The author’s reading voice contributes to the atmosphere. Overall good, but not Crescent-good.

With “Eden” Phil R. cleaned my clock. The good news is I was able to walk home. “Crescent” being a longer tale was more of a cerebral ass-kicking. I had to call a cab to get home.

I enjoyed this piece and quickly fell into step with the story. I had a steadily increasing appreciation for the powerful crisp writing style that perpetuated clarity and good depth of delivery. I found the pace, development, and exposition all well gauged, but there were moments when I had to unfortunately excercise some latitude and fill in a few flats-spots of information that were curiously absent. Fortunately these occurrences were infrequent and imposed little disruption in the continuity, but still, just a little unsettling. If I had to guess I would say this piece has been fairly heavily edited to keep it ‘short and sharp’ which it certainly is, or perhaps to meet the submission word count for some other prospective publication. I can only speculate. This is certainly one of the few occasions when I have thought, contrary to the much more frequent norm where wordiness rules and thick layers of self indulgence find their way into sections of prose they have no business being, quite conversely, this piece could have benefited from a slightly more robust body. A slick lick of fat on its supermodel-like body of paragraphs and passages could do it wonders.

Some of the symbolism escaped me, but I am not very perceptive; who knows, I may ‘get it’ on my second cycle. It is certainly good enough to warrant another listen, and having been thrown through a loop on my first encounter, I will be more attentive on my next pass.

The story itself is good, but not as intense and captivating as I would have hoped. It never quite reached the crescendo of excitement I believed it was capable of, but having said that, I was still locked into the story with some enthusiasm. I actually think this is more because of the expertise and talent of the author rather than the story itself, which though good is eclipsed quite considerably by the authors competence in imparting it.

It maybe a little unfair of me to be so critical of this story given its length. In all probability there is little leeway for the author to do much development without sacrificing some other aspect of the story, so I will leave it at that and simply say it is too short to completely fulfil its promise.

The sound and production quality are both very good.

Even though I would like to be more generous, I will simply give this a reserved thumbs up. Yes it is good. It is well written, engaging, original, and thought provoking, but it is reminiscent of so many report cards that read “Good work, can do better”

-Phil Rossi

Running through my review in my head, for my next podcast, in fact. Thanks for a good book. Do I hear hints of a Series in the ending, in fact?

http://freshly-ground.blogspot.com/2009/04/podcast-review-eden-by-phil-rossi.html

“Eden doesn’t drag you through the chapters with blood pumping in your ears and air rasping in your throat like Crescent. Rather, you find yourself being led, trying to turn away, your stomach a hollow pit, afraid of where the next turn is going to lead you, and cursing Malcolm for his crippling self-pity.”

Click the link above to read the rest of the review.

5/5 point