Review: Our Broken World: The Fourth Nightmare by Stuart Tudor

Blurb:

Nothing is what it seems.

John and Godwin seem to be alone, the only two souls in the crumbling universe. The Celestial Visitors, heroes designed to serve and protect, have disappeared. The Gods have gone silent. That is until Godwin finds a strange room with the apparent means to make contact.

Desperate for answers or salvation from the reality shattering Breaking. The two friends brave a fracturing world to contact the Gods, to maybe restore the world, or save themselves from destruction.

Our Broken World is the fourth entry in the Eight Nightmares, a collection of horror stories about the dreamlike, the surreal, and encounters with the fantastical. This story is rated R for body horror, existential horror, surreal Horror, depression, loss of faith, end of the world, suicide (hanging), self harm, child death and gore/ murder. Reader discretion is advised.

Review:

Now, this one will be a bit different when it comes to talking about this novel, since it's one that I got to read while still in its developing stages before reading the actual finished version. As I was reading this short novel, I was constantly being reminded of what was in the novel and what got changed, and for all of the novel, it was amazing, aside from the formatting at the very end, which wasn’t that bad. It’s hard formatting certain kinds of dialogue. Another thing that I noticed was that if I hadn’t read this before, I’d have been blindsided by the end, since it was more difficult to pick the cues up, which helped set the horror atmosphere.

First off, if I had to grab a random person and get them to read this book, I’d give them this blurb:

“John, observant for his kind, notices the celestial visitors, the protectors if you will, disappearing, so he embarks on a quest to find out why. Care for more?”.

It’s a succinct, straight to the point, sell of “Our Broken World”, but it’s not everything, nor is it explaining the how and why he is investigating the disappearances, or with whom. This hopefully helps explain things without saying too much about the actual story.

Without further dallying, let's look at Godwin and John. Godwin is a companion of John and does an admirable job being the Leeroy Jenkins of the party of two, which is both good and bad. Good because he helps further John's investigation, bad because of the enemies they run into. At any moment, death could occur, and Godwin just shrugs off the imminent death with “trust me, it’ll be fine”. Meanwhile, John is more cautious and slowly questioning his own sanity as more and more moving parts of his world get revealed. Each revelation brings him nearer to his answer, but each revelation also brings more questions. He’s coping well enough, determined to find out why the visitors are ducking out. 

Which brings us to the plot of the book. It begins with a celestial visitor ascending back to the heavens from the perspective of John, then goes into the puzzle solving with John and Godwin, and then it ends… with a plot twist hidden between the lines if one reads carefully.

The pacing was good, far better than the first version of the novel that I had read earlier this year, and there was a noticeable tone down of the signs for the setting of the novel.

After that, we have the design of the world. It’s barebones, with a few cities, a training ground and a few landmarks. But it’s also far more than it seems, with hints to the actual foundation of the world hidden within the story. There’s some magic, mostly used by the monsters in the book, lots of sword and shield work, by John and Godwin mostly, and nods to Lordran in the world itself. Needless to say, the world design and the plot play in perfect concerto with each other.

Then, there’s the ever present feeling of dread that John has, whilst Godwin is just vibing and having the time of his life. It’s a small bit of celestial horror, in a way. John doesn’t have too much hope and just tries to get by learning everything. Godwin however, has the optimism to just exist and learn the answer without getting depressed. It’s a perfect mix of “please I just want to find answers” and “yay, I get to travel around with friend!”.

However, there is one thing that I have to pick on when it comes to “Our Broken World”... the formatting of the final part of the book, the very end. It’s attempting something new, and I’ve told him as much, however it feels off putting with the strange text layout. Like when the coding window gets enlarged and the text decides that being in an orderly line is overrated. Now, it’s not bad, it’s alright, but compared to the rest of the book, it is a noticeable tone shift and it would be nice if it had a more orderly layout.

If you like exploration, some fight scenes with magic and swords, and celestial horror with a surprise spin on the tale, “Our Broken World” is for you.

Going completely off topic, if one is a part of the SFF Insiders Discord server (link here if you aren’t), Stuart Tudor is in the voice chat every so often, which is where I first interacted with him and learned of the anthology he is putting together, and there is also where we discussed this novel and others in length. Which brought me to a closer understanding of what each of the books he is writing are about, and also through the stages of the whole process of actually getting a book out, and it’s nice seeing a novel that was once being carefully worked on getting the praise it deserves. And I was able to talk with the author over Discord multiple times in the evening, with not much going on, about books, about games, and about films. Plus, with the various channels provided, readers and authors can interact without much trouble in regards to talking about their novels, their choice of books and everything else.

As per usual, if you’ve made it this far, going past both the review and short insert of the Discord server in regards to author interaction, thank you for reading and I hope I’ve helped nudge you towards your next book. If not, don’t fret, for we have reviews in all shapes, sizes and genres. If you want to go on a random journey, here is a link to a review on the site.

Wherever you are reading this review, have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night!