Author #1: Dinner Party
Overall, I quite like this piece. Excellent descriptions all around – there's a real writers eye for detail in this one and probably quite a lot of effort involved – but the story itself falls flat for me.
I think the main reason is that it is utterly predictable; The story is hardly begun before we are told Chief Brennan's inner thoughts: ”Maybe he could take her away as a prize”. Not as a ”gift”, not a general ”acquire her”, not an opportunity to ”use her”, but ”take her away as a prize”.
From that point on it really does not matter what is going on – Brennan is planning treachery of one sort or another and, given that GTA authors are usually milksops, he is going to succeed and leave with the girl and whatever else he wants. It goes without saying that the girl is the daughter of the house – whenever a stranger is greeted by somebody introduced only as a girl, who is attractive or pleasant or in any ways whatsoever not described as nondescript, it is
always the daughter of the house, the jewel of her father's eye, and so on and so forth. You can bet on it. The only question is whether she'll show her soon-to-be-abductor any sign of favour or not before she is carried off to a fate worse than death(tm). (See comment of milksops – the girl flutters her eyelashes when she seats him; a possibly hint that, even when her world falls in ruins, she might not dislike all that befalls her. That said, authors can be so cruel to innocent bit players)
But where the descriptions are excellent, the dialogue suffers. Whether this is a case of a non-native writer of English, a lack of time to polish the piece, or merely a lack of experience I cannot tell. It isn't bad, but it suffers by comparison. In addition, a few lines of dialogue are downright poor.
The worst is perhaps this one: ”Thank you for your hospitality, and may I add that this is a grand palace. I am but a simpleton in the presence of you, as my halls are made of sturdy wood and so are my tables.”
Now, it is obvious that this is a setup for yet another roman/barbarian comparison, which is fine, but that the barbarian chief would describe himself as a
simpleton does not fit in at all. It is, quite simply, the wrong word for the occasion. Calling himself a simpleton means calling himself a person ”lacking in common sense” - it does not mean what I
think the author intended: a simpler and less complex man or one used to lesser luxuries (or whatever – a way of flattering his host by stating how much better off the host is: ”you are such a great man, I am such a lesser man” approach).
Finally, I don't understand why the author has the chief
whispering the ”nice job” message to his soldier at the end. He has the situation under control and there seems to be absolutely no reason whatsoever not to praise his men. I also wonder how come Chief Brennan thinks of his men as
soldiers rather than, as would seem more appropriate, warriors, men, or followers. Of all the terms that can be used to describe the armed followers of a tribal chieftain,
soldiers is one of the least appropriate.
If I seem to harp on and on, it is perhaps because the feeling I had after re-reading it a time or two was that it could have been so much better with just a bit more effort from the writer: a great potential devastated by errors of execution.
Author #2: Sightseeing in the North
He came, he saw, and he took charge. There may be the gem of a story here in the making, but overall it reads like a travelogue with a few worries and a bit of background thrown in. It does a good job a presenting some basic cultural differences from a quite aloof perspective, which does seem fitting to the coming landlord, and perhaps it really does not need anything else.
The entry is well written and the errors few.
Author #3: Life in the Foxhole
Right, let me start out with a short statement about one thing that I absolutely, unconditionally, and unrepentantly
loathe in a story: when the author tries to pass off a brogue as an indication of culture, charm, or wit. ”Ya, guv'nohr, 'tats et, een't et??” and the many variations thereof are to me like a red flag is to...somebody who really hates red flags, if you know what I mean, and I'm sure that you do.
...To take the bull by the horns,
three pages of deliberately making a conversation harder to read in order to emphasize that people come from different social strata is something that should be left to the great writers. Amateurs should stick to using different areas of the vocabulary. You don't need to mangle speech by rendering it unreadable to clearly show differences in the speakers' backgrounds, cultures, or social standing.
...It is on the level of having every single dwarf in a fantasy movie sound Scottish, simple, and preferably half drunk, except that rather than listening to it, you are forcing the unwary reader to read it. HINT! Many of those dwarfs, in English literature, speak perfectly readable English.
That aside.... This is probably my favourite entry this time around. The setting is near perfect, the cultural clash obvious for all to see and the clear focus of the story from the start until the end. Strip it of the writing impediments strongly hinted at above and it retains the sharp social and cultural stratification. Two men, two very different worldviews, and both men indelibly marked by their class. War, pacifism, duty, and courage in a foxhole – of such things are great sketches made.
It goes without saying that the ”salt of the earth” dash ”simple man and true” turns out to have the most insightful views on the situation discussed to the point that the ”upper crust” comes out gaining in wisdom by questioning his assumptions while both men gain, insofar as their classes allow, a mutual friendship or, at the very least, the beginnings thereof. That is such a classic setup that any other outcome would be surprising, but it is done
well.
So thumbs up on this one, but, for the love of all that is holy, stick with plain English. You aren't good enough to carry off regional dialects in a way that will benefit the reader (who may be English or may be foreign, who may have heard the regional dialect you are trying to imitate or may not – you are basically self-selecting a decent percentage of your likely readers, whom you want to have trouble reading your story; unintentionally, perhaps, but that's the effect).
Not being good enough to carry it off is not a terrible flaw: very few people are.
Author #4: Just another pseudo-philosphical day in Hell
As others have noticed, it is hard to find any real cultural clash here. This is standard pseudo-philosophical claptrap as we all know and love it – easy to read, quite funny, some great throwaway jokes and short on significance.
That is not necessarily a bad thing, mind you – I love light entertainment of this type and this is a very decent attempt – but it does make it harder to critique.
With regards to the level of philosophical discourse on
the state between the damned sovereigns, I think we can all agree that this isn't quite up to Plato's standards, but it probably was not intended to be the case in the first place.
There are a couple of typos that hurt the story slightly (referring to Friedrich as the ”grumpy old
men of the society” being the worst) and grammatical errors abound.
As jokes go, it is almost a criminal shame that the very best one and the funniest paragraph in the entire entry got used right at the start. I refer, of course, to:
Iossif saw a wicked grin on Henry`s face.
“A new game ?”, Henry asked.
“What else...”, Iossif answered with unveiled despair, “Why don`t they hook up this place to the Internet so we can play something different ?”
Henry looked him deep in the eyes.
“Oh...yes....Hell, I remember.”
The ”why are things so bad” or ”why don't we get just this one thing to make it better” --- ”oh, right, because we are in hell and things
aren't supposed to get better” is a very, very, old joke that is, in this case, pulled off nearly flawlessly. You can vividly imagine Henry's look of contempt mixed with pity that answers Iossif's question and Iossif sinking, defeated and dejected, as he is once again brought face to face with a self-realization he would once have rejected out of hand.
Write more of that quality!
Author #5: Genesis
A latter-day masterpiece of the creationist genre, this entry demonstrates what happens when you slack a bit on the criteria in the selection of demiurges and shows some familiar dangers of design by committee taken to extremes.
It should come with a warning to ”read twice, understand once” for the author has chosen a remarkably bizarre format, throwing the reader in at the deep end and leaving him to swim or sink on his own cognizance, with sinking being the most likely outcome.
It does actually all make sense in its own fashion, but anybody merely skimming the text or leaving out the odd line here or there is likely to have no idea whatsoever about what is going on. With only very few exceptions, practically every line carries a meaning that is essential to understanding a later line in another paragraph... and every paragraph at least two or three jokes made at the expense of popular fantasy or science fiction literature/movies of the worst kind.
Now, it is no secret that I love stuff like this, but the entry suffers greatly from a lack of editorial control. Too many typos, too many lines that could have been tighter, a feel of overall sloppiness in the madness (this may be intentional; it is hard to tell), and too much reliance on the reader to fill in the blanks. A single chapter at the very start outlining just what the master and apprentice were doing would, admittedly, spoil the revelation in chapter 5, but it would make the damn thing readable and probably considerably more enjoyable to the average reader. The actual cultural clash only takes place in chapter 6 – until that point, there's absolutely nothing to indicate to the reader that the entry is actually on topic.
Good work overall... but lacking in planning and execution.
EDIT: Actually, come to think of it, I got much the same overall feeling from reading #5 as I did from #1, their very different natures being ignored for a moment: that it could, and should, have been so much better with just a bit more effort from the writer.