Review of Spellbound - The Workings of Drugtech

[lavkathleen]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Spellbound - The Workings of Drugtech" by Marcel Sahade.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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Marcel Sahade's Spellbound - The Workings of Drugtech tells the story of the dark, mysterious pharmaceutical giant DrugTech.

It reveals the company's sinister inner workings through a series of short stories, each featuring different characters and settings which ultimately lead to DrugTech. Every chapter presents how humanity and fate can be dark in different ways, whether it's for the sake of the company or just an unfortunate coincidence. There are all kinds of stories—magical, criminal, political, scientific, adventurous, psychological—but each of them ends on their own twisted, suspenseful note. However, there is no way of knowing how these are all connected until you reach the penultimate chapter.

The idea behind the storytelling technique for Spellbound - The Workings of Drugtech was impressive and exciting. Quickly switching between worlds and getting to know different characters in only a short amount of time was a more fun and unique experience compared to reading stories that use more common styles. In addition to that, each chapter ends on a combination of plot twist and cliffhanger which tightens the story's hold on the readers' curiosity and interest.

Ideally, this book would receive a perfect rating for the shock factor and creativeness of its storytelling. But because the author failed at efficiently executing it, it also failed to reach its full potential and thus received a 2 out of 4 rating instead.

Spellbound - The Workings of Drugtech was nowhere near being professionally edited. There were too many errors involving the use of the punctuation marks, especially the comma. The excessive use of the same interjections and adverbs across the chapters was also exhausting to read. The story barely had texture, too. It lacked details that create depth within the story and help produce a more vivid picture of its world. It's only made worse with how the sentence construction and harmony showed no major change in pace and emotion as well; the narration and dialogue remained to be straightforward and boring throughout the book.

To top it all off, the short stories were misused. It was difficult to immerse into each of the thirty wildly different short stories—it's nearly impossible to sink in and enjoy when the stories, characters, and settings were quickly changing. And not only was there not enough time, there was also not enough depth to sink into. The author failed to express the story with stronger and clearer depictions of the cast, environment, and overall atmosphere. The set of rules and principles that govern the science fiction were more random than systematic, which also made it hard to follow and grasp. It was for these same reasons that the short stories weren't connected more smoothly and securely by the end of the book as well. The endings, which were anticipated for its combination of plot twist and cliffhanger, actually lose its spark early on. When done repeatedly and in quick succession, the twist loses its shock factor and becomes common and expected.

The prospect of reading multiple short stories with thrilling endings that were secretly connected was exciting at first, until the plots were revealed to be almost baseless, predictable, and cringey. But although executed poorly, Marcel Sahade's storytelling here still has a lot of potential. Young adults and older who would like to see it for themselves are free to give Spellbound - The Workings of Drugtech a read. Please be warned that there were mentions and implications of both sexual and violent acts; however, these were not described in great detail.

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Spellbound - The Workings of Drugtech
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[MsH2k]

The premise of this book sounds very interesting. Thank you for your detailed and balanced analysis. I enjoyed reading your review.