'Lulu' by William Dragen

★★

Too Little Substance and...

...too many mistakes. Geez, but this really had the potential to be a cute short fantasy read, but it has far too many issues as it stands now. 

First, the story is choppy and rushed. This isn't surprising since writing a short story can be challenging for the best of writers. Next, it was as if the author wrote precisely what jumped into his head and didn't bother to go back to fix anything. There were so many missing punctuation and words as to make me shake my head in aggravation. Here are just a few examples (of the very many). These are written precisely as they appear: 
​     "Deciding to give up on the day she'd thought to swim across the lake..."
     "Lulu as still as rock, hardly daring to watch..."
​     "Kneeling in front of Mozeo's discarded apron she took a deep breath and gritting her teeth reached in the pocket."

​The dialogue was fairly decent, which was nice, but it tended to be rushed, as with the story line. Scenes that should have been drawn out a bit more, so that we could truly feel what was happening and to gain sympathy for the characters, were super short. Like this:
​     I see a demon. Let me fight that demon. Okay, fight over. I won. 

​​There wasn't a reason why this book had to end where it did either. The writer could have easily combined these short stories to make one cohesive read. If he would just go back and correct the mistakes, this could easily be a 3- or 4-star book