Monday 24 May 2010

Web Fiction: The Anti-thesis

Title: The Antithesis
Author: T.L Whiteman
Format: Web Fiction, updates weekly
Address: http://sanguinexdesolace.blogspot.com/2010/02/i-encounter.html
Genre: Dark Fantasy, Religion, Science Fantasy

Review: The initial concept behind 'The Antithesis' is intriguing, and comes across as 'Dollhouse' meets 'Dogma' with some time travel thrown in at first glance. Our main character, Alezair is a 'marionette' owned by the Nexus, whose mission is hijacked by a mysterious woman. Currently, the story as at 13 chapters, and will be updated once weekly on Friday.

The dialogue is fun and interesting, and Alezair's introspection is usually quite snappy and sarcastic. The location switches appear to be well described - as a Japanese major, it was a joy, nay a miracle NOT to be annoyed by descriptions of ancient Japan! No really, this is nigh on a miracle and why I can't sit through the Last Samurai with a straight face. When writing from a Euro-centric point of view, a lot of writers and directors slip into some very lazy story-telling formats, and Whiteman doesn't do this, so she gets extra credit.

While I described 'The Antithesis' as being 'Dollhouse' meets 'Dogma' (YAY alliteration), the Dollhouse comparison quickly falls away in terms of tone. Both works are fairly dark, but 'The Antithesis' leans more towards 'Night Watch' after the first few chapters as it has more of a super-natural bent to it.

On occasion, the descriptions of the Mysterious Woman can come across purplish prose, but I concede that this could be a word choice preference on my part, and it certainly did not impede my reading on. The original site design has changed since the site went online - gone is the fantastically eerie image of the Mysterious Woman with bleeding wings, and it's been replaced with anime-ish image which makes the story appear more cheery than it actually is.

The story seems to be steadily working on bring certain reveals and bigger mysteries as well - we're still finding out about what precisely the Nexus entails. As of writing, I'm just over half way into what is available online, and I'm looking forward to see what the future instalments will bring.

2 comments:

  1. Hey,

    Thanks for the review. Do you mind if I put it in my press section?

    - T.L.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nope, not at all! I've just jazzed up and re-written my original post from Web Fiction Guide, glad you like.

    ReplyDelete