Remembering Marchosia by Jack Dowden

[Lester Curtis]

Unusual subject matter: the devotion of a mortal to a 'Goddess' -- a superhuman creature. Some philosophical questions are here about the motives and emotions of deities.

Beautifully written: very simple and spare prose that affects the mind and heart without pointing to itself at all. Setting details are mostly absent, allowing the focus of the story to come to the front: the progression and depth of the relationship between the two main characters. I suppose it could be said that the real setting here is internal, subjective. Perhaps this author is yet another follower of writers such as Ray Bradbury.

I didn't notice a single typo anywhere.

Very good work.

The intro worked, but I usually like the first sentence to grab my attention even more.

Good description and good sensory input in this story which can help place the reader in the story, and in a fantasy setting it is harder to accomplish that. Castles and dungeons and candlelight and torch-lights are not common to the average reader today. The dampness and shadows that wash over chambers and hallways in a castle setting are as different to us as neon lights are to medieval people. The writer in this story seems to know the difficulty of fantasy settings and uses words very wisely in getting us into the scenes, as much as possible.

I love how he uses sentence lengths to determine how much emphasis he wants to convey. Nice. At first I thought he wasn’t varying sentences. But he was, and very strategic in his approach.

‘Small tears rivered through dried blood.’ Liked the use of ‘rivered’ in this
sentence even if the spell-checker indicates an error in spelling!!

Getting to the story, we have many themes present for our tastes. Love. Dedication. Honor. Duty. Science, advanced but set in a medieval setting, and war. And some magic thrown in! And the authors handles each in a balanced-out epic, so to speak, that is poignant and directed to our emotions. Nice.

If anything maybe too much thrown in for our minds to digest, but this is only a moot point and one that is superficial and not thought out.

An interesting fantasy story that demonstrates the possibility of using this genre to write tremendous Romeo and Juliet stories that even Shakespeare would raise a eyebrow to----- and smile!


Good Job!!

[TaoPhoenix]

This wasn't quite Medieval, because it had the whole Goddess element. But yes, it was Low-Tech.

Nice little story, and quite a few finesses.