Urban Malefic, reviewed by Hexillith

[Editor's note: This review was written externally and copied to the Mythos Review by its author.]

Urban Malefic is a 38-post blog by TheSomnambulist, and can be read here (cw: some sexual content). Many Fears are present in the story, but the primary one is the Empty City. Spoilers ahead.

The blog is about a man by the name of Portnoy Augustus, who wakes up in a strange room with inward-pointing corners and then falls into the sun. As he journeys through the Empty City, he learns that the Fears have brought him here for some kind of test. His thoughts are transcribed by a device called the PsiMe, hence the stream-of-consciousness narrative. It feels almost like a science fiction story at times, which I found interesting.

I think Urban Malefic’s greatest strength is its creativity and description of the City’s bizarre architecture and events. The first post got me interested, and my interest was sustained to the end of the blog. I was very curious about what was going to happen next, and how it would end. I’d call it very well-written in that respect.

The grammar wasn’t the best, but I actually think it worked well with the stream-of-consciousness flow of the story, and there were only a couple of points where I found it distracting. There were a couple of things I didn’t understand: how did Portnoy become godlike at the end of the story? Sheer resolve? I wasn’t quite clear on that. Also, why would the Fears go to the trouble of implanting the PsiMe and creating the blog for it? What do they gain from that? I think the story would have been improved if the author had included explanations for these things. As usual, I apologize if I missed something.

I liked Urban Malefic, and I’d recommend it because it’s engaging, creative, and weird. Weird is good.

EDIT: TheSomnambulist has informed me that Portnoy had some kind of connection with the Empty City, enabling him to gain control over it at the end of the story, and that this is further explored later in the Amalgam Saga, of which Urban Malefic is a part.