"The Hospital" by Kieth C. Blackmore

[Kaldrak]

I don't usually write book reviews, but I just can't stop myself this time.

"The Hospital" is a free eBook that I downloaded on my kindle for reasons that seemed pretty good at the time, but that I later very much regretted.

Written by Keith C. Blackmore, "The Hospital" is the first of the so called 'mountain man' stories. These are apparently zombie horror stories, starring the eponymous Mountain Man himself, Augustus Berry, a survivalist in a post-apocalyptic zombie infested blah blah blah. You've heard it all before and there's nothing really new about the premise here except that he apparently lives up in the mountains and only comes into civilization to scavenge for supplies.

The central 'plot' of the story (and I use the term loosely) is so short that there is no possible way I can describe it without spoiling it, so...it basically goes like this: Survivor scavenges for supplies in an abandoned hospital, survivor gets ambushed, survivor escapes. That's pretty much it.

I didn't really know what I was in for, but I will tell you this, the author's use of language is...well, there's really no good way to describe it, but I will show you a few examples and my reactions to them.

The author describes storm clouds:

"The sun was directly overhead, but blotted out by low storm clouds as depressing as suicide."

Me: Ow. That...ow. Can we not do that again? That was a really terrible metaphor.

A scene describing a van with the main character getting out of it:

"After a pause, the doors swung wide, and two motorcycle boots were shat to the pavement."

Me: Wh-what? That doesn't...why did you.... Did he just throw his boots onto the pavement? Is someone wearing them? Why would you describe this that way?

Describing a scene inside the entrance of the hospital:

"he turned to see a receptionist's room behind a counter that had been assaulted."

Me: I love how we keep describing stuff in ways that we really shouldn't be. I suppose 'assaulting' a counter is somewhat descriptive, but you could just say that someone smashed it or something.

Describing other places the main character has been to recently:

"He'd already tried the drugstores, but those he found had already been looted, their shelves and back rooms picked clean as if devoured by a swarm of something huge and famished."

Me: You fail at metaphors...and similes. Just stop. The reason this one is bad isn't for any shock value of the words themselves, but it's just a comparison fail. An obvious one.

Describing the scent of blood:

"He paused at the door, breathing through his nose and taking in the stench of dried blood that permeated the air, as recognizable as coffee."

Me: Y'know, that sentence was pretty good until you tacked on the last part. It's just unnecessary. I feel like I'm nitpicking here, but you could say 'as recognizable as the smell of coffee' if you really wanted to add this.

Describing the state of the vending machines in the front area of the hospital:

"Vending machines had been raped and punished."

Me: Stop, please. Do you...do you hate your readers for some reason? I can't take much more of this. That was almost physically painful to read. I know you picked it for shock value, but unless someone has literally gotten their rocks off in the vending machines, it's also an inaccurate way of describing them being looted.

I could go on, but the whole story is full of such...colorfully descriptive language. It's vile, offensive, and I'm sure a lot of people must actually like this stuff because the stories are rated pretty highly on Amazon.

If the author could just stay away from the god-awful descriptors and horrible, horrible metaphors/similes, he is actually pretty good at what he does. And what he does is write explicit horror stories apparently.

If you like gore and horror and zombies and the like, then these might be the books for you. For the rest of us, I'm rating this thing as NSFA, Not Safe For Anybody. I actually do like a well written horror story, but this? Not what I would qualify as such. Not by a long shot. This thing was disgusting and I'm a hardened survival horror gamer who's watched more terrible, gory zombie flicks then I'd care to admit to at the moment.

Oh, and I don't like torture scenes. That was pretty difficult to read.

Do not read this story unless you have a strong constitution and you can put up with the writer's uh...'unique' style of prose...and by that I mean his complete lack of good taste when describing stuff, just to spell things out plainly.

I give yon story two out of five stars. It's free, but so are a lot of things. A lot of other, better things.

[Anastasia]

Well, you know what they say. You get what you pay for. That strikes me as amazingly apt.