Hello Graham B. ,

I found your item "A Darkness in the Trees"  in the review request thread and thought I'd drop in to leave my thoughts, since it is that time of year to be reading spooky stories. Of course, I'm a bit of a horror nut - so all year is pretty much that time for me. So let's get right to it!






Cyclical:

I think my favorite aspect of the piece was how well it tied together. You had a strong opening line that was very descriptive and was mirrored pretty much perfectly by the last line, tying the whole terrifying tale up neatly. It's a good way to start and end things, and it came across very naturally. Neither line felt forced.

Ambiguous:

There wasn't a ton of exposition for the piece. While you could have done a little more, arguably, to give that unusual monster a motive, there's something that is deeply terrifying about the unknown and you used that to its full effect here. In traditional horror fashion the teens are given a chance to learn more but they turn it down, leaving themselves (and the audience to a certain extent) very in the dark about what could be about to befall them.

You hit on this note of uncertainty just perfectly at the end, which implies terrors yet to come for the protagonist.




Since this is a short story, I can understand you wanting to keep things short, but I do have a couple suggestions for ways to extend it a little that might add something to the experience for the curious reader.

Cast


I think one of the biggest challenges with a story of this length is developing characters. You don't want to spend too much time developing them, but if you don't spend quite enough time, it's hard to feel emotionally invested in their experience.

Overall you did a good job differentiating between your characters and giving them distinct personality traits so they were easy to tell apart, but a lot of those traits were negative (particularly when it came to Sasha) and it made it harder to feel invested in the characters who were the most memorable.

Putting just a little more personality/exposition behind the characters would really make the piece pop, I think.


Description


You have a very solid description style, but I would have liked to see a little more of that description woven through. The balance of description to dialogue was pretty good, but there were a few parts that were hard to visualize, and the descriptions were so good, it would have been nice to see just a few more.




Overall I thought the piece was really good. While there are a few areas I would have liked to see expanded upon, I enjoyed the piece quite a bit as is. You took a unique concept and hit all the right notes with it, I just would have liked to see you hit a little harder.

I hope the review was helpful, and wish you the best of luck with the piece.

-Cat













My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .