Review: Unique and chilling
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 1, 2012
If there's one thing Mr. McKinney has perfected, it's the art of hooking you with his opening! It's a skill so many authors struggle for years to learn, but his instincts have led him unerringly to the Bull's Eye right from the start.Another sign of a great author is the ability to describe a situation so that you can see it - without boring you to tears! How many times have you read about the location of every plant in the room, whose garden they came from, and when? Tolkien was a habitual over-describer, IMO. That's definitely not the case here. By the 4th paragraph, McKinney manages to project a clear (and disturbing!) scene into our minds, shocking enough to instill in his audience a desire to read on, to learn how this situation came to be.As with most self-published authors, there are a few mistakes here and there, but they're not as glaring, distracting, or as frequent as they could be. And he has a MUCH larger vocabulary than is common among his peers.There is a depth here that short stories don't often contain; honestly, that's why I rarely read them. They seem like fragments to me. Somehow, McKinney has managed to find a balance between the gore, the hope, and the tenderness. He finds inspiration in the midst of madness and is skilled enough to share it all with us.