Review: Very good writing but not enough substance
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 16, 2013
I received this short story free from storycartel in return for a review.The Memory Lights is an engaging short story about a woman with amnesiac who lives among the riff-raff in Victorian London. Weiland manages to hold the readers interest with solid description and action packed scenes as well as the continuous leit-motif of the lights, the fear of which haunts the amnesiac protagonist. The writing and pacing is solid. I especially liked the way the protagonists loss of memory was portrayed and kept reading until the mystery woman's origins was revealed.There were some noticeable glitches in the dialogue, which spoiled the otherwise realistic evocation of the period. Victorian riff-raff simply don't say "He used to fund some of our bigger operations". It would be more, "'e wuz behind some've our bigger jobs".  "Sort of a unionized group" is probably not right either. Unions were only legalized in the mid-19th century.  Previous to that, they were called "Societies" or "guilds".However, despite the generally well-paced writing and engaging story, I can only give this e-book 3 stars. The face is that the story lacked depth. The characters were rather "typical" and there wasn't anything special about them that would cause me to go back to re-read the story. Indeed, although I didn't "suffer" through the reading, I did feel as my time might have been better spent if I hadn't obligated myself to provide a review.