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.

Prestidigitation, reviewed by Hexillith

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

Prestidigitation is a blogpasta by TheSomnambulist, and can be read here. Its main Fear is the Choir.

This blog’s protagonist is Marcinius Trowess, who starts blogging in-story as a school project. He begins hearing strange things at night: first skittering noises, then footsteps and slamming doors. He runs away from home when he overhears his parents plotting to kill him, but the Choir continue to manipulate him.

I thought it was interesting how easily Prestidigitation lends itself to an alternate interpretation. The Choir only manifests within the text as sounds and voices heard solely by the protagonist; one might come to the conclusion that Marcinius had simply developed an unusually destructive case of schizophrenia. I’m not sure if this ambiguity was intentional on the part of the author, but I found it intriguing. I also liked the ends to which Prestidigitation uses the Choir – straightforward yet chilling.

I didn’t care for the use of Morse code in the final post. For one, I felt that it was unnecessary to make readers go to the trouble of decoding it, especially in a blog that hadn’t previously used codes or ARG elements. There was also no in-story explanation given as to why Marcinius was suddenly posting in Morse code when he’d never done so before. Also, throughout the blog, commas are practically never used when they should be. It’s possible that this was a stylistic decision made to give Marcinius personality, but I found it distracting (my inner grammar policeman is showing here).

Overall, I have a mixed opinion of Prestidigitation. On the one hand, I liked the way it used the Choir and the ambiguity therein; on the other, many small stylistic issues prevented me from enjoying it fully. I would recommend it to those interested in the Choir, but not to those who find grammatical errors as distracting as I do.