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"Abode"
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“Ave Weresh”
Do you ever have the feeling that you’re being watched by an unwanted presence? By someone or something with an insatiable appetite that won’t quit until it has eaten you out of house and home? A force that will not stop until it has devoured you from within and turned you completely inside out? Until you no longer recognize yourself? Welcome to a not so humble “Abode”, and enter into the mind of an individual’s descent into madness as they recount their dark past while attempting to get in touch with someone/something familiar to them.
Do you ever have the feeling that you’re being watched by an unwanted presence? By someone or something with an insatiable appetite that won’t quit until it has eaten you out of house and home? A force that will not stop until it has devoured you from within and turned you completely inside out? Until you no longer recognize yourself? Welcome to a not so humble “Abode”, and enter into the mind of an individual’s descent into madness as they recount their dark past while attempting to get in touch with someone/something familiar to them.
Readability
I think there should have been more time spent editing this story. The writing itself is not bad, but the story is too long! There are minor typos or missing words in sentences, but none of that harmed the story itself. What hurt the story was the overall pacing. This story easily could have been edited down to around a hundred fifty maybe two hundred total pages. The overall narrative remains a bit of a mystery to me and the storyline had many ups and downs throughout the book causing structural discrepancies; there wasn’t a clear rising action, climax, or conclusion, and the introduction lasted over half the book.
Creativity
Sylvia made use of nostalgic pop culture references of the late seventies/early eighties, which immersed me into the era of which most of the story takes place. Sylvia is not afraid to get experimental with her prose. I especially liked how she illustrated subconscious thoughts creeping through the narrator: “I don’t know that I want to delve too far into things hunger but blood I feel starving that I have eat a bit further winter to go.” Her usage of metaphor felt a bit forced at times (like when describing settings/surroundings) and didn’t have a poetic taste as much as it just tasted like word salad topped with some fancy dressing. I am actually not a fan of author’s using a lot of poetic metaphor, unless the author is aiming for surreal imagery or unless the references being made are actually relevant to what is being described along with the mood/atmosphere being crafted. Breaking into poetic prose over and over about something that has already been beaten to death in the story is another pet peeve I have as a reader. “Abode” does this a lot in the first half of the book when referencing weather.
This entire story is told from the first person perspective of the main character. The idea was that the character is sending emails to a person of interest about their paranormal experience with supernatural entities, so the novel reads more like a dark memoir (or a “grimoire”, if you will). The thing is - this anecdotal style of storytelling results in a lot of info dumping monologue, which completely sucks all the potential suspense out of this book. Except for that one scene where Lexie wakes up wondering why everyone is freaking out about her being outside in the snow. In most of the other scenes where paranormal activity is taking place it’s kind of just glossed over, and over, and over again until it becomes ingrained as “just another day in the life of” and I just stopped caring about the family’s Fine China and bric-a-brac.
Delivery
“We went through a lot of dishes in that house,” pretty much sums up the whole first half of “Abode”. I was annoyed when I thought “Abode” was a haunted house story. So much so that I wish I could have visited the home myself and just smashed everything in it so that I wouldn’t have to read any more chapters written about inanimate or irrelevant objects moving/breaking for no significant reason relating to the plot. I was indifferent about “Abode” being about an ancient evil that possessed the lands well before the arrival of the first “white man”. Really, I didn’t care. I was intrigued when “Abode” turned into a story about a witch’s curse that was tied to a bloodline that dated back to a puritan era. I was confused when “Abode” turned into a cannibal story. I was excited when “Abode” looked like it was going to have a psycho stalker twist of an ending, but then I was disappointed when it turned out to be a nonsense creature feature that did not provide me with enough closure in the end.
If the narrator becomes one of those beasts, then how does that spare the individual they were stalking? What happened to the individual that was kidnapped? Was this a story about the bloodline curse? Was this a story about an ancient evil that drove people insane and had nothing to do with witchcraft? The wendigo explanation only added more questions. If a wendigo can move so silently then why was it always howling and thud, thud, thudding and shaking the whole damn house in the first half of the book?! I hated the wendigo ending, because I was so satisfied with the idea that the book was going to end with me as the reader finding out that the narrator had been out of touch with reality this whole time.
I was on board with the idea of the narrator turning out to be an unassuming stalker suffering from a mental illness that came as a result of them experiencing traumatic supernatural and unexplainable paranormal activity that manifested into a life altering tragic event, which then left their perception of reality permanently blurred. I mean what the hell was the purpose of us believing he was writing to his reincarnated sister the whole damn story if the woman wasn’t even going to end up playing a significant role in the end? For instance, he could have been writing his final letters from a jail cell talking about how he got pulled over and the cops found her in the trunk of his car or something along those lines. That kind of ending would have blended the supernatural, paranormal, and psychologic elements of this story together a lot better than that wendigo malarkey.
I think there should have been more time spent editing this story. The writing itself is not bad, but the story is too long! There are minor typos or missing words in sentences, but none of that harmed the story itself. What hurt the story was the overall pacing. This story easily could have been edited down to around a hundred fifty maybe two hundred total pages. The overall narrative remains a bit of a mystery to me and the storyline had many ups and downs throughout the book causing structural discrepancies; there wasn’t a clear rising action, climax, or conclusion, and the introduction lasted over half the book.
Creativity
Sylvia made use of nostalgic pop culture references of the late seventies/early eighties, which immersed me into the era of which most of the story takes place. Sylvia is not afraid to get experimental with her prose. I especially liked how she illustrated subconscious thoughts creeping through the narrator: “I don’t know that I want to delve too far into things hunger but blood I feel starving that I have eat a bit further winter to go.” Her usage of metaphor felt a bit forced at times (like when describing settings/surroundings) and didn’t have a poetic taste as much as it just tasted like word salad topped with some fancy dressing. I am actually not a fan of author’s using a lot of poetic metaphor, unless the author is aiming for surreal imagery or unless the references being made are actually relevant to what is being described along with the mood/atmosphere being crafted. Breaking into poetic prose over and over about something that has already been beaten to death in the story is another pet peeve I have as a reader. “Abode” does this a lot in the first half of the book when referencing weather.
This entire story is told from the first person perspective of the main character. The idea was that the character is sending emails to a person of interest about their paranormal experience with supernatural entities, so the novel reads more like a dark memoir (or a “grimoire”, if you will). The thing is - this anecdotal style of storytelling results in a lot of info dumping monologue, which completely sucks all the potential suspense out of this book. Except for that one scene where Lexie wakes up wondering why everyone is freaking out about her being outside in the snow. In most of the other scenes where paranormal activity is taking place it’s kind of just glossed over, and over, and over again until it becomes ingrained as “just another day in the life of” and I just stopped caring about the family’s Fine China and bric-a-brac.
Delivery
“We went through a lot of dishes in that house,” pretty much sums up the whole first half of “Abode”. I was annoyed when I thought “Abode” was a haunted house story. So much so that I wish I could have visited the home myself and just smashed everything in it so that I wouldn’t have to read any more chapters written about inanimate or irrelevant objects moving/breaking for no significant reason relating to the plot. I was indifferent about “Abode” being about an ancient evil that possessed the lands well before the arrival of the first “white man”. Really, I didn’t care. I was intrigued when “Abode” turned into a story about a witch’s curse that was tied to a bloodline that dated back to a puritan era. I was confused when “Abode” turned into a cannibal story. I was excited when “Abode” looked like it was going to have a psycho stalker twist of an ending, but then I was disappointed when it turned out to be a nonsense creature feature that did not provide me with enough closure in the end.
If the narrator becomes one of those beasts, then how does that spare the individual they were stalking? What happened to the individual that was kidnapped? Was this a story about the bloodline curse? Was this a story about an ancient evil that drove people insane and had nothing to do with witchcraft? The wendigo explanation only added more questions. If a wendigo can move so silently then why was it always howling and thud, thud, thudding and shaking the whole damn house in the first half of the book?! I hated the wendigo ending, because I was so satisfied with the idea that the book was going to end with me as the reader finding out that the narrator had been out of touch with reality this whole time.
I was on board with the idea of the narrator turning out to be an unassuming stalker suffering from a mental illness that came as a result of them experiencing traumatic supernatural and unexplainable paranormal activity that manifested into a life altering tragic event, which then left their perception of reality permanently blurred. I mean what the hell was the purpose of us believing he was writing to his reincarnated sister the whole damn story if the woman wasn’t even going to end up playing a significant role in the end? For instance, he could have been writing his final letters from a jail cell talking about how he got pulled over and the cops found her in the trunk of his car or something along those lines. That kind of ending would have blended the supernatural, paranormal, and psychologic elements of this story together a lot better than that wendigo malarkey.
#LFLR Indie Rating: 5/10
If you are into slow burners then “Abode” is what I would consider a cozy horror in which you sip your coffee and flip through pages waiting for things to take shape. Just make sure you stock up on plenty of mugs beforehand (just in case they end up flying across the room for one reason or another). This is Morgan Sylvia’s debut novel, and I actually think “Abode” was pretty good in terms of stimulating my imagination. The novel could have been a lot shorter if all the irrelevant filler had been cannibalized and thinned out like a wendigo standing sideways, and the ending could have been more thought out, but “Abode” is a piece of work that's worth a look - from an author whose creativity I think shows promise. Morgan Sylvia has several other published works that are featured in collaborative horror anthologies, and she is also writing her own dark fantasy trilogy.
If you are into slow burners then “Abode” is what I would consider a cozy horror in which you sip your coffee and flip through pages waiting for things to take shape. Just make sure you stock up on plenty of mugs beforehand (just in case they end up flying across the room for one reason or another). This is Morgan Sylvia’s debut novel, and I actually think “Abode” was pretty good in terms of stimulating my imagination. The novel could have been a lot shorter if all the irrelevant filler had been cannibalized and thinned out like a wendigo standing sideways, and the ending could have been more thought out, but “Abode” is a piece of work that's worth a look - from an author whose creativity I think shows promise. Morgan Sylvia has several other published works that are featured in collaborative horror anthologies, and she is also writing her own dark fantasy trilogy.
THIS BREAKDOWN IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE #LFLR NETWORK.
