Title: Everyone’s a Casualty
Author: Jaidon Wells
Publisher: Less Than Three Press
Pages/Word Count: 41 Pages
At a Glance: Short story with interesting characters but is difficult to follow.
Blurb: Joel is more in love with a fantasy world, and one of his own characters, than he is with his own life. He spends his days slipping between reality and the world on the other side of his bedroom door, drifting from day to day with no sense of direction.
But something is haunting the world he’s created, and when it slips out into the real world Joel must choose: surrender the world he loves, or tear it down.
Review: Sometimes it’s difficult to describe something you’ve read. This is one of those times. Everyone’s a Casualty is a short story with a character who lives for his fantasy world. He struggles with adjusting to reality, and throughout the story it’s hard to tell exactly what reality is.
Joel is a writer and he has created this circus-like world, with characters who are part machine and have two heads, shapeshift, etc. But something he hasn’t created gets into his world and starts to take it down. Joel has to solve the mystery and discover what it is, or risk losing the world he loves so much.
While the idea of the story was interesting, it was so fast paced I had a difficult time understanding what was happening. Often my reaction fell along the lines of, “What the hell did I just read?” I did like Joel and I felt for him, though, because sometimes fantasy is better than reality, and I’d like to be there, too.
The ending lost me, though. I thought I had some things figured out, but then it twisted and I really don’t know. I guess this is just one of those stories I didn’t get. Is Joel mentally unstable? Has his world completely consumed him? Has he finally stepped back into reality? Was it all just a story he wrote? I would love to hear what other readers think!
You can buy Everyone’s a Casualty here:
