Friday 17 March 2017

TODD LUCHIK - THE CHILDREN OF THE TRANSMISSION (2015)


Synopsis/blurb........

Joan is a troubled woman haunted by loss and tormented by sinister voices and terrifying hallucinations. It's Christmas Eve and she walks the city streets alone looking for a missing friend, but her search leads to a shocking discovery, one that will force her to confront a painful secret from her past and set her on a collision course with danger.

A short February read from my kindle and if I'm being brutally honest not something I especially enjoyed.

Hallucinations and delusions, a controlling cult called the Microbes - real or imagined (?), a women obsessed with another woman, a dead baby in a dumpster, a showdown in a church and a bit of a twist in the tale.

I  just couldn't really feel any empathy or involvement in the characters, which is sometimes the case with short pieces. If you don't feel the story a pithy one-liner or joke is often reward enough for reading. Humour wasn't the author's intention here so that wasn't going to happen. I just didn't get it.

2 from 5

I have enjoyed Todd Luchik's work previously and I'll happily read him again in the future.

Forgotten Boy was reviewed here. Friday Night, Saturday Morning was reviewed here.




Todd Luchik has his website here.

Catch him on Facebook here.
Twitter@ToddLuchik

You can get a copy of this one and one of his novels by signing up to his mailing list.

Read in February, 2017
Published - 2015
Page count - 16
Source - FREE from the author's website
Format - Kindle

8 comments:

  1. That's happened to me, too, Col. As you say, if you don't feel for the character, or get drawn in for some other reason, it's not going to happen. To be honest, I don't know if I'd be drawn in, either.

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    1. Margot, I read it and kind of scratched my head afterwards wondering what the point was. Never mind there's always the next read to look forward to and credit to the author for attempting something a bit different.

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  2. Col, where do you get these short reads from? All I get is erotica and such on Amazon!

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    1. Prashant, maybe you've be loitering around the wrong kind of websites!!! I don't really recall how I happened upon Luchik's work.

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  3. I have run into short stories I just don't get. Fortunately, there are still a lot of them that I have enjoyed, especially recently. For this one, the blurb sounds good but your description includes too many elements I would not like.

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    1. Tracy - ditto. I've read a collection or two recently (not yet posted on) that maybe 50% of them were just a series of words and sentences in some sore of coherent pattern, but which meant nothing to me!

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  4. Not for me at all - glad to have the chance to resist something!

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    1. Fair enough. I'm not quite sure who it's for TBH.

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