Dreamland Review Archive

Suns & Sparks (A)

The Mirabile Remedium also confused me when I read it in the email. It's a brand new term just thrown in with expectations of the reader to know what it is. I'm assuming it's something similar to SARS? As that was somewhat compared to it beforehand. But you also mention how nobody ever gets sick anymore, so I'm not exactly sure how B.M.R Or A.M.R. work and how they affect an individual. Just a little clarification of the terms would help out a lot here.

With nobody falling ill, it seems like there's more accidents occurring now and Rhea believes that the bus crash is intentional. She makes an excellent point about how people would need to make money now that doctors and hospitals aren't needed much anymore. But this brings another point I thought of. What about crimes with guns, knives, etc... Or just a good old fashioned beating? Or random accidents? Wouldn't hospitals and doctors still be needed for these? Surely that bus crash would bring a need for doctors, which I feel like is the point for it to occur. But has crime and accidents really dropped that drastically and suddenly picked up the pace again?

Perhaps this is just my terribly pessimistic view of humanity, but I'd expect there to be so many more murders now. xD Is that awful to say? I wouldn't be too surprised if more accidents and crimes occurred, unless maybe there's been some sort of change in violence after a thousand years as well? If so, it might be a good idea to mention that. Would be an understandable reason to keep doctors around and need plenty of them.

You mention how they don't really die now either, which makes me wonder if there's possibly an overpopulation issue at hand. It's almost impossible for someone to die early with how their immune systems work now, but it makes me wonder how all this came to be. Part of it was with Lara and Marisa's research, from what I gathered in the beginning, but I wonder more about how it all came to be.

The email exchange is a unique way of providing the reader information in a shortened form without info-dumping, but honestly, at some points I feel like a little more information on the terminology would benefit greatly here. I'll admit, Science Fiction isn't a strong suit of mine, but there were moments when I got a little lost in their conversations. I think my greatest confusion was how we went from working with genetics to the golden rose artifact and having time travel added in. I feel like I'm missing a chunk of the correlation between them all. Please, feel free to elaborate or correct me, as this was just my experience while reading.

Time travel being tossed in toward the very end felt rather abrupt to me, and while it was a nice little plot twist, it had me wondering what the heck was going on. I'm assuming her older self came back to the past to help her with the golden rose, so perhaps things went differently in her timeline and she needed to mend things this time. Unless, this was some kind of loop that was always meant to happen? She needed her future self to help all along. Very strange, but unique at the same time.

Toward the ending, things get rushed. And not in a fast-paced action way. Alexia reveals a gun that she somehow got by the guard? This place appears to have top-notch security in place, so I'm not even sure how that happened. Unless the guards were in on it too? Maybe that's why they never showed up when gunshots went off. But my biggest issue was the lack of emotional buildup. With this being in first person, I expected to witness her panic and struggles on what she should do. More inner turmoil. Yet, she simply went through the motions. When the gunshot went off, I expected more fear and intensity in that moment. Things felt rather simplified and quickly skipped over. Not saying there should be paragraphs of build up on the moment, but just a little more details from her to show just how serious the situation really is. Perhaps her ears start ringing from how close the gunshot was? Show us how scared she really is, but still determined not to let herself die there.

Characters:

We start off with Lara and Marisa. They've uncovered something profound, but we're left wondering what it is when the story takes a sudden shift in perspective. Initially, I figured these two would play major roles as main characters throughout the entire story, but then two new characters take over instead.

There's not enough time to really dive deep into Lara and Marisa's character developments because they're introduced almost like side characters. Which felt rather odd, especially with us being in first person, told by Lara. They both seem like eager scientists, but neither made a huge impression on me. Lara seems to be the most important, as she's got familial ties to the next two characters who are brought center stage.

Twins Rhea and Regina become the focused protagonists until the end, and we're introduced to them by emails. I do like the inclusion in their emails, as it gives us a little peek into their personalities by their choices of phrases and their beliefs. While Regina thinks that odd email is from her sister, Rhea makes it clear how it's definitely not her and has me intrigued until the very end to find out just who it was that sent them. Rhea's certain that the bus crash was no accident, and I can't say I'm surprised by her suspicions in their world.

I'm curious about what happened to Aunt Lara now and why she's not around helping them. Is she just too old now? Or perhaps working on something entirely else? It's never mentioned what happened to her, although from the emails, it sounds like she's still alive and by the way they've cured most diseases, people live quite a long time. Since she was a main character in the intro, I'm surprised she doesn't turn up at all. I honestly expected the mysterious email sender to be her.

Overall thoughts:

This was a fascinating short story. It had me interested all the way until the ending, trying to puzzle everything together. I'll admit, some of the terminology did confuse me at times. I'm still a little unclear on B.M.R and A.M.R and feel like you could expound a bit more on them through the emails. Not only that, but there's a moment where I'm still trying to figure out how their uniquely modified genetics play a role in time travel and the Alchemy with that golden rose. It almost felt overwhelming with everything coming up at the ending and took me a moment to figure out exactly what was going on. I'll admit, I'm still a bit lost since the ending was left open-ended for readers to decide what happens next after that twist.

One thing I really liked was the way you added the mysterious sender in the emails. It had me wondering who it could possibly be, right up to that twisty reveal at the end. The "signed with blood" on each of the mysterious sender's emails was also very clever!

Now, for this last suggestion, I will preface by saying this is a personal preference. But I feel like this short story would read a lot better in third person limited. Why? Because with the twists of your characters and the somewhat emotionally distant narrator. Sometimes the phrasings even read more like they were told in third person. The main reason why I suggest this is because I feel like you could explore more with the characters you have here in this point of view and because it's a bit weird to swap from one first person narrative in the beginning to another entirely new character. At the end, I was initially struggling to figure out who's point of view I was reading from. At first, I swore it was Rhea because I knew it couldn't be Lara. It just didn't sound like her.

After reading the entire story, I have to admit, I don't really see the connection between this story, the title, and the cover. None of them follow a similar theme. The story focuses on genetics, science, time-travel, and hope for the future. I'd have to read the other stories to really get an idea for a theme that fits them all, but for now, with the current title, I'd suggest playing around with a cover that showcases the sun and the moon. It could be a metaphor to distinguish between light and dark, life and death, like you wrote in your story's blurb. The only connection I can really make is how you show the differences in Light(good) vs. Dark (evil)