lot of the time stories like this get lost in the angst and become very cringe worthy but this kept a level timbre of it’s cringe.
The reason I called it a morbid fairytale is because of the description of the body bag swallowing her boyfriend up, I really liked that imagery. Put me in her mind for a minute, made it all feel dreamlike, as if he wasn’t really dead and this was just the start of a really messed up fairytale. Kind of makes you think whether anything she’s experiencing from then on is really real or if her mind is so shattered from the loss that she’s creating a world where she can see her boyfriend again in a fantasy.
There were a few errors and sentences that sort of tripped me up but overall I thought it was very competent and I would recommend it.

You can check this story out on inkitt by following this link Talking to gravestones.

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Review of Black Gold by R A Sewell

Just got a lovely if a bit cunty haha review for Green Sunday so I thought, what with being a nepotistic shitlord I’d fire back and write a lovely review for the talented author and fellow traveller R A Sewell.

So thar she blows (that has literally nothing to do with the plot nor the quality of the work, I don’t know why I wrote that, probably because it’s a sort of nautical story but I can’t remove it now because I’ve written out this explanation, fuck it here’s the review).

I’m so sorry, I guess this rates my overall maturity level, as soon as I saw the captains name was James Woods, I instantly cast him as the actor James Woods and couldn’t stop thinking about videodrome (hence the odd title of my review).

Just had to get that out the way ha.

Now to the review.

I just read the first chapter so far and I thought the story was pretty good, I don’t usually like when stories get right into the action but this really actually catches you off guard. You almost feel exactly as I imagine the crew of the boat feel, caught completely with their trousers down.
It’s very pulp, with the femme fatal and the visceral violence, I really enjoyed the description of the gun fire and the use of sensory information. You could literally smell the bullets as they were fired and it added a whole new level to the description and put me right in the room.
Instantly it reminded me of a classic action movie from the mid-nineties like Die Hard three or something and that I really enjoyed, I loved that period of gritty, yet slightly campy/pulpy action movies.
The plot I found a little trouble with, not a lot is given to why this happening, I know right, der money but there are hints there that it’s something more with the mysterious tattoo. But I had to mark this a little lower just because I thought the plot was a little contrived, I liked what was happening but how could these terrorists/thieves/nebulous bad guys sneak up on this giant super tanker and take it over in a matter of moments?
Surely they have armed guards on a super tanker or radar or something they could use to detect pirates, it’s not like you really sneak up on someone in the indian ocean, least of all a giant super tanker named the ‘Goliath’, probably crewed by hundred of people, all not watching the horizon or any device that might tell them a ship full of heavily armed dudes is coming to rob them.
I do have faith though that this is probably elucidated on later in the plot but I was a little annoyed that it wasn’t made clear that it was night time at the start of the chapter or listed on the date stamp. I’m sitting here imagining this is all happening mid-morning while they still have croissant crumbs on their shirts you know. Just a time stamp or just a little description of the night would go a long way to setting the scene and adding more plausibility to them being boarded like that without them having a clue.
I loved all the technical language in regard to the boat ‘stuff’, I didn’t understand any of it, but I’m sure somebody who knew anything about boats would, and that’s the point, it’s add something.
Frankly I don’t have much to say about the writing style and the grammar and punctuation, it’s very professional and very competent and it shows what I’m guessing is a lot of experience, so I can’t fault it in the slightest.
The only thing I feel like sticking to you for is fact you didn’t delete the ‘start writing here…’ bit. Schoolboy error mate haha.
I was reading the end thinking ‘Start writing here? they just got on a lifeboat, why are they writing, what?’ then I realised.
It’s not big deal, takes two seconds to fix, I just thought my being confounded at it for a few minutes was slightly amusing.

Overall I really liked it and I would read on and recommend it.

If you wanna read it you can check it out on inkitt by following this glowing title Black Gold.

Cheers.

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