Review: Who Are They?
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 9, 2014
There is one unusual thing about "They," the short story by Vincent Hobbes. We never actually find out who the title characters are. Of course, that's not the only thing we don't find out in this competently written but unremarkable story. In particular, we don't find out why "We" should have spent our time (and in some cases our money) reading this story."They" is the story of two couples (two brothers and their wives) on an ill-fated trip in the Colorado Rockies. They get lost during the night in a snowstorm and eventually run out of gas. Seemingly fortunately, when they do, they are close to a gas station, so the two men decide to walk there and get some help. It turns out, however, that it wasn't so fortunate after all as the couples encounter "They," and gruesomely bad things begin to happen rather quickly.Although "They" is a self-contained 15-page story and not an excerpt from a longer work, it certainly reads like the beginning of a horror novel. As a teaser intro, we might forgive the rather rushed feel of the piece, the lack of character development or real tension and the rather anticlimactic ending. As a self-contained story, however, we realize how much better the piece would be if author Hobbes explored the interplay among four related people who get stuck in the middle of nowhere because of some bad decision making or if the increasing tension of the story had been allowed to develop at greater length. However, in place of everything that would have made "They" a really good story, we get ... some well written graphically violent moments and being allowed to imagine who "They" are."They" is competent (gotta love how the title allows you to play with proper grammar), and it's not a story readers are likely to quit in the middle of (unless they are squeamish). But I expect a short story to leave me with something... a clever ending, some insight into human nature, an intriguing problem or issue... something that justified Hobbes writing the story and my reading it. Instead, it just ends. I got the story for free as a promotion, but Hobbes apparently charges for it normally. As a free story, it was marginally worth my time. A reader who pays for it, however, will find that "They" got to his wallet instead of his imagination.