Tentative review: The Final Victim

Tentative review:

Note: An “Tentative” review is a story that I am reviewing without reading the entire novel and I feel I have only gotten a preview of what the story has to offer. An ill or positive reaction is to be taken with the knowledge that I don’t know how the rest of the story goes.

The Final Victim by I. J. Sarfeh

As much as I did enjoy this book, if I take a step back and look at only the part of the product I read, without the promise of its accompanying advertisement, it starts to fall short in a couple categories, especially for a suspense novel.

The characters are great, there’s nothing wrong with the descriptions and the scenario is believable. Heck, this is the first real world scenario story I’ve read on the site, that has to do with a specialized field, that didn’t talk over my head. What can I say? I wanted to give this story a high rating, but I can’t.

The problem is, this is a suspense type novel and I don’t feel any suspense from the story itself. The story’ advertisement and title promise a story of an accidentally discovered epidemic the title giving the impression that said epidemic was released on purpose. However, if I had not read the title or advert, I would still not feel any suspense, nor know what the direction of the story was. That’s after reading over ten thousand words, or eight chapters (including the prologue) in.

It’s like the writer is emphasizing suspense too much in this story. This feels much like a Steven King movie, where suspense essentially means nothing at all is happening. (I never read the books, got turned off by the movies.) All that really happens in the first eight chapters is a patient dies, but for reasons everyone accepts that are completely laid out.

I’ll explain more in the body of the review. Suffice to say for now the author’s score is 8 out of a possible twelve with no bonuses. This came about mostly because the categories he did well in were only to expectation, and couldn’t save him where he fell short. The story could be made into a solid ten if the author improves what I suggest, but I must preface that. You see, Steven King, to my understanding, is also known for very slow suspense stories, that if judged from only the beginning would generally fail. Not seeing the rest of the story, I can only call what I read. Not knowing much about suspense, perhaps this is just outside my genre. The author can take or leave what he wishes, but I might recommend he at least give me a chance.

It is difficult to even considered giving this story a moral rating without having read the whole story. A good person does die which means a -3 for more realistic death scenes, a feeling anyone, good or evil can die. But I can’t judge much beyond that for now.

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I normally make a bit of an advert here for the author to use, but I can’t without really getting a feel for the mode of this story. I’ve only read what likely amounts to one quarter the story. I just don’t feel I know enough yet.

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And with the author plug out of the way, here are the details of how the score was decided:

Warning: Spoilers may be ahead.

Spelling/Grammar

Score: ¾

I noticed the occasional misused word or bad punctuation, but nothing struck me as a legitimate misunderstanding of a rule of English. I’m going to be suggesting major changes as it is, so grammar seems pretty immaterial at this point but to acknowledge the author did indeed make mistakes.

Interesting Plot

Score: ½

This is where the story started to fall apart. Normally in a sci-fi or fantasy novel, this is where I would expound upon the world created by the author. However this story simply accepts that the world here is the real world. Perhaps the author could go into more detail about the city in which our main character lived or where he worked, reflecting a man who was more passionate about what he did or where he lived. The catch to that is, not everyone in real life is all that passionate about the city they live in or the job they go to. The main character even admits he likes his work, but it’s an interest, not a life-long dream or anything. None of that’s bad.

What’s bad is that from just reading the story itself for eight chapters, I don’t know what the point is. I see some subtle commentary on the eagerness of society to set up heroes and then tear them down, from the way the doctor is treated before and after the operation, but the impression is that this commentary is meant to be a side note, not the goal of the story. In fact without reading the advert for the story, no hint about the possibility of an epidemic is given. Without that hint, the fact that the doctor’s assistant skips town after an unsuccessful operation looks suspicious, but the reader has no reason to believe it any more than just a cowardly act after something blows up that has the national media watching. A lot of oft considered good people would rather not face a mass media frenzy. After all, the main character himself eventually leaves town, if not in a hasty retreat fashion. The assistant also acts unusually pensive during the operation, but such is immediately explained by the fact that he has a bad head cold. With no evidence of real wrong doing, the operation just going badly doesn’t really make me suspicious of anyone after a certain point. And that point is several pages later after nothing has been brought to light to make me suspect wrong doing.

The point is, eight chapters and no epidemic, no suspicion of an epidemic and no evidence of wrong doing and I begin to feel like Lestrade in a Sherlock Holmes novel. I’m being told something big is going down, but I just don’t see why I should believe so with so little evidence.

Here’s the rub, if suddenly stuff started hitting the fan with greater and greater intensity after the last chapter I read, I’m pretty sure that would be good suspense writing. Just remember, you can’t string your audience along for too long without something nefarious or dangerous to nibble on.

Good Direction

Score: ½

This is where I think the plot failed specifically. As I said, I got no sense of foreboding from what was going on. I want to recommend to the author the story Flash Back by Michael Palmer. In both this story, and that story, a presumed normal operation is carried out on a patient. The one in Flash Back is even successful. The difference is that the reader is constantly reminded that something about the operation went horribly wrong and the young patient is having terrifying flashbacks to the surgery. This happens more than once in the first few chapters, keeping us suspicious and enraptured during the inevitable slow points of a real world story.

Perhaps if we saw the assistant before and we as the readers noticed just how dynamically different his attitude was than normal. Perhaps if we had been given a glimpse of a nefarious group putting things in motion in the prologue (the prologue was actually pretty hard to understand). Perhaps if it had been at least hinted that another operation went like this not long before with very similar results. Perhaps if someone before the very last page of chapter seven noted the insane timeline for the supposed cancerous tumor. But as it stands, I didn’t get a knot in my stomach telling me something was very wrong.

The author needed to detour from everything being business as usual, and give us reason to believe it was not so. Even to the assistant skipping town, I remember back to my days as a soldier. If a soldier skipped town before a major training exercise, without that soldier being known as particularly of high standard, we just assumed him one more coward in over his head, and thought nothing of it. Even if that was combined with the guy being a little snappy before he left. In the story, we never saw the assistant being that gentle or trustworthy before hand. Perhaps showing an operation where his impression to us would have been overwhelmingly positive would have made us perk up when he starts snapping like an angry house cat and then runs away like the same.

Again though, perhaps my impression would have dramatically changed had I been able to read much further. The insane timeline of the patient’s illness was brought up and however easily dismissed, the assistant skipping town was a suspicious event in its own right.

Author Interest

Score: ½

Here I can’t help the author. He joined authonomy early February, it’s currently mid-March, and he’s only commented on his own book to thank others for their comments. He has nothing on his shelf, I don’t see much interaction with others... perhaps he’s not ready to advertise yet and that’s fine, but I can only judge what I see. He accepted my offer for a full trade read and is friendly, but I don’t see much interest beyond being a nice guy and being open to trying to read people’s stories. Again, this is not to be insulting, I can only judge what I see. Perhaps he’ll be getting more involved soon. That would definitely help his story, as the story has potential.

Believable Main Characters

Score: 1

This is why I’m only doing a slant comparison to Steven King for this novel. I HATE Steven King for his penitent for unbelievably dull and uninteresting characters. Yes, I get that in real life not every moment is thrilling or hilarious, but that doesn’t mean there is no humor or interesting back stories or momentary stressful situations that mirror those thrilling moments in more boisterous fiction. The author here has characters that live lives that would be possible to live, but they have back stories, they joke around and they get very nervous in tight situations. When this doesn’t happen in a story I find myself thinking the author is trying too hard to emphasize normalness through blandness. It is this author’s ability to balance bland real life with dynamic characters that helps me believe his characters and well...

Likable Main Characters

Score: 1

Yes! I liked these characters too! Dr. Greg was devoted to his craft, had a dry sense of humor and a real concern for those around him. He even felt a little superstitious in the first few chapters, despite being a doctor and I suppose then a “man of science”. Kate, what I saw of her anyway, was funny, determined and easily set off, like a real life version of Donald Duck. It was great to see the characters interact with the world around them and bounce off one another. Despite not really feeling suspense or suspicion, I was still attached to Dr. Greg, and didn’t want to believe anything bad about him so I dismissed out of hand the notion that he just messed up the operation.

Likable Side Characters

Score: ¾

The assistant character left an impression in this story, as did a gas station attendant later on. In fact, most of the side characters left an impression. However I never got the feeling that they had lives beyond the story itself. It didn’t look like it would have been interesting had the story been about them. The exception to this was the patient, Olie Nielson. He raised my expectations of side characters for the story; however no side characters after him gave the impression of having interesting lives or stories of their own, like they were just there to fill a role and leave.

Good Scene Descriptions

Score: 1

Actually the scenes and settings in this story were set up quite well. I will actually compliment the author on being able to describe a medical operation without leaning towards an unnecessary gross out factor. I could visualize what was happening in the story pretty well and unlike some medical thrillers, grotesqueness was not substituted for true horror.

Targeting

Score: 1

Actually, fans of medical thrillers, from my understanding, tend to like a more realistic setting. The author managed to pull this off without being bland, so I think with polish this story could fit well into its genre.

Broad Appeal

Score: 1

The characters in this story are appealing and the story is well pulled off. Nothing is stated that would gross anyone out or fly over anyone’s head if they really paid attention. This story has the potential to be a solid medical thriller and a good introduction to the genre for outsiders.

**

Note:

I really feel compelled to emphasize to the writer that I enjoyed what I read, I just didn’t find anything to hold on to. Nothing made it feel special. Elements of things to make me feel uneasy were there, but they felt too minor to really intrigue me. Course, as Conan Doyle taught us with Sherlock’s, A Study in Scarlet, the plot of the story doesn’t have be to be non-stop action or even seem to be leading to that if the characters are compelling enough. The characters here are great, but they can’t break the mold because of the need to stay grounded in the real world... or maybe not, that’s up to the writer. In the end, I have to admit that eight chapters does seem like a bit much for me still not to find something to latch onto. I do feel that if the story changed after the point I read to dramatically, perhaps my feelings would have been different, but as it stands, I can only judge what I’ve actually read.