Archives » Tade Thompson

The Last Pantheon by Tade Thompson and Nick Wood

NewCon Press, 2024, 128 p (including 1 p Introduction by Tade Thompson, 2 p In Memoriam (of Nick Wood,) 1 p About the Authors, 2 p Genesis of the Pantheon, 3 p Interview with Tade Thompson, 3 p Building Super-Heroes and 3 p The Last Word on the Pantheon. Illustrated by Tade Thompson. Reviewed for ParSec 11.

This book is in part an In Memoriam for Nick Wood, who died in 2023. So it goes. Fellow author Thompson and he had an admiration for African superheroes of the 1970s like South Africa’s Mighty Man and Nigeria’s Power Man (who are name-checked in the story.) Together they wrote The Last Pantheon as a kind of homage and it was published in the collection AfroSFv2. Thompson’s Introduction here says this edition was more how they first imagined it would be, a short and sharp illustrated book wearing Silver Age bona fides on its sleeve. The illustrations were provided by Thompson himself, in his words a motivated amateur artist.

The story features Black Power (now using the name Sipho Cele) and Pan-African (Tope Adedoyin.) Though Pan-African refers to Black Power as brother they have been antagonists at various times over the years since they fled to Earth on a spaceship a very long time ago. Black Power can fly and move very quickly, Pan-African levitates, can read minds (and sometimes influence them) and is surrounded by a limited force-field. As the meat of the story unfolds their past is outlined in memories and flashbacks in one of which Black Power wonders at his anatomical and DNA similarities with humans. The story the book tells ranges over how they intervened (or failed to) at important moments in, mostly recent, African history – the deaths of Patrice Lumumba, Dag Hammarskjöld and Murtala Mohammed, the Sharpeville massacre – but also encounters with Shaka Zulu and a certain primate in 15,000 BP.

Black Power has always been on the side of law and order and Pan-African more or less the opposite. The last time they had clashed, the atmosphere over the Sahara was so disturbed it began to snow. In the aftermath Pan-African turned himself in. At this story’s start he is being released from prison after serving his time. Soon he is on a TV programme phone-in being interviewed by journalist Elizabeth Kokoro to explain his career choice. Black Power comes on the line. The ensuing conversation reveals their antipathies. Kokoro (who it’s later revealed has an extremely expensive brain implant connecting her directly to the internet) is amused by their verbal sparring but is then startled by Pan-African telling her the old comics featuring Black Power were propaganda, funded by the CIA and dosed with chemicals that may have been mind-altering. (Asides such as this help to provide an oblique critique of colonialism and its effects.) The interview, though, has laid the groundwork for the superheroes to meet in a televised last battle.

The novel has many grace notes, including a knowing nod to The Incredible Hulk, but, oddly, a scene near the end where Pan-African meets a pair called Nick Wood and Tade Thompson who are to write the graphic novel of the last encounter. A meta-fictional step too far?

For fans of superheroes there are plenty scenes of the pair demonstrating their powers but the structure and treatment, the characterisation, will also gratify appreciators of more literary virtues.

The illustrations are not (as Thompson warned us) up to comic standards, but neither are they crude.

I doubt anyone reading The Last Pantheon will have any cause for complaint.

The following did not appear in the published review.

Pedant’s corner:- Thompson’s In Memoriam of Wood is attributed to “Tade Thomson” (Tade Thompson,) “both victims and perpetuators” (x2, perpetrators,) low lives (usually lowlifes,) Jonnie Walker (it was whisky, so, Johnnie Walker.) “She wore shorts and burdened under a backpack” (She wore shorts and was burdened … ?) “Once the settled in a price” (Once they settled on,) staunching (stanching,) a missing full stop. “‘Thembeka, some back!’” (‘come back’ makes more sense,) “ a twelve miles journey” (a twelve mile journey,) “onto the stationery boy” (stationary,) “a chair in the next table” (at the next table,) Thendeka (several times, but elsewhere usually spelled Thembeka,) a line break after two thirds of the line, “the corpses ragged head and body wounds” (corpses’,) “where the chances for collateral damage was less” (where the chances … were less,) “far side of he hall” (of the hall.) “He out a cowhide covered shaft” (He pulled out a …,) bonafides (bona fides,) Addidas (Adidas,) “knew his presence has been marked” (had been marked.) In ‘About the Authors’; “in ddition to” (in addition to.) In ‘Building Super-heroes’; “is being control of” (is being in control of) “the character’s and their supporting cast” (characters.)

 

ParSec 11

The latest edition of ParSec magazine (no 11) is available for purchase. At £5.99. It’s a bargain.

This edition contains no less than five of my reviews.

The Last Pantheon by Tade Thompson and Nick Wood.

The Phoenix Keeper by S A MacLean.

Dark Shepherd by Fred Gambino.

Sparks of Bright Matter by Leeanne O’Donnell.

And, last but not least, Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi.

Those reviews will appear here after a decent interval.

 

More for ParSec

The latest books I have received for review for online SF magazine ParSec arrived this week.

They are The Last Pantheon by Tade Thompson and Nick Wood and Dark Shepherd by Fred Gambino.

I have read books by Thompson and Wood as individuals but not in collaboration. Thompson is Nigerian and Wood South African. It therefore make sense that The Last Pantheon has African (super)heroes. The novel contains illustrations.

Fred Gambino is new to me.

I assume the reviews will appear in ParSec’s issue 11.

The Murders of Molly Southbourne/The Survival of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

The Murders of Molly Southbourne
Tor.com, 2017, 117 p.

Molly Southbourne has been brought up from birth with the mantras:-
If you see a girl who looks like you, run and fight.
Don’t bleed.
If you bleed, blot, burn and bleach.
If you find a hole, find your parents.

She has a genetic condition that means copies of her, described as mollys, will grow – in days, from any source of sustenance to hand – to full sized human replicas. Replicas intent on killing her. Her only recourse will be in killing them first, hence the mantras, and then disposing of the remains. In extremis she has tattooed on her arm a number she can call on for help.

Molly’s story is told by way of a framing device wherein our narrator is being held captive – by Molly herself as we find out when she relates her past to the narrator after making sure she is quiescent.

Albeit laced with an abundance of violence this is an enjoyable mixture of fantasy, horror, paranoid thriller and spy story, given a Science Fictional gloss when it is revealed Molly’s mother was a spy sent behind the Iron Curtain to investigate a secret Soviet project to find a cure for fertility rates falling worldwide, then to steal it. Caught in the act, she instead injected herself with it, hence Molly’s condition.

Pedant’s corner:- Written in USian; spellings such as hemophilia etc (haemophilia, or better, hæmophilia.)


The Survival of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

Tor.com, 2019, 122 p.

Our narrator calls herself Molly Southbourne but no clones form from her blood when it is shed. She is, though, the same molly whom the original Molly kept captive in the previous book before going off to confront the army of mollys whom we assume did Molly to death. This molly has all of Molly’s memories, of her parents Connor and Mykhaila Southborne, of all the mollys she murdered to prevent herself being killed.

This book, though, is slightly different in that at least to begin with there are interpolations [headed Transcript] of the thoughts of Professor James Down, an academic whom Molly set her cap at in Book One; fatefully as it happens because some of Molly’s blood must have leaked into him and he has what Thompson has dubbed in this book a hemoclone [sic] growing inside him – a molly which will kill him: as one did her previous lover, Leon, for the same reason.

Our viewpoint molly soon finds herself pursued by other women identical to each other; called tamaras after their originator. Tamara is trying to protect our molly as it is her belief that the organisation Molly thought was there to protect her is in fact designed to kill hemoclones.

This all seems to be set during the Cold War, contemporaneously with the Prime Ministership of Margaret Thatcher. Both Molly and Tamara had within them artificial cells, the ones Molly’s mother and presumably others as well as Tamara had been infected with. This renders the concept as fully Science Fictional. We are told these artificial cells act as matter converters. From a drop of blood they can make “a full human duplicate based on the genetic material of the Prime from almost any base material: wood, soil, organic waste, even metals.”

In this strange paranoid world our molly soon comes to trust no-one.

Pedant’s corner:- Again published in USian. “James Dawn” (elsewhere he’s James Down,) “a full human duplicate based on the genetic material of the Prime from almost any base material: wood, soil, organic waste, even metals” (this phrase reads as if a full human duplicate could be made solely from metal; it could not,) hemoclone (haemoclone or, better, hæmoclone,) “the lay of the land” (the lie of the land.)

The Rosewater Redemption by Tade Thompson

Orbit, 2019, 380 p.

This finishes off Thompson Rosewater trilogy (I reviewed the previous instalments here and here) and features many of the characters from before – Kaaro, Femi Alaagomeji, Aminat, Jack Jacques, Oyin Da (the Bicycle Girl,) Lora the construct.

There is still antipathy between Rosewater, the city which grew up around the alien dome which had translated itself from London, and Nigeria, from which the city had gained independence. Here the alien city has begun to move slowly towards the sea. Those unfortunates called reanimates, dead humans whose bodies have been revived by the city’s healing powers, are now found to still have residual consciousness, a fact that causes conflict between Jack Jacques, Rosewater’s mayor, and his wife Hannah, a lawyer who represents the reanimates.

A lot of the scenes though again take place in the xenosphere, that mysterious, hallucinatory realm by which the alien Homians remain in contact with their own planet and the individuals waiting there for Earth to be made suitable for their transfer. That contact is cut off and the plot thereafter more or less revolves around the need to make sure Earth is not further invaded.

Thompson’s grasp of human emotions and motivations and his ability to display them are not in doubt but the multiplicity of character viewpoints, as in the two previous books of the trilogy, again renders this concluding volume bitty. As an imaginatory SF/Fantasy vision the Rosewater trilogy is successful in those terms but the tenuous nature of reality in the xenosphere bears the inherent sense of the unsatisfactory of any setting in which the impossible can happen.

Pedant’s corner:- “there are a multitude of footpaths” (there is a multitude,) Nostradamus’ (Nostradamus’s,) Jack Jacques’ (several times, Jaques’s.) “A series of notifications arrive” (A series … arrives,) “the sole benefactor of Mr Tanmola’s estate” (sole beneficiary,) “building to a crescendo” (no. The crescendo is the build, not its climax,) “when I sprung him from jail” (sprang him.) “A small knot of humans follow her” (A small knot … follows her.) “The family seem to have” (The family seems to have.) “None of my actions are part of that” (None … is part,) “a series of graphs appear” (a series … appears,) “will do in a pinch” (will do at a pinch,) “with some of the aliens perpetuating mass shootings” (perpetrating mass shootings,) “the hoi polloi” (I know this is commonly used but ‘hoi’ means ‘the’ so the phrase ought to be rendered as ‘hoi polloi’, or ‘the polloi’,) “begin to rise to a crescendo” (see comment above,) “washeed up” (washed up.)

The Rosewater Insurrection by Tade Thompson

Orbit, 2019, 379 p.

This is the second in the author’s Rosewater trilogy of which I reviewed the first here.

In this instalment something is up with the alien named Wormwood, buried in a part of Nigeria, where the city of Rosewater has grown up around it. The latest clone of the human from whom it derives sustenance, Anthony, has failed to form properly. A woman called Alyssa Sutcliffe has woken up not knowing who she is – nor her husband and daughter – but with other memories intact. She does not know who she is, only that she is not Alyssa. The novel is told through various other viewpoints as well – some first person, others third – including two of the characters from the previous book in the sequence, Aminat, and Kaaro, plus Eric (an agent of S45 Nigeria’s security service) and the mayor of Rosewater, Jack Jacques, who is in dispute with the President of Nigeria and declares independence, relying on the alien’s presence to protect the city. There are also extracts from a novel titled Kudi by Walter Tanmola, who in addition narrates one section which focuses on his experiences after he is enlisted by Jacques to write an “impartial” chronicle of the independence struggle and during which he forms a relationship with a construct, Lora, who acts as Jacques’s advisor/personal assistant. And, too, we remake acquaintance with S45’s most formidable operative, Femi Alaagomeji, but only through other eyes.

Alien cells called xenoforms are infiltrating the bodies of humans, “‘We change the organisms and live in them. In you.’” S45 is involved in a project to try to separate these cells from living humans. The attempts are not going well. Alyssa is of particular interest as she is over 70% xenoform. Some of the novel is taken up with Aminat’s efforts to keep Alyssa away from S45’s attentions, some of it with the conflict between Rosewater and Nigeria, another strand deals with the xenosphere, a dream-like atlternative universe, into which Kaaro can take his consciousness and where he has a gryphon as an avatar. To add to all this an intrusive plant species, which may have been inspired by The Day of the Triffids but isn’t quite so threatening, is taking over Rosewater.

As in the previous book there is a lot going on; perhaps too much. At times it seems Thompson isn’t quite sure what kind of novel he wants this to be. It veers between thriller, fantasy, adventure story and quasi-allegory. The situation is so extreme that the characters don’t get the time to behave as humans (of course, at least two of them are not.) Certainly there is a third instalment to come, but I may leave that for a while.

At the end of the novel this edition has “extras” – a half page of author information and several pages of extract from another book by a different author. I do wish publishers would cease this practice. I do not understand who would read these. I’m certainly not going to start a book which I cannot possibly finish and may well find offputting in any case, so defeating the purpose. It has the effect of merely filling out the page count to make a book look bigger than it actually is.

Pedant’s corner:- “none ever return” (none ever returns.) “She is clothed in some diaphanous material, but it is like a nightgown and covers nothing” (if she’s clothed she is covered, a nightgown is also a covering. I suspect Thompson meant ‘hides nothing’,) maw (it’s a stomach, not a mouth,) “none of them fit” (none of them fits,) staunches (stanches.) “It lays down” (It lies down,) floatation (flotation – used later,) “good to his word” (good as his word,) phosphorous (phosphorus,) “reaches a crescendo” (no, the crescendo is the increase, not its climax,) lay (lie,) “a skein of geese make their way” (a skein [of geese] makes its way,) ganglions (elsewhere ganglia is used for this plural.)

Rosewater by Tade Thompson

Orbit, 2018, 393 p.

 Rosewater cover

Rosewater was a nominee for the BSFA Award last year and won the Clarke Award. Its successor The Rosewater Insurrection is on this year’s BSFA Award short list. As I hope to get round to reading that before voting I thought I’d better look at this first.

Rosewater is a doughnut-shaped city that surrounds the biodome, an alien outcropping in Nigeria. The biodome opens once every year for twenty or thirty minutes and everyone in the vicinity is cured of all physical ailments. Even dead people can be reanimated, but the results tend to be soulless and mindless, and have to be killed again.

Narrator Kaaro is a sensitive, able to discern the thoughts of others by accessing the xenosphere, strands of alien fungi-like filaments and neurotransmitters, which link with the natural fungi on human skin and penetrate the nervous system. His abilities have made him useful to S45, a branch of the Nigerian security services. He is also a finder, and a thief. Later his abilities are referred to as those of a quantum extrapolator. His attitudes are misogynist and sexist, notwithstanding his entering a relationship with a woman called Aminat. Not that strong women are missing in the book, his initial S45 boss, Femi Alaagomeji, and Aminat being cases in point.

The novel is structured into scenes taking place in Kaaro’s Now of 2066, the Then of when the biodome first appeared and its subsequent evolution, and interludes describing his previous missions for S45. This tends to render the reading experience as bitty. Just when getting into the swing of things in one timeline we are jarred out of it, often with a cliffhanger. Coming across in the background we find that the thing humans call Wormwood was an amœbic blob of alien organic matter that fell to Earth in 2012 in Hyde Park, London. Unlike previous such incursions, Wormwood survived and (apparently) tunnelled its way to Nigeria.

Not that it has any real connection to any part of Kaaro’s story, but we are informed that in this world, as a response to the alien incursions, the US has withdrawn into itself, letting nothing in or out, not even information.

At the start of the book Kaaro has a job protecting a bank’s customers from the attentions of other sensitives out to steal their information. This is one of the hares Thompson sets running but never quite catches. There is the biodome itself, the appearance of a character known as Bicycle Girl or Oyin Da, and, in an apparent signal to a thriller subplot that never arrives, sensitives are dying. In the wider xenosphere, where reality is very distorted, Kaaro uses a gryphon as an avatar. Aminat’s brother, Layi, is kept chained in her flat to prevent him burning things using his own xenospheric power.

As can perhaps be gleaned from the previous paragraph there is too much going on in the novel which, as a result, fails to achieve focus. Thompson can undoubtedly write but hasn’t yet found the virtue of economy. Quite why Rosewater has been accorded the accolades it has is therefore a bit obscure.

Pedant’s corner:- “crimes perpetuated in the xenosphere” (crimes perpetrated,) “Ascomytes xenophericus” (elsewhere Ascomytes xenosphericus,) smoothes (smooths,) “amuses me to no end” (‘to no end’ means ‘without purpose’, ‘amuses me no end’ [‘no end’ = infinitely] was meant,) aircrafts “OK it was in dialogue but the plural of aircraft is aircraft.) “None of the people around me are harmed” (None …is harmed.) “None of them want to live in the refugee camps” (None of them wants to live….)

BSFA Award Novel List

I’ve now read three of the short-listed novels for this year’s BSFA Award.

I can’t say I’ve been too struck on any of them.

Gareth L Powell’s Embers of War did not appear to be anything out of the ordinary.

My thoughts on Before Mars by Emma Newman are here.

Dave Hutchinson’s Europe at Dawn was beautifully written but is the fourth in his Fractured Europe sequence and did not add substantially to the world(s) he has created.

I’ll not be reading the Yoon Ha Lee. I found his Nine Fox Gambit was not very good and put me off his fiction for life.

That leaves Tade Thompson’s Rosewater for which I probably don’t now have the time to resource or read. I gather also there is some doubt as to its eligibility as it was published on the Kindle in 2017 rather than 2018.

My reading of the short fiction has not progressed since the short list was announced (see first link in this post.) The usual BSFA booklet containing the stories has not yet arrived. I live in hope. In any case I doubt anything else will be better than Ian McDonald’s Time Was.

BSFA Awards 2017

BSFA Awards 2017 booklet cover

Short fiction nominees:-
The Enclave1 by Anne Charnock (NewCon Press, Feb 2017) is not obviously Science Fiction. Written well enough, it focuses on Caleb, a refugee seemingly from Spain but it could be further south, at a time when the world seems to have global warmed. It has some echoes of Oliver Twist as Caleb is variously exploited and learns to trust no-one. The titular enclave lies somewhere near Manchester.
In These Constellations Will Be Yours by Elaine Cuyegkeng (Strange Horizons, 7/8/17) oraculos from the planet Buyin have enabled much swifter interstellar travel at the cost of having their backs opened, spines, brains and nervous systems attached to the galleon-ships which ply the celestial sea. Some avoid this fate by paying to opt out. There is a revolt.
Uncanny Valley2 by Greg Egan (Tor.com, 9/8/17) is an extract only. The full text is available online but I dislike reading fiction from a screen so this one page sample had to do and was consequently hard to adjudge.
Angular Size3 by Geoff Nelder ( SFerics, 2017) is in the tradition of the big dumb object story, or, in this case, the maybe not quite so big as something the apparent size of the moon but only detectable in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum suddenly appears in the solar system. However it may be as small as a button but, more importantly, a precursor to alien invasion.
The Murders of Molly Southborne4 by Tade Thompson (Tor.com publishing) is also an extract, two pages this time; too short an extract to appraise properly.

In the non-fiction items the extract from Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Iain M Banksa by Paul Kincaid is mainly about Feersum Endjinn, Whit, A Song of Stone and Excession.
Juliet E McKenna’s The Myth of Meritocracy and the Reality of the Leaky Pipe and other Obstacles in Science Fiction and Fantasyb examines the ways in which women are undervalued in and marginalised from SF.
There is an extract from Wells at the World’s Endb by Adam Roberts in which he looks at The Invisible Man.
Various contributors consider The 2017 Shadow Clarke Awardsc.
The Unthinkability of Climate Change: Thoughts on Amitav Ghosh’s ‘The Great Derangement’d by Vandana Singh deals with the unwillingness of people to think about climate change.

Pedant’s corner (fiction):- 1focussed (focused,) sat (sitting,) “no sense of daring-do” (it’s derring-do.) 2a stationers (stationer’s.) 3”they might consider humanity are a scourge on the planet” (is a scourge,) miniscule (minuscule,) focussed (focused,) “‘The White House are having kittens’” (is having,) “‘take it Edwards’” (take it to Edwards,) “‘it’s slowing down but still heading for the Moon’” (unless it was very close to the Moon already, not in any trajectory I’ve ever heard of.) 4feces (faeces.)
(Non-fiction):- ain a passage about Banks’s prefiguring of txt spk, “duz she 1/2 a naim” (I read that as one/two, not ½,) rumor and center (in a British piece about a British writer! Rumour and centre, please.) bCandaules’ (Candaules’s, yet we have Wells’s and Griffins’s,) “to talk an individual caught up in … is to describes” (to talk of an individual… is to describe,) “as good as stopping photons” (as good at stopping.) b”which that presenting evidence” (which presenting that evidence,) practise (practice,) selfevidently (self evidently.) c”as a third wave of riots break out” (a wave breaks out.) dCO2 (CO2.)

BSFA Awards Booklet 2016

The End of Hope Street1 by Malcolm Devlin. First published in Interzone 266, Sep-Oct 2016.
This is told in a curiously flat style which seems devoid of any feeling. Without explanation – which makes this fantasy rather than SF – the houses in the cul-de-sac of Hope Street are one by one becoming unliveable, death to anyone inside or who enters thereafter. The survivors are taken in by their neighbours, but matter-of-factly, not compassionately. The end of hope may touch a nerve in these unenlightened times but it’s a depressing philosophy.

Liberty Bird2 by Jaime Fenn. First published in Now We Are Ten, edited by Ian Whates, NewCon Press, July 2016.
The bird of the title is a racing spaceyacht about to take part in a prestigious race and piloted by Kheo Reuthani, scion of an aristocratic house but homosexual in a society which frowns on that – and where some such aristocratic clans have seemingly managed to survive the removal of an Empress from power. The plot hinges on the fact of Kheo’s sexuality being known to his chief engineer. It’s depressing that such repression of sexuality has to be continually commented on. But the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

Taking Flight by Una MacCormack. First published in Crisis and Conflicts, edited by Ian Whates, NewCon Press, July 2016.
On reading this I was reminded irresistibly of the style and tonal quality of many of Eric Brown’s SF stories. Our (unnamed) narrator having come to find little satisfaction in the bustle of life in the core worlds remembers an invitation by Eckhart, an acquaintance from her privileged youth in college, to visit him on far-flung backwater Wright’s World. Eckhart appears distracted and fretful but arranges for his friend to travel up-country where the scenery is magnificent, the experience of gliding, on drugs, sublime and the secret of Eckhart’s behaviour is revealed. Apart from a single phrase to do with the passage of time and a slightly weak ending this is pitched perfectly.

Presence3 by Helen Oyeyemi. First published in What is Not Yours is Not Yours, an anthology from Riverhead Books, March 2016.
Jill and Jacob, two psychiatrists married to each other – both not in their first marriage – agree to take part in an experiment to simulate the presences of deceased loved ones some people experience after their bereavement. Jill and Jacob are each to feel the presence of the other but an unexpected different presence intrudes. I found the experience of reading this was marred by no less than 17 unusual hyphenations (pur- pose, drop- ping,) in the middles of lines which may have been a hangover from true line-breaks in the original publication.

The Apologists4 by Tade Thompson. First published in Interzone 266, Sep-Oct 2016.
Somehow in taking over Earth the aliens didn’t realise it was inhabited. Only five humans survive but they don’t get on. They are kept alive and given work designing replacements for everything that was lost. Storm’s project is to design simulant humans, Katrina works on roads, buildings etc. But, as Storm says, “Humanity is defined by imperfections.”

Extract from The Arrival of Missives5 by Aliya Whiteley. First published by Unsung Stories, May 2016.
In the aftermath of the Great War Shirley Fearn conceives a passion for education and war-wounded Mr Tiller, her teacher. She goes to his house to speak to him about it and through the window witnesses something strange. This is well-written but unfortunately the BSFA booklet contains only an extract so it is difficult to assess.

In the non-fiction category, Paul Graham Raven’s essay New Model Authors? Authority, Authordom, Anarchism and the Atomized Text in a Networked World discusses an experimental piece of critical writing on Adam Roberts’s novel New Model Army which had appeared on the internet (and which he had uploaded to his clipping service) but which has now vanished – apparently without trace. Raven’s essay read to me as if it were a piece of fiction.

Pedant’s corner:- 1Lewis’ (Lewis’s,) the both of them (“both of them, or “the pair of them” not “the both of them”,) oblivious of (ignorant of was meant; oblivious means “unaware of”, not “unknowing”,) the community prided themselves (itself,) residents committee (residents’, x4) “there had been only few” (only a few,) “one of its residents found their way” (his, or her, way,) more-so (more so,) a sentence containing only subordinate clauses, may have (might have,) focussing (focusing,) “the neighbourhood fought to free themselves” (strictly, itself,) homeopathic (homoeopathic,) PIN number (PIN – the N already stands for number,) the chemists (the chemist’s.) 2miniscule (minuscule,) “Why were this mismatched pair meeting ..?” (Why was this pair meeting?) “a block of portholes have been elected” (a block has been selected,) seven year ago (years,) a lack of punctuation makes at least two sentences read oddly, publically (publicly,) forbad (forbade,) “‘But not every change is for the worst,’” (worse, I think that would be.) 3stood (standing,) focussed (focused,) four absences of paragraph breaks when a different person is speaking. 4none … yells (fine,) but none … mean anything (means,) none of us remember (remembers,) breathing heavy (heavily,) “I cannot move from the aches and pains” (for the aches and pains,) “I know there is such a thing as odourless solvents” (such things as,) whinging (I prefer whingeing) 5”Those from farming stock can possess…..if he is shown..” (those is plural, therefore, “if they are shown”,) smoothes (smooths,) “there are a handful” (is a handful,) Clemens’ (Clemens’s,) “which decorates the entire of his chest and stomach” (the entire? How about “the entirety” or “the whole”.)

free hit counter script