Sanctuary Reviews

My Sweet Tooth vs. Their Craving for Flesh by _Sublime_Fantasies_

My Sweet Tooth vs. Their Craving for Flesh

By _Sublime_Fantasies_

First of all, I absolutely love the cover and title of this story. It's creative and very edgy! The chapter titles are equally entertaining. "Is that mashed-up guts or raspberry filling?" "Junkie City." "The Madness of Frenchman." From the beginning, you are promising and delivering a quirky, tongue-in-cheek tale and I love the way it's unfolding so far. I'd recommend connecting with spelunkadunk who authored Human Bait for the 2021 ONC contest (and won an honorable mention!) Both of your stories are in the same vein: eccentric zombie tales that balance intensity with humor. And I think that both of you accomplish this very well.

This story is less about the zombies and more about human relationships which I like a lot. It's like a rom-com taking place in the middle of a brutal apocalypse. Darcy, Marcus, Lychee, Luna, and Andie must survive alone in a world that's slowly overrun by "junkies" every day (I love that the zombies are called junkies). These kids are as equally brutal as the world they live in: "All of us, deep down, probably have the same evil urges, to cut his tongue out and stick it right up in his left nostril." The theme and main conflict are great, it's a story about children trying to hang onto their morals in a post-apocalyptic world that presents the constant temptation to turn to their individual "Lord of the Flies" dark sides. Without parents to protect them and with a situation that becomes more and more desperate every day, every character is pressed to commit more immoral, brutal, and violent acts just to survive. The reader never really knows what these kids are going to do or who is going to snap first, and this just keeps the tension rising.

I really like the way exposition is handled in this story...rather than info-dumping a list of how the world got to this state, all of the exposition is mentioned very casually in either conversations or conclusions that the main character makes about her colleagues. "His attitude is by far the worst part of the world ending." "One is the huge difference between my level of fitness and Marcus's. Two, being my utter unrealistic, hellish fear of zombies that somehow managed to come to life..." This is a great approach to the exposition and keeps your main character's voice strong.

Andie is sweet, dorky, and a badass. I love how much she wants to protect her eleven-year-old sister, Darcy, and I love her sarcasm. I keep wanting to use the word "edgy" to describe this book, its tone, its characters, and its prose because that's exactly what this project is. Andie's sharp tongue and wit contribute to the promise of the story perfectly. I like that she's confident at times, "[the dress] looked rather good on me, a deep, dark, rich forest green that complimented my skin," and at other times she's insecure. "I looked okay. I mean nothing like a model runway material due to my stumpy legs and excess belly fat, but decent for a belly." She swings between confidence and insecurity just as someone her age would, and all of this is exasperated by the total social collapse of her country. Now she must deal with the challenges of being a teenager while surviving the zombie apocalypse and somehow still having to deal with bullies. She's extremely charming and very relatable. I really like the work that you did with her character.

Your writing is pretty solid and I think this is strong for a draft. There were some pacing issues that took me out of the story at times, however, and I thought that the first two chapters were a bit bloated. Once you get to chapter three the story moves quite smoothly and I love the Walking Dead model for a plot: the kids racing from safe place to safe place and becoming more and more desperate and strung out by the day. The sudden flashback in the first chapter kills the tension of an approaching threat, however. I was let down when Andie was expecting to come face to face with a junkie but it was Marcus snooping around instead. I also thought that the fact that while Andie mentions zombies often but they're never actually shown to the reader made the opening chapter anti-climatic. While the second chapter makes up for it, I think that in terms of pacing it would've worked better in the first chapter. There are lots of long stretches of witty dialogue that aren't necessary to the story and paragraphs of "stage directions" that could be cut down. "Yellow who stands by the living room door." "I close the door and make my way to the kitchen where I find everyone else." There is also a lot of filter that could be removed as well. "A single wonder crosses my mind." "I focus my attention somewhere else. "I see it." Making these edits will tighten and cut down on your word count a lot more than you may think, and it'll give you the space to combine the first two chapters into one effective, tight, and heart-thumping opening. Have the beat where Andie and Marcus go to get food in the middle of the chapter, then have the inciting event (the zombie attack from chapter two) happen at the end. This will keep the first chapter from feeling anticlimatic and bloated, and the faster pacing will keep the reader on their toes.

Overall I really enjoyed this title. Its wit, edge, and cast of sarcastic characters make it a great addition to the genre. I love that the characters use humor to survive but are extremely complex and deep, especially Andie. Writing a science fiction, post-apocalyptic story with relatable characters isn't easy, but you've accomplished this and I think that it's Sweet Tooth's greatest strength.

See you, space cowboy