A Promise to the Faceless: Review

 

Book: A Promise to the Faceless
Author: D.A Barr
Pages: 290
Hard Core Scale: 2.7/4
Normal Scale: 5.5/10
Publish Date: 2024
About: A collection of interconnected stories of a future were to recover from a dying earth humanity begins to clone and back up bodies digitally, but one scientist begins to approach ethical boundaries. For why does one need to have a human body?
What’s it about? A man obsessed with fantasies gaslights and manipulates everyone and causes his own problems with no consequences.
Review:
Messy. 10 parts that some are near masterpieces and others need to be thought on the page. A second book and tall orders to develop. Lots to learn and grow in. Lots of stuff not prepped. Things I could only say go deeper and needs more thoughts and a lot of work.
The Curse Miracle:
¼ Twenty Year Review: The technology of digital forms is released and a young scientist presents his new creation to the world.
Very messy, draw distance issues, time issues, weird plot points.
Twenty Year Review:
3.9/4 This is a 4/4 in story. A genetically engineered servant fears its 20 years review and waxes with its master on life and death.
  Just have to knock for inverted tags which is a severe issue through a whole work. Fantastic, beautiful. Good writing.
¼ A Tragic Inconvenience: An inheritor is tired of her retiring servants and finally caves and buys some new ones. Better written. But messy beginning and cold cut ending. Close to a 3/4
¾ Derelict: A young homeless woman learns she is about to be hunted and that three factions hunt for her.
Pretty solid and exciting writing.
2.5/4 The Trainee: A young boy is kidnapped and transformed into a dog monster forced to hunt others once like him.
Good writing with a strong beginning, but repeats parts of the derelict which will be an issue for the rest of this work.
¼ Found and Lost: A powerful man loses everything and finds himself with a new opportunity.
Most of this information is gained in the other stories.
1/4 Hunter: A cougar hybrid bounty hunter gets called on a favor, and has plays hot cold in its pursuits.
Some severe issues in this story. Lost agency and nothing happens until the end. The character’s revulsion switches on a dime.
¼ Doc: A group of anti non-human activists confronts a mark to ask them to join him, but weirdly gets stuck in a awful situation.
This was also a mess. Weird agency issues up the wall. Trying understand what the point was? Goes nowhere.

2.5/4 Welcome to the Family: A woman makes a choice and wakes up in her new body and her new roll, but forces seek to end the family she has become.
Powerful and strong writing, weaseled by otherism and a conflict that is not well defined.
¼ In Plain Sight: Short, only a couple of paragraphs. Wrong tense with a weak frame to support it. Could have been turned into something else.
¼ Monster: The look at the life of a long-lived man and his manipulations to let his dreams come true? A monster becomes a monster.
                 A review of several things of easy inference. Some ill thoughts on humanity and something that kind of just ends.
Messy, growing room. Hard to follow, some bad decisions, world details lost, often lack of reaction and reaction in appropriate means. Questions become what is the point and what is the audience to gain in this messy thing.


    
                                                Cover: Jonathan Gwilliams, copyright DA Barr

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