It's the beginning of our Halloween readings of H.P. Lovecraft. Ava's been counting adverbs, Brynn needs to read about cats, and Dr. Herbert West is maybe the world's worst liar.
We forgot to give our final ratings, so here they are:
Brynn - 5/5
Ava - 4/5
Also we've got another playlist for this one!
-----
TRANSCRIPT:
Brynn: Final thoughts!
Ava: Yeah, final thoughts. So, this is bonkers, um, and [pause] uh, it's great, and I love it, except for the racism part, and I wish that wasn't there.
B: Yeah, the racism, and, I mean, the repetitiveness. I – I mean, it would be better to me if I didn't read it all in one sitting, I should've read it the way it was designed.
A: Yeah.
B: But that's not really his fault, because he did design it to not be written – read – in one sitting, you know?
A: Yeah, and actually [pause] Lovecraft considered this to be one of his worst works. Uh, because [pause] the [pause] uh, guy who had ordered it, the editor who had bought it from him, uh, stipulated that each chapter had to end on a cliffhanger, and he did not like that [laughs].
B: Gotcha. Yeah, I'd read that he wasn't a huge fan of it, but I, um [pause] didn't really see why.
A: Yeah, and, uh, in, uh, The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft, uh [pause] Joshi, the author says that, um, Lovecraft did a really good job with it, even though he's very critical of it.
B: Huh.
A: He put a – seemed to have put a lot of care into the plotting of this book. Um, so on to star reviews. We're gonna take dialogue out of this because there was basically zero dialogue, and it would be silly to rank that, and we're going to replace –
B: I give it a zero on dialogue [laughs].
A: [laughs] We're gonna replace dialogue with creepiness. Um, which, for some reason, I spelled creepinees in the email.
B: [laughs]
A: [laughs] Um [pause], so what did you give this for editing?
B: I mean [pause], you go first [laughs].
A: I mean, I thought it was fine, there's weren't really any problems – I mean like, obviously –
B: The adverbs [laughs].
A: Yeah, obviously there's like, style, but as far as like, just straight editing, I give it a five out of five. There's – there's nothing super weird in there. There's not like, misspellings, or like –
B: Yeah, it's a five out of five.
A: – stuff like that. Yeah. So what do you give it for plot?
B: I mean, plot is probably a five out of five, I mean – you know, it's a short story, and [pause] it can only go so far, as far as the plot goes, and it had this good flow to it, as far as – each point that you go. You know, part one this happens, part two this happens, part three this happens, and it moves in a logical progression.
A: Yeah, I gave it a five out of five, too, and, uh, I was saying in the last book we read – His to Protect – that [pause] there weren't any try-fail cycles, um, in that. And [pause] this had plenty of try-fail cycles. They failed many times to resurrect a zombie. Um, so –
B: Technically they succeeded [laughs].
A: Yeah, well, they succeeded a bunch of times, but they thought that they failed [laughs].
B: [laughs] Yeah.
A: So what did you give this for characterization.
B: I'd give it a five out of five, I mean, it – it teaches you about the characters without going into a lot of detail. And I think that works well for a short story, cause you get a good feel for Dr. West, you get a good feel for, uh, the narrator, and you actually get, like, a pretty good feel for, uh, Dr. Halsey and them, too. So it – it's a short story, you don't get a lot of description of them, but you get a good understanding of their character.
A: I only gave it a two out of five on characterization. Um [pause], and it's because –
B: Oh?
A: – I thought that [pause] – I'm having a real serious problem putting my thoughts together. Um, I thought that Herbert West himself was really, really well fleshed out – including his flaws, he had many flaws – obviously, he's a monster – um, but I felt like the narrator was not flat, but –
B: I –
A: – unfortunately, he only felt one thing, which was fear. He was never, like, angry at Herbert West for being an awful garbage person, which I would imagine somebody would be. Um, he was like, never sad because, I feel like, if I, like, was party to that, I would be really sad – sad about it, I would feel a lot of guilt. So I felt like [pause] I felt like there wasn't enough emotion from the narrator in the aftermath of Herbert West disappearing. Because he was sort of under Herbert's control, and [pause] I feel like after he was out from under the control of West, he might have felt something besides just being scared.
B: I feel like, too, you know, it is from his perspective, um, you know, he's basically speaking to us. And [pause] I don't know that – I mean, yeah, he was technically under West's control [pause], but he was kinda there willingly.
A: Yeah, that's fair.
B: I mean everyone else and school was kinda creeped out by West, but he's like, hey I like talking to you, I'll hang out with you, and –
A: Let's be weirdos together!
B: Exactly.
A: [laughs]
B: So I don't know that he'd feel all that much guilt, you know?
A: I'd at least feel guilt for West dying, you know? Anyway –
B: Ehh [laughs].
A: [laughs] Well, I don't feel bad for West, I would feel bad...No! You know what the heck I feel bad about? [expletive] West! I'm gonna have to bleep that out. I'd feel bad for –
B: Sir Eric?
A: Well, like, all the people, like that child who died, and like, the people that, um, Halsey ate. Like –
B: Yeah [laughs].
A: Some really bad stuff happened in that town. But yeah, that kinda leads us into [pause] our creepiness reading. How creepy did you think – or, rating – how creepy did you think this was?
B: It was pretty creepy. I mean, you know, you look at the fact that it – it's a short story, and it packed that much creep into it. It's like – you go on – if you turn this into a full-length Stephen King [pause], like, there would be oodles more creepiness. However, it's all compacted, and you get creepiness after creepiness after creepiness. And his descriptions of everything [pause], like, um, you know, the zombie with the baby hand and whatnot?
A: Ugh!
B: I give – I give it a five out of five.
A: Oh, totally, five out of five. This is a creepy story. Even though, like, there seems to be some humor in it, it's still real creepy.
B: Yeah.
A: I – I think that humor and creepy sometimes go real well together. Cause it's nice to have um [pause], like, a break from being anxious every so often.
B: So, now, um, your favorite part of the story.
A: Um, I like the atmosphere. Especially in that, uh, World War One scene. That was [pause] so gross, and so creepy, and so choice, I loved that.
B: Yeah. My favorite was probably the whole zombie FedEx delivery.
A: Oh, yeah, that was great [laughs].
B: [laughs] Just like...package!
A: I'm gonna send you a package from Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee, or whatever his name was.
B: [laughs] Now, least favorite.
A: Uh, I think – I think we know [laughs] what my least favorite part is. It's definitely the racism, but also the brain decomposition thing, that was like, ugh.
B: Yeah, I can agree with all the above [laughs]
A: Plot-wise, it's the decomposition thing. Just in general, it's the racism thing [laughs].
B: Yeah, I can agree with all of that.
A: Laughs.
B: Anything else you want to add?
A: I dunno, I really like this story. I could read a zillion Lovecraft stories [laughs].
B: [laughs]
A: Except [pause] not Red Hook. Not The Horror at Red Hook [laughs].
B: I gotta read this cat stuff you were telling me about.
A: Oh, yeah, the man loved cats [laughs].
B: [laughs] Thank you for listening to Amazon Warriors. You can find us on Twitter @thebookwarriors, and you can email us at warriors (at) superfuntimes (dot) net. Next episode we'll be discussing The Dunwich Horror by H.P. Lovecraft.
No comments:
Post a Comment