Official Review: Seven Years (Tales from the Backwoods #1)

[Carabosse]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Seven Years (Tales from the Backwoods, Story 1)" by Backwoods.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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"Seven Years (Tales from the Backwoods, Story 1), by Backwoods is the story of Dave, an all-round tough-guy...or so he thinks. He didn't think his sentence of seven years' imprisonment was fair anywhere, let alone in a prison inhabited by a ghost.

I'm a big Sci-Fi/Thriller/all-kinds-of-creepy-stuff fan. Huge. So when I read the description of "Seven Years (Tales from the Backwoods, Story 1), by Backwoods and it promised ghosts and demons, I thought to myself: "This is going to be excellent!". It wasn't. Firstly, there were numerous spelling and grammatical errors. For example, the word "Gothic" is used in this story to describe the name given to a particular period of architecture. It should have a capital "G". I'm not just being picky here. There were LOTS of errors. There were spaces missing between words and the wrong words and/or their meanings used during a description. If you're going to take the time to write a piece you want the public to see, you need to ensure that all the punctuation and grammar is correct-in other words, that it has been proofread and spell-checked by someone else, preferably more than one person.

Secondly, there was the language itself. Swearing is fine; it can be used to great effect, if used sparingly and in the right places. I understand the protagonist is a tough guy confronted with prison and so he wouldn't have the most learned vocabulary. When you're writing a novel of four hundred pages, or even two hundred, go for broke and swear your head off if it's right for the character. When your story is twelve pages long, however, the swearing becomes monotonous and repetitive and takes up valuable space that should be used to describe characters or events.

Having said all that, there were some great descriptions here, such as "His tall frame supported his wide shoulders, atop which sat his skinny bald head and hard-chiseled chin". This was very vivid and showed that the author had a clear picture of the character in mind, along with the filthy state of the prison itself. The author is very good at writing detailed descriptive scenes and it would have been good if there had been more if these.

This story left me with more questions than answers. I know it was meant to be a short story, but it could easily have been expanded into a novel. I really wanted to know Dave's history. He has a little girl, Dani, but where is his partner, if he has one? Most importantly, where did the ghost come from and why was it after Dave? This could be really good if the author chose to expand it. As it is, I felt as though the author was trying to cram enough material that would fill a novel into a short story. I give this story 2 out of 4 stars.

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[Kappy]

Excellent review. It sounds like the author didn't even use his word processor's spell check program. You were generous in awarding 2 stars.