In Transit Review: The Devil of Black Bayou

In Transit review:
Note: An “In Transit” review is a story I feel is still “on its way”. This simply means a production isn’t complete or is in need of a rewrite. It also means I’m likely to revisit the story if it gets a rewrite.

The Devil of Black Bayou by Jeffrey LeBlanc

http://www.authonomy.com/books/40163/the-devil-of-black-bayou/

This story is a classic example of what many writers talk about when they say “less is more”. That’s not to be insulting, because this story is wonderful. It’s highly descriptive, it has a very large variety in its vocabulary, and the author endeavors very hard to keep the reader on track with events despite a complex and involved story with several elements. At the end though, it’s too much. The descriptions don’t need to be as long as they are, as often they start to become confusing, the variety of words used often feels awkward, as characters in early colonial times using the term “fuck” right alongside period appropriate language and simple page break transitions could be used to keep the reader up on changes in setting rather than constant in text reminders that the current story is part of a flash back or dream. This is a story that looks like it was very hard to write, however it was also harder to read than it needed to be. Perhaps this is the harder thing for a writer to do, but in my opinion, Jeffery should be more concerned about what to take out at this point than what to put in. 

That being said, the writing style itself is very promising. The world is dark and well imagined, the tone is steady, the action intense and very little occurs “off camera” (meaning nothing happens as part of a history lesson, we see all past events play out ourselves in scene). The varied language, beautiful descriptions and huge variety of elements creates much to love. To tell the truth, what has to go or be fixed is often structural in nature, the story itself being amazing. 

This is another story that was actually inherently pretty good, so it scored rather high. Again I must reiterate that a score below 9 means a story needs serious revision in my mind. The final score is 8.25 with zero bonus points, so 8.25 out of a possible 12 points. 

As to objectionable material, this is a dark story of monsters, thus there was much many people may not find appropriate. There are curse words used, but to be honest I’ve never felt justified in rating a story as objectionable because a character says a word that is currently called “dirty” and tomorrow will be considered everyday language. -2 for a natural amount of blood coming from people’s wounds, possibly -3 considering some scenes had an excess of that. The main vampire character is sometimes subjected to torture, however it’s not of a graphic nature if you think about it so I’ll call that a -2 as well. Good and bad characters frequently die giving a -3 score. There were several sexual encounters earning a -3. Evil ideas are brought up and it’s easy to sense that the author intends the reader to sometimes get a kick out of them, giving a -3. Adding up to a -14, no, this is not a children’s story to say the least.

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The Devil of Black Bayou is a thrilling and imaginative vampire story with haunting supernatural overtones and a vast mythology and world to get lost in. It is very dark, but not in a particularly depressing manner. The story successfully makes you feel for a character who is ultimately despicable and evil without getting excessively preachy about pretending to change moral outlooks. Really this is a great story that takes cues from classic horror.

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Now that I’ve given the author a plug he can use if he likes, here’s the meat of the review.

Warning: Spoilers may be ahead.

Full scoring explanation.

1. Spelling/Grammar

Score: ½

Here is the first stumbling block of the story. The writer makes many flat out mistakes, but usually unless this happens excessively often, I don’t make a big deal out of it. Unfortunately this is coupled with a tendency for trying to use bigger words or more offensive language, perhaps to elicit a bigger response from the audience. 

 

I think the author needs to understand that for most people, especially those without any real compulsions about them, expletives don’t carry a special meaning. If a scene is not dramatic without the usage of the word “fuck” then it won’t be made dramatic when it’s added. Why do I care? Because when the main character flashes back to the eighteen or seventeen hundreds I should not see the word “fuck” printed at all because that word wasn’t even in common enough use to be in the dictionary until 1972 making the characters in these flash backs incredibly well read vulgar pirates and commoners.

Also more heavy impact words like “omnipotent” are used in place of more general and commonly used terms like “all-powerful” that would have been just fine. If Satan is “all-powerful” in the story, that just means he has ridiculous power and authority. If he’s “omnipotent” that denotes that him being outdone by God, who the story places him at war with, is conceptually impossible. Look, put aside religious debate on whether the concept of omnipotence or omniscience makes sense in the first place, does an “omnipotent” being desperately trying to undermine a more powerful opponent work even on a conceptual level? 

 

To quote Orwell “Never use a long word where a short one will do.”

A minor problem, but one that will still get noticed, is the lack of any real pattern for chapter length. Often one chapter will only be about five pages in length, only to be followed by one that must be forty. Why the disparity is never clear as sometimes a chapter will encompass an entire flash back and sometimes a flash back will be spread over three chapters. The writer should understand that some people use chapters as mile markers in reading, wanting to read one chapter a day. However with this book that means some days you’ll be reading for two hours, and others you’ll only read for about five minutes with no real explanation as to why. Unless there is a reason for it to not be so, chapter lengths should be relatively equal (without creating jarring pauses of course).

2. Interesting Plot

Score: 1

Actually the plot here was excellent. I’ll say it again, the story was dragged down by structural problems but the story itself was great! Elements like a vampire slowly turning the inhabitants of an island into monsters, and actually explaining how this happens rather than just accepting that it does like other stories. Also including multiple monster mythologies such as Leviathan and werewolves without losing track of the real creatures we’re supposed to be following, vampires. I do personally love having a vampire that is not portrayed as a sexual predator but actually a legitimately powerful and intimidating creature. Also the desire to feed on blood is given an original explanation rather than another attempt to liken it to a heroin addiction.

3. Good Direction

Score: ½

This is another problem area. There are two main issues with direction in this story, period inappropriate references, and constant jarring references to future events in the middle of flashbacks. Later on the story also has a huge problem with perspective writing.

I understand WHY the vampire Voltaire is able to make a reference to something from the 1970s when speaking about events in the eighteen hundreds, after all according to the story he was alive in both time periods. However it’s still jarring to be mid flash back to a horse and buggy era and have the narrator suddenly make a comparison to a modern era singing group. It’s like comparing a pair of ravenous wolves ripping apart live prey, to a pair of five year olds harmlessly wrestling with their pet sheep dog. Perhaps you can see how the comparison is drawn, but it’s still incredibly inappropriate and takes you out of the moment. If a modern character is making comparisons about past events he should compare them strictly to things in that time period, or things existing in the time period he is narrating from. In other words, it seems appropriate to compare a horse and buggy to a car perhaps, but not a 1966 Rambler when the narrator is speaking from the year 2012. 

 

The thing that I actually found the most off putting about this story was the complete abandonment of simple page breaks for transitions. Instead the author would constantly have the narration remind us that a vampire is talking when speaking about his human years, or that the girl he is just meeting for the first time in the flash back, will soon become his wife, and she will be brutally killed and become his motivation for joining the legions of the undead, but for now she’s twelve and talking to a sea turtle. Mostly the writer needs to keep events in his story straight and stop referencing ahead of himself, whether jumping ahead in real time, or in story time. Slow down and tell the story sequentially, using foreshadowing sparingly, IF AT ALL. 

 

Finally, in the last quarter or so of the story the vampire character Voltaire continues to narrate during scenes that his character is no present for and has no known surveillance of. Even if this could somehow be explained he goes so far as to tell the reader the inner thoughts and feelings of characters. Again, he narrates the feelings of characters during events he is NOT present for. This keeps striking me as flat out impossible and really the writer should think about changing persepective, or changing to third person, or not telling us peoples thoughts whilst writing in an excuse for why Voltaire knows what’s going on, anything but simply treating a first person perspective piece like a third person omniscient piece.

4. Author Interest

Score: 1

The author of this story actively promotes it and even promotes himself in order to get attention for it. He outright volunteered to work on a chapter of the Traveler series to try to let his talents show, and I must say, I would love to take him up on that offer after seeing these results.

5. Believable Main Characters

Score: ¾

Really Voltaire is a fantasy style vampire and being believable is frankly impossible. He has desires, that while very well explored, are completely alien to the human experience. This is as it should be of course, as Voltaire is not supposed to be human. Voltaire has motivations that originate in human emotion, but are justified by supernatural means. Again, I don’t see this as a bad thing, Voltaire is a fictious character, there is no reason why he shouldn’t feel that way. He’s not phony, and if I could be made to believe in vampires, perhaps I could be made to believe that this truly is how they behave and why.

6. Likable Main Characters

Score: 1

Getting the reader to sympathize with a character the writer himself believes is evil is not easy to pull off. Especially when the writer, like in this story, never really tries to make an appeal that his character is completely insane. Voltaire even seems to know that killing is wrong and even has a sense of morality. He is evil, he is aware of it, perhaps he could fight it, but he doesn’t. As we explore his reasons for doing so, the writer doesn’t try to force us to believe he has no alternative. Voltaire is between a rock and a hard place in a supernatural sense, either betraying his values, or damning himself and erasing his chances at seeing his wife again. However this is still a choice and he still makes it. He’s not dumb, he’s not insane, he’s just real.

7. Likable Side Characters

Score: 1

This story must have some twenty or so side characters. And while the majority of them do die in inventive ways, they’re not just meat sacks to serve as an unending line of cannon fodder. Most of the victims in the story that we spend more than a few minutes with have stories to tell of their own meaning we either miss them when they go, or are rooting for their demise to be as painful as possible because they’re creeps. This is how horror should be written in my opinion. It’s just not scary if I don’t care what happens to the characters. Kind like in Star Wars when the only person we feel for when a planet blows up, is Obi Wan because he had a feeling of unease. He and Lea were the only people hurt that we knew anything about. You knew the people who died here, and not because they were cliché’s, they weren’t, because you spent time reading about them and how they lived.

8. Good Scene Descriptions

Score: ½

This was another problem area. Sometimes it felt like the writer would go on describing one creature for three or four paragraphs. Unless knowing what a character looks like on a detailed level is important, if the devil looks like an evil Satyr, just say that or something more effective along those lines. Truly a description of a character or scene CAN go on for several paragraphs, but as a rule of thumb, when it does, it should be interspersed with dialog or story. Sometimes the writer will want to get descriptions out of the way, in which case they should be quick and to the point, however if he wants to go into detail, allow the reader to feel like he’s examining the character or scene over time, not taking in a massive amount of detail all at once. To be honest I’ve seen classic and even contemporary published work that has descriptions that seem too long or too short to me. Really there’s a balance and this story seems to swing towards the excessive. Perhaps though if the other issues were fixed, this would not bother me as much, as I really did love some of the descriptions. It was just hard to concentrate between the wrong word usage issues and excessive flashing forward and backward simultaneously.

9. Targeting

Score: 1

This is a horror story that gets things right. For once it could be considered both scary AND a story. It’s not just an excuse to watch blood fly everywhere, even though that does happen. True, I’ve read and seen scarier, but that’s not the point. Can the story stand on its own merits for the people reading it? Yes. This story reads like an old monster story written in a classic style, which is something vampires buffs will love. Also the de-emphasis on sexuality should appeal to the jaded horror enthusiasts still holding out for when vampires will be respectable monsters again and not just sex icons.

10. Broad Appeal

Score: 1

Actually this one is hard to call. I believe watchers of general fantasy horror will love this story even if vampires aren’t their main squeeze. However given the massive amount of violence and older writing style, many may wish to steer clear. The story is clearly intended for a more mature audience, not only mentally but education wise as well. Time will tell of course, but if this story were revised I see a real classic in the works here.