The Daughter (alternately capitalized as “The daughter” in its IFcomp ballot listing) is a choice-based story created by Giovanni Rubino for IFcomp 2021.
I had difficulty engaging with this work because of
implementation issues. The pale gray text was difficult to read, most of the
passages included spelling errors, and then it ended abruptly. (Right after I
asked to be pointed to my room, everything stopped.)
The Daughter’s blurb makes it sound like The Children of Men meets The Eyes of Heisenberg, but its focus was uneven — some details were described exhaustively while other information felt like it was missing. This might have been translated from another language, which could explain some of its unusual phrasing and descriptions.
If not, there were some bold style choices that
failed to resonate with me.
Overall, I couldn’t find enough relatable context to understand
the forces at work in The Daughter’s far-future setting. Yes, there were some
jokes about the broken culture of the twenty-first century, like our fixation
on true crime podcasts, but they were used to emphasize differences, not to build empathy.
The Daughter might be waiting to be discovered by the right
audience, but at the moment I think it could be improved with more thoughtful editorial
decisions.
It shouldn't have been entered without further editing.
ReplyDeleteMaybe. Other reviewers have asked whether the errors are intentional. It's possible, but if it's a stylistic choice, it's not very appealing.
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