Monday, April 30, 2012

Review: By Pain Possessed


By Pain Possessed
By Pain Possessed by Randy Attwood

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Book Info: Genre: Speculative Science Fiction Reading Level: Adult

Disclosure: I picked up a free copy on Amazon; there was no obligation, but I’m happy to provide an honest review.

Synopsis: Can the weakest human save us all?

My Thoughts: I was actually on my way to go to sleep (I have a lot of manuscripts to get through this week, so it’s going to be a busy one), I learned that not only did Randy Attwood have a couple new short stories up, but that this one, By Pain Possessed, was currently free! Well, I figured I could fit in a short story; after all, I did have to wait to fall asleep until after 8 a.m. so I could take my medication, right? So, I grabbed the story and opened up in my Amazon Cloud reader and started to reading!

Because this is a short story, it is hard to provide a synopsis that describes the idea behind the story without spoilers – that is, I think, why Randy Attwood went with such a short and succinct synopsis (provided above). This story is about pain – those who enjoy dealing it, who who enjoy feeling it, those who would rather avoid the whole thing... Deeper, there is an undercurrent of facing up to your fears and becoming a stronger person for it, but also a warning about becoming that which you hate and therefore losing sight of yourself. So, there are a lot of ideas put into this short story.

I do wish I’d had a chance to edit it for Randy, since I found a few typos and a couple of places where the wrong tense form of a word was used. The one I can remember off the top of my head was the use of “slat” for “salt.” But there were only few and only one of them really made me stop and re-read the sentence because it threw me off.

Like all of Randy’s stuff, this is a great piece. Fans of his work won’t want to miss it. Those who enjoy thought-provoking ideas and don’t mind working a bit to find all the layers should enjoy this also. Definitely check it out – like all of his stuff, I recommend it.



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