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Printed from https://writing.com/main/profile/reviews/luminementis/sort_by/r.review_creation_time DESC/page/51
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2,325 Public Reviews Given
2,325 Total Reviews Given
Review Style
I try to be honest and positive. My Christian faith is an important background factor. I hate rating low but have a system that determines how I grade.
 
STATIC
My Philosophy of Rating and Reviewing  (E)
How do I assess people's work when reviewing?
#2259390 by LightinMind
I'm good at...
More interested in the content of what you write than the style. Theological, political, historical, scientific, or experiential, or indeed anything that paints a vision of the future. A good grammar checker will tell you about spelling and commas.
Favorite Genres
Not entirely sure as I like most stuff. I prefer something with a soul rather than purely secular. But I like Sci-Fi, anything Christian, and also 'What-if' type speculations with plausible plots.
Least Favorite Genres
Anything that fails to look for a way out of the darkness. You can be dark, just don't wallow in it. Generally, I try to steer clear of Fantasy, and most Dark or Horror stories just make me laugh or grimace due to their ignorance of the dark side.
Favorite Item Types
I have really liked some of the heartwarming dramas I have read here particularly personal stories. Thought-provoking poems or stories are cool also though I am no expert on poetical forms.
Least Favorite Item Types
Anything that is just an affirmation of the dark side. I hate empty words. I always look for human intelligence. I try and avoid Fantasy and Horror where there is no metaphorical resonance or connection with real-world truth.
I will not review...
I mainly review at random and just see what grabs my attention. I will usually skip stuff I do not like unless it gets me riled or if it is interesting for other reasons.
Public Reviews
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Review by LightinMind
In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group  
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)
Received this by random review and was interested in the subject matter.

You use no capitals to start sentences and commas seem to be missing also. I have no idea why these 4 words are highlighted in green and not others. Even so I did not really care that it was a poem without proper punctuation.

The simple power of this poem is its simple, desperate expression of the desire for a cure. The continual checks and insulin injections weighs heavily on the mind of the sufferer. Yes it is a war, but one that seems so far from completion. You expressed this very well I thought.

"WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group" 


*Gold* My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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Review by LightinMind
In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group  
Rated: E | (4.5)
Received this via random review and was hooked by the first stanza.

The first two stanzas were excellent, however not sure about the flow of words in the last two e.g. "Why lament fate? Why don't you for", was an especially tortured line.

Liked the content, but was not sure the description fitted the last stanza. The last stanza is written like a prayer to God, nonetheless you described the poem in terms of an inner voice.

"WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group" 
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Review of Phoenix Rising  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
Received this via random review and found it amusing.

Casper appears to be an immortal whose life never ends. AS he ages, he grows tired with his existence and attempts to end it in a variety of ways. His latest attempt is death by motorway traffic. However this like the other fourteen attempts fails as he merely phoenix like comes back from the dead leaving a pile of ashes of his previous form. Since he is revived naked he regrets having done his latest suicide attempt in public. The story ends with a newly invigorated young man determined to have some fun.

Loved the story line, which was well written and engaging. Thanks for an enjoyable read.
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Review by LightinMind
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
Received this via random review and again was struck by the power of it.

You describe a watchman guarding the fortress of justice, a servant of the rule of law. This summons up pictures of castles in high places, but instead you challenge this imagery with a portrayal of grey minefields, quicksands traversed in rafts, and even caves under the ground. Can the law cope with the ever changing variety and challenges of circumstance and context. Does the watchman have the strength to say no to his clients when the law refuses them? In a grey, cold world can this person be the sunshine breaking through?

This is powerful and well written and there is little to object to in its style or content
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Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (4.5)
Received this via random review this morning and was stirred by its simple message.

It reminded me of that passage relating to Elijah in 1 Kings 19:12.

"After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper."

Sometimes our language is too extreme, designed for effect and not sincere communication. Sometimes our fabrications undermine our authenticity. Before God, who sees all, such efforts are vanity. This was not the best poem I have read by you but the message is one of the most important.
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Review of Dreamily Familiar  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
Received this via random review and was hooked by the descriptive power in your words.

You ask weather it is real or a dream but then describe the scenes in language that is richly sensual and filled with profound observation. We experience the dirt, the smells, the attraction and the nausea with you on your journey past prostitutes, taverns and the diabolical. But then there is that voice saving you from your thoughts and dragging you towards the light.

There is no message here, just an experience, which you articulate with some power. Thanks!
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Review of Writing Again...  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (4.0)
Thanks your this, I received your article by random review and it asked questions and posed answers that I found interesting.

Why indeed do we write? I have a full time job with gaps between the work loads, travel time and stays in hotels which would be empty without the writing. I do not write because I have to pay the bills but rather because I love it. Your comments on the spirituality of writing were apt. It is like a calling, something that has a hold on you. More than a hobby it is a passion. For me curiosity and the desire to make sense of things, to see Gods hand in the events of history and the happenings of today and tomorrow drives me to articulate, clarify and express. It is a living process of collation and communication, an attempt to bring light where there is chaos and confusion, darkness and depression. Writing connects me to my own soul and releases what it finds there. It opens the "doorways of perception" to a larger universe and a larger view of God and shatters the cliches and stereotypes of the mundane. Releasing this potential in myself and others makes the world a better place, I think. If we were all writers the world would be far more interesting, conversation richer and love more intense methinks.

Anyways, you inspired this little essay, so thanks again for what you wrote.

I did find some errors in the text:

1) his talents to his penmanship to be muttled by peripheral motives

2) Then upon being proved by his benefactors = need a comma after then

3) purposes of truth, justice, liberty, creativity and practicality. = probably needs a comma after creativity
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Review of Coffee!  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (5.0)
Came across this via random review, while drinking my "wake-up" cup of coffee. So you were on to a winner with the title.

However as I read the first lines, I thought maybe you should have categorized this in the horror section! A world without coffee!!!! Well it is Halloween I thought, maybe this is just a prank? As I read on I realized there was still hope, the dark web and your own determined efforts to turn your home in to the last place on earth where coffee was still grown, may have saved humanity. I was there with you with those first glorious sips.

But wait, you "closed the drapes", this was only for you, how dare you! Is this the unforgivable sin? Oh but it was all make believe, because I still hold the coffee in my hand, the world is still OK.

Thanks for a fun read and please forgive my overly verbose response to it. But it was coffee you were writing about!!!
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Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (5.0)
I came across this by random review and, as a newbie here, hearing the voice of experience in your first lines, was encouraged to read on.

You write authentically about your experience of the site, the annoyance with ads, the decision to invest in upgraded membership, your success here. The loss of your computer hard drive with 75000 words of books, that were not backed up, was painful to hear. I loved your commentary on a timely act of kindness that saved your interest in the site and allowed you to persevere. It does seem there are people out there who appreciate what you write and are touched by your creative efforts.

Thanks for the insights and the inspiration.
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Review of Rainbow  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (5.0)
Received this via random review. It's a crash landed alien, how could I not read on!!

It seems to be a commonly agreed fact, that children have to meet the stranded aliens and help them, cause the adults will probably mess it up. After all from "ET phone home" on-wards this has been young peoples gift to the universe. So I was not surprised to see 4 year old and 6 year old girls honoring this time tested tradition by, first helping the alien find a place to sleep, and then helping them with his ship. They played checkers with him, carried his ship to the launch pad and even fixed it with 3 milk teeth, extracted by the "eating caramel" technique. Then leaving him with a picture they had drawn, and having shared a telepathically communicated memory with him, they watch him depart on his quest for that one star, with only their picture and a remembrance of their kindness to keep him company.

It is a cool story and quite heart warming and stylistically I could not find anything wrong with it.
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Review of The Cheshire Grin  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (5.0)
Received this via random review. It was obvious it was going to be good by the ratings other people had already given it.

Charming and amusing story of an old widow, whose husband had hidden their life savings and then died. A cat comes to the rescue befriending Mrs. Kremburger, finding the hidden cache of money and then giving her the cash she needed to pay for a nurse to visit her in the house. When she finally dies another cat suddenly appears at door and the two live in harmony thereafter in the house they made their home.

Story fantastically assumes reincarnation and that the woman could not be trusted with a pile of cash and then manage her own finances. Is the assumption she would have blown it shopping? Maybe not in her advanced years. But very funny and an engaging read.
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Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (3.5)
Received this by random review and was intrigued by the theme.

The author claims it is not enough to think positively but that we must also put emotions behind that to make it happen. That integrity of thought and emotion equals positive expectation as opposed to mere positive thinking. It helps to explain the Rolling Stone cover story success and #6 in the US Charts hit of Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show.

While agreeing that "without vision the people perish", the cult of positive thinking has seemed quite dangerous to me, generating unrealistic expectations and ignoring reality. There is often a lack of integrity between what people are prepared to do and what they hope will happen. Emotion is only a part of the equation, there is also considered actions and a realistic reading of facts and circumstance and also a considerable amount of luck/grace. So while this account was well written, it seems naive, to consider a marriage of emotion and thought to be enough.
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Review of Magic Moment  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (5.0)
Received this by random review and was hooked by the story before the poem.

A frog in the veld at night can sound like a bathroom tap dripping on porcelain if you listen carefully.

Used syllable counter to count the syllables and everything checked out also.
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Review by LightinMind
Rated: 18+ | (4.5)
In an age when American presidents seem to be required to be over 70, we visit the country of Delorea, which sounds like a play on "DeLorean", a cool car from the 70s and of "Back to the Future" fame. Since this story is written with 20-20 vision of the past maybe there is some truth in that. This Scandinavian country speaks German, English and Russian so could be a sort of Viking version of Atlantis with TV and cool 80s video games but lacking the Norse gods and distinctive Swedish word for yes. Victoria Fox is a photographer / puppet mistress /artist with the hots for the married president Gabriel Naberg. He sounds quite socially liberal and was caught with his Secretary a few months before, something which apparently made no difference to his electoral success. Victoria Fox finds a way into the presidents house, by doing a puppet show for his kids, who love her, and is paid by the presidents wife for her efforts. The president gets a visit from a ghost, called Nora Eberts, who apparently died of Spanish Flu, and she has been sent to warn him about covid19. Naberg acts about a week later and leads the whole of Europe into lock-down. As the lock-down eases, some time later, Victoria visits the president with a picture she painted of him and some deviled eggs she knows he likes. The president offers one to her and she tastes them, then realizing that they have been poisoned. She was killed, apparently by her friend Alicia, a social conservative, who does not consider murdering liberals a problem for her moral code. So Victoria dies and is offered the choice to come back as the president's cat. The position of First Lady having been filled she comes back as First Cat and spends the next 20 years after that purring on his lap, on her way back to heaven.

Content wise this could be a satirical critique of various European leaders , including the Swedes, and indeed the American president, who failed to act on Covid19, until it was too late. It dodges the obvious conservative critique of Victoria's adulterous impulses and willful ignorance of the presidents marital status, by making out the right wing to be a bunch of murderers, and implying the people did not care about his adultery, and elected him anyway. Strictly speaking ghosts are hardly ever portrayed as messengers of anything good, that is a more angelic role. That said a ghost from the Spanish flu era would have been a cool aid, to convince a president of the importance of covid19. The Germans were already acting on the science in early January. Naberg would have probably been greeted by a rolling of the eyes by Angela Merkel and a "we know!" and especially if he was motivated by the ghost of Pandemic past.

Not sure it is a proper romance, unless you really think that a cat would be as loved, by an action man like the president, as much as a woman. In which case the end game is a worthy end to her misplaced adoration and still means she does not lose her place in heaven. Cats are capable of singular devotion, very similar to the first flames of romantic love, but if anything building over time. However she did not even give her life to save the president on purpose, only by accident. In my experience she would probably have ended up in the lap of the First Lady, rather than president, as our own cat does not like men.
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Review by LightinMind
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
This article about India came up via random review. Since my father was born there you hooked me in quite rapidly.

The article could be split into 3 parts.

The first describes how the popular singer beats the talented on and was a lesson in how social media works today in the age of Reality TV. Charles Dickens would never have gotten published in such a world.

The second describes how the requirement of integrating a mentally challenged child in a classroom did nothing for this child and yet spoilt the education of the others in the classroom

The third described a powerful initiative by the "Ugly Indian" team to clean up India street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, as a result of anonymous people getting together for the sake of the community. They publicize the before and after photos on You Tube to inspire a nation to go and do likewise.

Thought it was well written and interesting content.

Found one small mistake with this sentence which does not make sense: "Reality TV had come to India, and how."
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Review of Excuses  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (4.5)
Received this by random review and got hooked after first line by the familiarity of the content.

Text describes one of those church events you want to get out of and the long list of excuses explored as a way of doing that. This included, as a final act of desperation by the authors subconscious, a call to be the Queen of England, even though the succession is clear to the 1000th place.

Of course had the author but waited a month more she could have used covid19 as the perfect excuse for a grandma not to do the rounds. One wonders since the virus was around even in February if that "sick headache" saved her life.
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Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (3.5)
I received this via random review and was hooked by the fact that this was your first attempt to write here.

So Peace be Upon you also!

You are right, that there is so much that we are not in control of, and death is also on that list. As you say also, God knows the time. I disagree with your fatalism however, we do after all have freewill and the essential dignity and capability of persons made in Gods image.

You need to run what you wrote through a spell checker and grammar checker. The sentences are too long lacking commas in the appropriate places, but not bad for a first effort.
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Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (4.5)
Received this by random review and was hooked after the first line.

It seems, this is an account of a suicide and the delusional thoughts, that race through a young girls head, just before she does this. There is trauma, in the background, which she concludes lends justification to this, in the death of her mother. She seems drawn to this lake and away from a small town, which holds no interest for her, and has wounded her in undisclosed ways. Somehow she concludes, that the lake holds the answers for her like the doorway she never found to Narnian adventures.

The descriptive power of the writing here is awesome and there is a hypnotic quality to it. I had to keep reminding myself how stupid this girl was being, but the screams of my soul to her that there is always hope and always a reason to keep on living could not be heard. But I am not going to give 5 stars to a glorification of suicide, even though I doubt it could have been written better than this.
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Review of An autumn walk  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (5.0)
This came to me via Random Review in Autumn and so was eminently topical.

Your descriptive abilities in this poem are astounding and I loved: "Like green hedgehogs, chestnuts nestle the ground." and "breathes cobwebs to glittering necklaces".

Maybe a more experienced writer could find fault with this poem, but I cannot.
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Review of Alien Shampoo  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (5.0)
Received this via random review and it made me laugh.

Author describes the benefits of alien shampoo over lesser earth bound forms of the same. Its' restorative, regenerative, hair enhancing, miracle working, rejuvenation of hair, means that anyone who has read this poem, is probably in the queue waiting for that next UFO salesmen to visit!
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Review of Part 1 : The shop  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (4.0)
I received this by random review and the plot intrigued me.

A girl is going through a bad break with her boyfriend. She had found him with another woman. But to this she has to leave her old life behind as her own friendship networks were heavily intertwined with his. So she goes to a new city.

There are some errors in the way this powerful story has been put together. I offer the following so that you can improve the text:

1) At the beginning you say she had been living in the new city 2 weeks. But at the end she has just arrived.

2) Various sentences are missing key words e.g. "She couldn´t stop calling him and try to speak with him while they were living in the same place" = "She couldn´t stop calling him and trying to speak with him, while they were still living in the same place."

3) Some sentences could be improved: "But the town was so small that to create a new life was unthinkable, so knowing people from scratch wasn´t an option" = "But the town was so small that to create a new life there was unthinkable, so getting to know people from scratch wasn´t an option"

4) In this sentence you say she only had one friend in the old town whereas previously you said friends plural - "The day when she decided to leave the town was when she saw her boyfriend with a new girlfriend, who was some days ago her only friend."

5) You end with this line - "a shop where a lot of dogs were drinking beer inside." Do dogs drink beer

I am still giving you 4 stars because with the above adjustments I think it could be a good story.
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Review of An Unusual Dance  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
Received this by random review and it made me laugh

Describes a man, of low character, without morals or courage, who nonetheless managed to get inside the head, heart, and then the skirts of a nun, leaving her pregnant with his son. Now her sisters dance on his grave!

Funny, memorable and well put together
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Review of LIVING FOR MYSELF  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (4.5)
This came to me via random review and got me hooked.

It describes an old man who lived his life for others and was steadily ground down by their ingratitude and indifference to his own needs. Finally embittered by this experience he decides to love for himself.

The poem has a b-d rhyming structure with 7-6-7-6 syllables and is professionally written. This does indeed describe well many elderly peoples reactions to the darkness in their life experience. As a religious person I wish the elderly person had looked a little higher. You cannot be ground down by serving God as He is always faithful. But I cannot force my beliefs on him and accept this is the way he chose to go.
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Review of SAPPHIRE OASIS  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: E | (4.0)
This poem invaded my mind, by random review, this morning, and got me hooked.

The author describes it thus: "Lover's are losing in the mirage of happiness." This is difficult to reconcile with what he wrote though.

The text describes a blue oasis which is an image of hope and refreshment usually found in a desert. But there is a darkness here as Ravens have apparently learnt to howl like wolves in this place. A mirage is again associated with a desert so would occur looking out from the oasis, this is a daytime image and invisible at night. The golden colour would confirm that and what the author sees marching in the mirage is a host of faces. Then he jumps back to a temple or shrine of some sort which incorporates feathers and candles into its design. Yes that is obscure! We appear to still be in the temple watching the shadows dance and the religious type smells of amber and incense. But then suddenly we are in a forest turned to stone and under moonlight and there is a sombre mood in conclusion.

That is a jumble of powerful imagery that does not really fit together and especially the stone forest. If the author is talking feelings then the positive mood he wakes in, tinged with darkness and perhaps a little delusion ends in a sort of more ghostly sombre mood with less life in it. That could describe a lovers day, but it is a stretch.

So to conclude, loved the imagery which inspired my verbose reflections but finding a coherent narrative in that is harder hence the 4 stars not 5.
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Review of After the Storm  
Review by LightinMind
Rated: ASR | (4.0)
This came up on random review. Impressed that you were able to rhyme day 18 times.

After the storm is the experience that most of us can relate to. After the strong winds, torrential rain and damage we get to look out at blue skies, play on the ruins, watch nature come gently back to life. There is a feeling of cleanliness, newness and relief as we move into the new day. I thought your poem expressed it all very well and that the repetition of "After the storm" added to the effect rather than diminished it.
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