Lora Hates Spam

by Mariana Pavlova

Another story written in present tense. Why do they do it? This one fooled me because the Prologue was in past tense and drew me in, but when the story proper starts, it's in present tense and sometimes switches to second person.

Elisse is a white boy who is used to living in a Tibetan temple in India, but he has been sent to New Orleans for his own safety when the Chinese raid the temples. His English is heavily accented and he has been in a refugee camp, where showers are a luxury. Culture shock is the first of his challenges.

The narrative sometimes changes mid-chapter, slipping from first person to second person. It's a little jarring, as is the sudden changes of tense or person and what looks like a misplaced chapter of a detective story that interjects into the story about Elisse without explanation, albeit set in the same city. This gets tied in a little later.

The writing itself is good, apart from the person and tense anomalies, but intermittent continuity made the early chapters rather difficult to follow. There's a supernatural aspect involved that kept me wanting to see where it was going to go. Elisse sees demons and explains away his occasional injuries as sleepwalking and nightmares, knowing that explaining the truth would land him in an asylum.

The plot itself is very interesting and Elisse is an easily likeable character. Things start heading towards explanations about a quarter through and I found myself wanting to keep reading at the end of each chapter.

All things considered, an unusual and original story worth reading, despite the tense and person changes that kept throwing me off.