Today we see that a precious or arch narrative style is like a fresh razor; one slip and the virtue becomes a vice.
What I gleaned about the stories: The daughters of fortitude roil heavy in iniquity tonight.
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Note: This is a short story collection, so the rules are slightly different from standard Immerse or Die: instead of reading on every time I lose immersion, I stop reading that story and move on to the next one. As usual, I stop reading after the third WTF.
Note 2: Both the cover and the author’s name made me aware that this collection was likely not to stick completely to the language usages common to modern fiction. However, I am fond of both Lovecraftian and surreal fiction, so didn’t see that as a barrier to my immersion.
Analysis: The introduction (somewhat charmingly called Exordiam) ends with: This is a portion of that text there concealed; this is a portion From the Passages of Revenants. Usually when stating something is an extract the structure would be ‘this is a portion from {Title}’ so the capital caught me out. A moment later, I realised the From was part of the title; however, my mind then niggled at the absence of the from I expected (i.e. ‘this is a portion from From the Passages of Revenants’).
Aware I was focused on how I would construct the sentence, rather than immersed in the book, I moved on.
Analysis: A few sentences into the first story, I hit: The sweet, effervescent smell that spread amongst us imparted a horrid sensation of life when despair was its true insinuation. Effervescent is a bubbly, and thus uplifting or energizing effect; so clashed somewhat with despair, which is a dull, limp emotion. Imparting is a process of revealing facts, so clashes with insinuation, an oblique hint. On their own, either might have formed a subtly unpleasant disjunction in the image without damaging immersion; however, the effort of trying to resolve two contradictions in the same sentence left me unable to form a stable mental image. Which was a shame as I found the sentence toothsome as a pure string of sound.
Undecided whether the author had misremembered the meanings of some words or pushed too hard for a stylistic fancy, I moved on.
Analysis: A little way into the second story, I encountered: I had always been no more than a hermit, straying from one shell—one shelter—to another,… While shell and shelter look like different words, they share a first syllable; therefore, because I hear narration as if spoken, the words sounded like as …one-shel one-shel-ter… This came across as someone stumbling in the middle of a word and then restarting. As that isn’t how the sentence was punctuated, this niggled me. So, I paused to wonder why the hermit was living in a shell, as nothing had been mentioned earlier about giant molluscs or such.
I concluded that it might mean either a literal or metaphorical shell. However, as it had brought me to a halt, I pulled the plug.
Analysis: Stripped of considerations of whether I understand it all, I found the prose pleasant as written music. I will therefore be returning to this for the pleasure of the words, with any coherence in the stories a pleasant extra.
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