(This review may contain spoilers).
Having been approached by the author about reading a copy of this short story, I gave it a try and found myself drawn into the story really easily.
Although the story was written in a letter, I found it easy to empathise with the father… though I’m not sure if what he was describing was real, or if everything was just in his head. The first person perspective worked really well, but I wasn’t sure if the character was a reliable narrator or not.
I wasn’t sure how the father had truly felt about his wife. It would have been good to get more glimpses of their lives together, since his wife seemed to come across as quite a hard woman and completely opposite to her husband. In some ways, it seemed like he might have been bewitched by her.
It was easier to see that the father cared about his son and there was an obvious contrast between the beginning and towards the end. I did pick up on what was apparently going on quite quickly.
I found the motivations of the father’s wife quite hard to understand. I really didn’t find her a very sympathetic character and it was hard to empathise with her. While the letter worked as a short story to pique my interest, I felt it would work really well as a longer story and therefore enable me to get to know the characters better.
The paranormal hints in the short story were interesting to read and I was interested in discovering exactly what was going on. Despite knowing that things probably didn’t end well, I still found myself drawn into the storyline. There was a lot of tension in the short story that made me want to see how it would have all ended.
The ending of this story wasn’t a completely satisfactory one, but I’m definitely interested enough to read an expanded storyline set in this world… and it would be good to get answers to the questions raised by this short story. In many ways, I felt this could be an introduction to a much larger world – it certainly would have made me want to read more if used as a Prologue.
Ink of Blood 