Against my better judgement I paid for a copy of Philip Fracassi's Commodore. I have heard many good things about him, and from trusted sources, but a couple of things bothered me.
One, I am tired of the novella length. I have enjoyed quite a few of them, but a novella has neither the punch of a short story, nor the character depth and detail of a novel.
Two, at sixteen dollars the price is pretty steep for a novella.
Three, kids on bikes. Once among my favorite subgenres, the coming of age horror novel, usually set in the past, has been done to death. Just like Vampires, serial killers, zombies, and clowns had been done to freaking death.
For a few minutes I thought from the cover that Commodore is a comic. In which case I would not have bought it.
I could not resist. There has been so many wildly positive comments about Commodore.
Well, I liked the story. I can't quite echo the hosannas I've been seeing, but Fracassi certainly knows how to write. He's working on a level most of his contemporaries cannot compete against.
I wanted more background about the characters, and the outcome of Commodore was kind of lightweight. A good buildup and a slightly disappointing conclusion. Not enough to scream about. Philip Fracassi has got the goods.
Still, I felt like I got rooked. Amazon currently lists the page count of the paperback at 98. My copy has 73. There are illustrations to pad out the length, too. I know a lot of people like illustrated fiction, but I'm not one of them. Any artist's interpretation of a story always, always falls short of my own inner visuals. For me it's the beauty of fiction. Picturing the details of a writer's words with my own imagination. No artist, regardless of their talent, can compete.
For the record, the illustrations are nicely done. Just, in my case, unnecessary.
The credits kind of irked me as well. They state that Philip Fracassi "writes really scary shit from his secret hideout", and that Brian Vox "paints really scary shit from his hidden lair". I suppose it was an attempt to be hip and clever, or perhaps a stab at ironic understatement. To me it seemed to trivialize the good work by these men and it indicated that the person who writes copy for Strange Aeons is creatively bankrupt.
In closing, I will probably read more Fracassi. I will probably not buy anything else from Strange Aeons.
Written by Mark Sieber
One, I am tired of the novella length. I have enjoyed quite a few of them, but a novella has neither the punch of a short story, nor the character depth and detail of a novel.
Two, at sixteen dollars the price is pretty steep for a novella.
Three, kids on bikes. Once among my favorite subgenres, the coming of age horror novel, usually set in the past, has been done to death. Just like Vampires, serial killers, zombies, and clowns had been done to freaking death.
For a few minutes I thought from the cover that Commodore is a comic. In which case I would not have bought it.
I could not resist. There has been so many wildly positive comments about Commodore.
Well, I liked the story. I can't quite echo the hosannas I've been seeing, but Fracassi certainly knows how to write. He's working on a level most of his contemporaries cannot compete against.
I wanted more background about the characters, and the outcome of Commodore was kind of lightweight. A good buildup and a slightly disappointing conclusion. Not enough to scream about. Philip Fracassi has got the goods.
Still, I felt like I got rooked. Amazon currently lists the page count of the paperback at 98. My copy has 73. There are illustrations to pad out the length, too. I know a lot of people like illustrated fiction, but I'm not one of them. Any artist's interpretation of a story always, always falls short of my own inner visuals. For me it's the beauty of fiction. Picturing the details of a writer's words with my own imagination. No artist, regardless of their talent, can compete.
For the record, the illustrations are nicely done. Just, in my case, unnecessary.
The credits kind of irked me as well. They state that Philip Fracassi "writes really scary shit from his secret hideout", and that Brian Vox "paints really scary shit from his hidden lair". I suppose it was an attempt to be hip and clever, or perhaps a stab at ironic understatement. To me it seemed to trivialize the good work by these men and it indicated that the person who writes copy for Strange Aeons is creatively bankrupt.
In closing, I will probably read more Fracassi. I will probably not buy anything else from Strange Aeons.
Written by Mark Sieber
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