Don't Drink the Water

Don't Drink the Water

D. B. Swift

Genre: Horror

46 pages

Age: Teen 

Warnings: Scary themes; light violence

   While having to endure a summer focused around his step-mom, six-year-old brother and father, fifteen-year old Micah is drawn to a gap in the fence of his family's new house. He finds a hill with a small stream at the bottom on the other side of the fence. As he approaches, he finds a knife that he pockets, calling a humanoid creature to claim something of Micah's after Micah took something of his. Micah manages to get away from the creature with the help of a crow, but soon notices that his family is acting strange around the gap in the fence, strange enough to possibly even get them killed.

Writing Style- 6/10

   Not terrible, but not my favorite either. For the most part I enjoyed it, but I seemed to have a problem with Micah's gender. Micah came off as more feminine to me and I had to keep reminding myself that he was not, in fact, a boy.

Plot- 7/10

   The plot was intriguing, but started off pretty slow, mostly being about Micah and how awful it was to have to move and just spend time with his family, especially when they gave him the same rules as his brothers, even though he's much older. It was important, but seemed to drag on longer than necessary to me.

Originality- 6/10

   Although the idea of going through a small opening and going somewhere more dangerous is not new, there were some good things about this. The crow comes to play a much more important role later, but it is not a creature of good and it must be bribed to do this. The story was just too short to have too much originality, which I feel may come out more in the Fledgling and A Chain of Fine Silver, the sequels.

Enjoyability- 7/10

   Overall, I enjoyed it. I was interested in seeing how this creature dealt with Micah and what was going to happen to his family. There was concern for one of the characters and his possible death to the gap and there is a lot that rides on how Micah reacts to his debt.

End- 7/10

   The end was decent. It ties up what is going on and Micah gets some answers to his questions about the creature, but it raises so many more and doesn't answer them all. I think it left a little too much hanging to give it a higher score. It was almost as if this was more of a cliff hanger for a chapter than the end of a story.

Overall- 33/50

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Has anyone else read Don't Drink the Water? What did you think?