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4.0 out of 5 stars
Good pair of Halloween novellas, March 27, 2006
This review is from: Devil's Playground (Paperback)
Coscom Entertainment has come up with an interesting idea: two separate authors (A.P. Fuchs and Keith Gouveia) tackle two parts of the same story in, combining their talents to create a nasty two-part novella, and a lot of Halloween fun in Devil's Playground.
Gouveia starts off with "Forever Hallowe'en." The story begins, appropriately enough, on Halloween night, when a group of friends meet at the house of one of their number to go out trick-or-treating. They are having a great time until they decide to stop at the wrong house and, on the one night they're allowed to take candy from strangers, they end up playing a game for their lives. In a magic arena built by Lucifer, where a player becomes whatever his costume represents, they are pitted against each other and against the clock. But when you play by the devil's rules, it's nearly impossible to come out on top.
Like in his novel, Children of the Dragon, Gouveia really captures the different voices of these children as they prepare to go out for the evening. "Forever Hallowe'en" was fast-moving and relentless and it was over before I was ready. Nevertheless, I jumped right into the second story, unable to wait to see what Fuchs did with the rest.
What he does is continue the story from another perspective. In "Forever Jack," a boy named Max, dressed like Jack the Ripper (and behaving like him as per the rules of the game), meets up with two survivors from "Forever Hallowe'en." Together, they have to decide whether to compete against each other and escape individually, or join forces in hopes of defeating their captor. But to do that, they'll have to resist the ever-increasing tendencies of their "characters" to take over their thoughts and actions. Nearly irresistible bloodlust works against you in this kind of situation requiring calm, strategic thinking.
Fuchs' take is a little slower and more introspective, with "Jack" remembering his past and how he got into the game (100 years ago!), yet also more action-oriented with some terrific battle scenes with the devil. Ideally, these two stories would feel like they were told by the same writer, but each individual's style comes through, forcing the reader to take the stories more as two separate tellings than as one smoothly flowing narrative. One wonders what Fuchs and Gouveia would have come up with had they collaborated on a single novella, but Devil's Playground is quite the ride on its own terms, perfect for those looking for a couple of quick jolts around every child's favorite holiday.
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