Reviews for PostDawn - FictionPress.com

Reviews For: PostDawn

La-rose-de-soleil 2006-02-23 ch 4,	abuseReally good. Incedentally, Zeke and Casey are two of my favorite names...Zeke was my nickname for a while (don't know why, I'm a girl). I think you may be making the classic mistake of sticking cyber- or smart- or holo- on the beginning of everything, not that I haven't done it myself. I like the class diferences by implants thing, sort of like a more functional extension of the modern designer-clothes thing. The characters are beliveable, just like modern teenagers, if a bit more drugged-out. The relationships are almost more fascinating than the actual "rebellion" plot (and that's a good thing). Update soon!
Tim Stillman 2006-02-23 ch 4, anon.	abusePostDawn is a neat, full bodied, eloquent science fiction story that I think would have done H.P.Lovecraft proud. The dialgue is so perfect; the characters so well delineated that they are almost visible in my hands. All of this with the comps and the V worlds and the plugging in for sex, and the coming revolution--the stagnation of aociety, the distractions, the using of human emotions and personalities to keep us humming our souls away while Those Who Know Best are laughing their tails off at us. Rebellion comes sooner or later. And in this work in progress it has to come from tiredness of being used as a tendril of a dream that died somewhere back there in netherland. If sexuality is a given with the V world and plug ins, it is also innocent still, the next step after some petting and groping gentle like. The bravado of the young characters is so sad and so brave and so lonely seeming. If Zeke is a druggie and gets sex in the drugging, then he is the loneliest of all. It is like necrophilia with him, and that is what always breaks a person--being dead inside, or being with someone who is dead inside--till anything at all is better than that. If teens need to learn one thing alone from dreamshell's work, this one especially, it's the credo of Howard Beel from the movie NETWORK, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." Whether this comes from Sinclair Lewis or John Steibeck or Rolling Stone when it was worth something, there is always the need to ask why. To say I'm not being buffeted off to the side anymore, put thte sex on hold, put the V on hold, and take the plug out of you wrists--it hurts to be woken up and it is needful that the hurt be gotten through. This is a powerful work in progress, Dreamshell, and I know you have been told this many times before, but you are a writer! Encompassing. Creating a world that is alive and full and making imagination work for you, and always a conscience, always a firm grip on what you are doing--not as a screed, but as a story with characters who are funny and angry and stoned and fed up and overcried sometimes, that are filled with huge bunches of ground glass cutting. Your words do cut and they put back together. You have arrived, and I join your fans saying, thank you for a brilliant mind and a caring heart and a writer's abilitiy not to take pot shots but to see the endurance of the human equation and not to give up on it, but to be fascinated by it.
Will Heydt-Minor 2006-02-10 ch 3,	abuseI think this is my favorite chapter yet. The dialogue is great, and Zeke's machinations are done really well. This one reminded a lot more of A Scanner Darkly than William Gibson's work, but that's certainly not a bad thing. Although of course the cyberpunk element is still there, waiting in the wings. I noticed a few minor typos ('where' and 'vunerable'), but otherwise it's nearly pitch perfect. Great stuff!
BlackOrigin 2006-01-22 ch 1,	abuseWow, this is a really great story. At first I wasn't quite sure what it was about until you explained later and I must say I love it!^^ A very original idea and you describe it very well. I will continue to read with great intrest.
Will Heydt-Minor 2006-01-20 ch 2,	abuseHey, just read Ch.2 and I like it quite a bit. It flows much better than the prologue/chapter 1, and also is much better at dealing out the information. Although at the end, I think you get a little ahead of yourself in talking about the ROM. Always let the story carry the information, not vice versa. Kasey is a developing character, but you do a good job of introducing him. I get the idea that he is both young and naive, but also very experienced in the ways of the Virt, and the laws therein. I also like the black and white relationship between the technological elite and those like Kasey, living in the bush. I hope later on you'll expose this dichotomy as being not so simple as Kasey believes. One small complaint though. The word noob is pretty distracting, it just reminds me of the present for osme reason. Anywway, great job so far. Looking forward to chapter 3!
JaveHarron 2006-01-04 ch 1, anon.	abuseOkay, very posthuman dystopic setting. Gritty cyberpunk world, that's for sure.
poet tree 2006-01-04 ch 3,	abuseCurious. You're very good at writing sci-fi. I like it.
Will Heydt-Minor 2005-12-20 ch 1,	abuseAn interesting start. It reminds me a lot of William Gibson, which is a good thing. Your opening paragraph is a little rocky though, I had a bit of a hard time following it. After that however, it was smooth sailing. As always your imagery (although there wasn't much of it in such a short prologue) was great. The combination of the fire-wood heated mountain cabin and the warmth and fuzz of drug use was clever and also very vivid. I do have one complaint though. I think your exposition gives away far too much too soon. A prologue only needs to the set the tone (which it did quite well I might add), but I don't think it needs to give away specific aspects of the story. I think it would serve the story better to reveal the 'post-organic' 'post-human' information layer in the story, in a more natural fashion. As it is now, it reminds me too much of an info-dump. I'll read chapter 1 soon.
L. Damarik Laizare 2005-12-19 ch 3,	abuseAnd after reading your Chameleon story, I just had to come back for my 'third trip' into the world of the Virt. Zeke, the womanizing drug dealer is back at it...again. I like how you use that one line, a line that I could be very familiar with... 'You just hid that lying smirk on your face as fast as you could, then you looked them straight in the eyes and fed them your **.' Very well concieved. I also noted your correlation between what Zeke does in comparison to what a Virus does. He really does just seem to work into one's system, eh?
Cirex 2005-12-17 ch 1,	abuseGood stuff as usual. I wonder though, why don't you combine all of this into one story? Seems like each part of the PostDawn series is just one chapter, and they all seem to be connected, so... No problem. It's your story/series, so I guess you have your own plans, huh. :) Keep it up :)
Tim Stillman 2005-12-01 ch 1, anon.	abuseThe first 3 chapters of POST-DAWN VIRUS are cleanly limned, and very human, while giving us a machine of trembling joy that is becoming more and more of the Virt worlds of today; turn around twice, and science fiction is fact. It juggles nicely, these chapters, the human pain, the drugs to alleviate that pain that produces more schizo monsters almost seen; with sexuality that is harbored in non sexuality, plugging in more mechanically than not--a rather wonderful toss of non thanks to all the inherited narrow minded, stuffed turkeys, anal retentives whose twisted views on life and caring and love have sent us on our own sad visions. Zeke lives now and Zeke will always live. However I see much hope for redemption for him thanks to artificial devices he has met in cyber world, thus to crush the holograms of simple minded. And Zeke and 3-D(rone)are going to knock the world silly. We are stuck with being human beings. Chemicals act on our perceptions of the world already around us, not other dimensions of impossible for the brain to comprehend, thus I think, if this is one of the things Dreamshell is saying here, there are so many levels, there is hope in seseming hoplessness. If one plugs in mechanically, there is at least a real person to plug into. And perhaps later on, if angst is pushed aside a bit...If I were the Establishment, I would be worried. There is still quite a lot of life in these zingers and I'm rooting for them.

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