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 Review #4732002 |
 | King Tut's Staff  [ASR] An alternate history about the opening of a tomb.  |
| (3.5)| Hi Weirdone-Back in the games. I'm reviewing King Tut's Staff for week seven of I Write 2024. Blurb: My aim with any review is to give comments and suggestions without judgement. I love to teach but I am no expert. Remember this review contains the thoughts of a single reader who recognizes that you know your writing better than anyone. Now, let's do this thing.  Impressions/Suggestions: I found this story to be an interesting angle on giving an alternative story of the opening of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen's tomb. The changes you offer to the history (that I'm aware of) are immediate: the discovery of gold, glowing everywhere. Howard Carter, the archaeologist in charge of the dig, keeps the group on task and guides them to open the sarcophagus.  Finding snakes inside the sarcophagus, while surprising, didn't grab my attention or effect me emotionally. Maybe a little humor here with a callback to Indiana Jones with a line like, "Why's it always snakes?" or "I hate snakes." would add to the significance of finding them there. I would argue that the scientists wouldn't bring torches anywhere near the highly flammable mummified corpse of Tutankhamen. Perhaps once the lid is opened, the snakes would find their way out of the case and slink away on their own, or they could be lifted and flung from it with a stick or poker. I appreciate that you created separate characters with defining personalities. Most notable is Campbell, "the muscle" who seems to be there for the gold, not the science. I like his attitudes and dialogue. A few things that can be expected from Writer's Cramp entries that I noticed: There are some misplaced commas that you can clean up with a read-through or grammar checker if that's your preference. I also caught two lines about the discovery of the staff where the word "harmless" is used twice in three sentences, which felt awkward to me: "...it was just a harmless staff lying beside the mummy." and ""Just a harmless piece of wood," said Campbell..." I can understand Campbell referring to it as harmless because they'd all been freaked out by the snakes, so maybe just stating that "beside the mummy lay an ordinary staff" or "a staff didn't seem to fit the age" or something along those lines that makes sense to you. [By the way, you might want to add a informing readers that the story was written for that contest, with a short description of the prompt. This can also be a helpful reminder to yourself after a few years.  ] I find it impressive that you did some research for this story (unless you're an archaeologist yourself or studied it at university). Bringing Christianity into the picture at the end was certainly a surprise to me. What's hard for me to say is that I found the ending anti-climactic. The staff didn't do anything extraordinary. The idea of snakes has been introduced, so it isn't a startling occurrence for the staff to change to a snake. Then it hissed. I personally don't understand the significance of this. Is it going to do something else, or will it slither away? Take-Away: My expectations of this story was to be wowed by the discovery inside the sarcophagus room. The story includes good characters and some neat details that I appreciated. I think where this story fell short for me was that the discovery was more subtle than I was looking for, and the story had a narrower focus in terms of the target audience. This made it difficult for me to fully appreciate the ending. Of course, I'm just one (non-Christian) reader, and there will be other readers/reviewers who will likely have different comments and suggestions.Thank you for the opportunity to read and review your story. I wish you all the best in your writing pursuits–and good luck with I Write! Of course, write on!      My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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You responded to this review 02/16/2024 @ 4:33pm EST