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Radiation Face
Abe Jennings’ parents finally got him out of the zone and into Keystone. A decent town where everyone looks normal and the streets aren’t filled with sludge. The best part is the lack of giant monsters destroying the place. That’s all fine and dandy for his parents, but Abe has no interest in staying there.
The kids treat him like a second class citizen. And thanks to the radiation back home, he was born with a face only a mother could love. But Abe tries his best to make it through school everyday. Which isn’t easy until he finds his true fighting. Now that’s all he can think about which doesn’t make his straight-laced parents too happy.
The kids treat him like a second class citizen. And thanks to the radiation back home, he was born with a face only a mother could love. But Abe tries his best to make it through school everyday. Which isn’t easy until he finds his true fighting. Now that’s all he can think about which doesn’t make his straight-laced parents too happy.
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First published March 10, 213
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About the author
Phil Skaggs Jr.
9 books2 followersI'm currently a student at Ball State, getting a Master's in Digital Storytelling. I write weird YA fiction under The Public Factory. Also want to move out of my apartment so I can finally get a pet. Since I can't do that yet, I started writing about two adventurous cats named Marlo & Norway.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 25, 2014
You can see Phil Skaggs, Jr's talent from the get-go. The first page of Radiation Face is a little rough, and it feels like the book is going to immediately devolve into some whiny YA screed, full of ham-fisted angst. However, Skaggs pulls the narrative out of that brief slump and delivers an interesting story.
The kid can write. Skaggs goes old school, telling a pulpy boxing story a la Robert E. Howard's Kid Allison, yet set in a post-disaster America that has left parts irradiated and in the path of kaiju-esque monsters battling each other for supremacy. Abe is a sixteen year-old kid from the radiation zone, whose family has moved to a clean suburb. He spends his days dodging the abusive comments of his fellow students, watching the monsters fight from the safety of his school's rooftop, and slipping off for trysts with a "freak chaser" named Melanie. Abe, you see, is a mutant, with a deformed head and face, marking him as an outcast and a target for police harassment. His parents love him, but their quest for normalcy has led them to get pregnant with another child, one they hope won't be a mutant. You can't fault them them their desires, and Abe doesn't. However, his father is pressuring him to get a job, and that's something our protagonist does not see in his stars.
Abe wants to be a fighter. After watching the card at a place called The Bishop, Abe signs up for a try-out. A veteran fighter mops the floor with him, and he winds up in the tutelage of a goth girl named Sam, whose father is one of the regulars at The Bishop. Abe begins training as a proper fighter, and most of the book deals with the trials and tribulations of a kid with a dream trying to make it in a world that hates and fears him.
If I could talk to the author, I would tell him he needs an editor. At first, it seemed that the multitude of misspellings, grammatical errors, and vocabulary misusage were part of the story. Abe is an average kid, and, since the story is told from his perspective, it's easy to see how a reader could believe the mistakes are intentional. However, upon reading the book's blurb and pieces of the writer's other material, it's clear that this isn't the case. The mistakes are the author's, not Abe's. This is a four-star novella but for those problems. An editor would vastly improve the readability and professional sheen Radiation Face lacks. Skaggs can definitely tell a story. The characters are well done, and he has a knack for combining ingredients to take a well-worn story and turn it into something vital and compulsively readable. He just needs the hand of a professional at this point, and I could see him developing a real following.
The kid can write. Skaggs goes old school, telling a pulpy boxing story a la Robert E. Howard's Kid Allison, yet set in a post-disaster America that has left parts irradiated and in the path of kaiju-esque monsters battling each other for supremacy. Abe is a sixteen year-old kid from the radiation zone, whose family has moved to a clean suburb. He spends his days dodging the abusive comments of his fellow students, watching the monsters fight from the safety of his school's rooftop, and slipping off for trysts with a "freak chaser" named Melanie. Abe, you see, is a mutant, with a deformed head and face, marking him as an outcast and a target for police harassment. His parents love him, but their quest for normalcy has led them to get pregnant with another child, one they hope won't be a mutant. You can't fault them them their desires, and Abe doesn't. However, his father is pressuring him to get a job, and that's something our protagonist does not see in his stars.
Abe wants to be a fighter. After watching the card at a place called The Bishop, Abe signs up for a try-out. A veteran fighter mops the floor with him, and he winds up in the tutelage of a goth girl named Sam, whose father is one of the regulars at The Bishop. Abe begins training as a proper fighter, and most of the book deals with the trials and tribulations of a kid with a dream trying to make it in a world that hates and fears him.
If I could talk to the author, I would tell him he needs an editor. At first, it seemed that the multitude of misspellings, grammatical errors, and vocabulary misusage were part of the story. Abe is an average kid, and, since the story is told from his perspective, it's easy to see how a reader could believe the mistakes are intentional. However, upon reading the book's blurb and pieces of the writer's other material, it's clear that this isn't the case. The mistakes are the author's, not Abe's. This is a four-star novella but for those problems. An editor would vastly improve the readability and professional sheen Radiation Face lacks. Skaggs can definitely tell a story. The characters are well done, and he has a knack for combining ingredients to take a well-worn story and turn it into something vital and compulsively readable. He just needs the hand of a professional at this point, and I could see him developing a real following.
November 15, 2013
This is good for those who love mutants and and lots of life problems
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews