The Lighthouse Keeper

A hell of a lot worse than a life of hell is pretty hellish 😊 Apart from laughing every time I breathe out, I really liked the first page with short sentences, powerful and evocative writing with strong sensory descriptions of the never-use-one-adjective-when-three-are-available sentence structures. It’s an extremely good depiction of a drug high (which does make me think the writer put in some good practical research or has a fantastic imagination, or both) and the writer uses words as an artist uses paints: to successfully achieve an effect.

The narrative voice is bitter when the drugs aren’t in action, though in fairness my first decision is to abandon my wife and children (but I’m such a douche it does seem they’d be better off without me) so I can go off chasing imaginary women. The flashback is great even if the Cassantor is a dick. I decided to stick with my dealer which led to a surprisingly sudden ending so I tried the other branch with the same result (“The sharks destroy your boat and eat you and that’s that.” Really?). The sudden endings were really disappointing after the enthralling prose poetry that had gone before, not unlike suddenly coming off a good high, so I tried the other branches but nope, the whole thing is about a dozen pages long. Also, why do these edgy things always seem to end in murder?

The first page was brilliantly written and much could have been made about the tragic destruction addiction can wreak on a person’s life and relationships. The Skagons I could have taken or left as the addiction itself was so beautifully portrayed and its consequences on the family also so skillfully written this could have really been developed much further but alas, it seems that after an initial great idea and some really strong writing the author was not sure of where to take the story after the first couple of pages.

I definitely think this could be revisited and extended significantly (extensive branching is not really necessary but I’d love to have seen this developed into perhaps a 50-page story with a couple of main branches of 10-15 pages each with a few side ones for variety. Not that I’m asking for much :D). I’ll give the author 5/8 for the initial promise shown, especially in the beautiful writing on the first page, but the endings were sudden and, for me, irritatingly brief and the difference in the quality of writing between the beginning and the ending pages is noticeable. This writer shows good promise though 😊