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Date Posted: 04:43:12 03/19/25 Wed
Author: Curious
Author Host/IP: 49.196.254.29
Subject: Re: Nevermore (Prologue) (Richard Ralls) - An Analysis (correction)
In reply to: Curious 's message, "Nevermore (Prologue) (Richard Ralls) - An Analysis" on 04:39:58 03/19/25 Wed

Nick, this is the version to be added to the library.

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Nevermore (Prologue) (Richard Ralls) - An Analysis

Introduction

'Nevermore' was a novel written by Richard Ralls under the pseudonym Flavius Aetius and released on Amazon in paperback form in 2005. The copyright information in the now-removed Amazon preview indicates that an eBook edition was prepared for but the book was never issued in this form. When the last copies of the paperback were sold, the preview was removed from Amazon.(1) What follows is not a review of the story, but rather an analysis of the only complete part of the story that survives, the prologue.

Analysis

The prologue, the only intact part of the story available to this reviewer(1)(2) is bipartite. The first part of the prologue is a funeral scene witnessed from the point of view of one Robert Rainier, a particularly nasty and insidious anti-smoker, full of his own righteousness and willing to exploit the death of his sister from a smoking related illness to begin the process of persuading his daughters to abandon that which gives them pleasure having already driven his wife away from the habit.

The second part of the prologue is the introduction of the second character in the story, the only one mentioned by name in the blurb(3). Tiffany Bruce, in the prologue 13 years old and a devoted smoker for nine of them. She has two siblings, 11 year old Aurelia Bruce, a devoted smoker for three years and her brother Morgan Bruce, whose age is not given in the prologue, but has been smoking since the age of six. In her part of the prologue the reader is treated to her bringing her cousin Patricia Blevins into the smoking fold.

Tiffany's appearances in this part of the prologue reveal that aside from being a prodigious smoker(4), she's a hedonistic smoking evangelist(5) of the type who wants to spread the wonderful thing they've found.(6) It's clear from the blurb(3) that the story would have been built around the interaction of Robert and Tiffany, a clear case of irresistible force meeting unmoveable object.

Of note in Robert's part of the introduction is a sequence that makes it clear that at stories start he's the only survivor of his siblings, his brothers died in WWII and his only sister from a smoking related illness. This gives him both the burdens of survivors guilt and the shame of never having served his country during it's greatest trial. However the rest of the characters makeup as displayed in his portion of the prologue wipe away any degree of sympathy the former facts might raise in the mind of the reader.

Contrast to the scenes of Tiffany seducing Patricia into the habit is provided by an interlude featuring her and Patricia's parents and her brother Morgan, his relative unimportance to the story is shown by the fact that like his uncle, we are given little detail about him other than that he is like the adults around him a devoted smoker and that like his siblings was raised in a smoking permissive environment. Patricia's mother on the other hand reveals that wherever they live things are much different and that she was after many failed attempts to get her daughter to start without openly encouraging her, concerned that she'd given birth to a non-smoker!

It is an effective prologue, it sets up the key characters and does manage to build some anticipation for whatever was to follow. That said the author's use of not only young start ages, but fairly extreme levels of smoking(7) and the likely introduction of sadistic imagery/acts into the plotline does mitigate against that in my own opinion.

Notes:

1. This reviewer took the precaution of saving the preview in the form of a series of screenshots prior to it being removed.
2. The preview consists of the complete prologue to the story and the incomplete first chapter which appears to follow directly on from the second part of the prologue.
3. The full blurb as taken from Amazon reads: "Intentions are capricious things; they are a fool's guide and the Devil's play-ground. Interesting, isn't it, how the best of intentions pave the road to hell with the corpses of their victims?" This is a tale of human nature and human will. It is the story a girl named Tiffany and the tyrant whose tragic good intentions would make herself, herself detest. His will would lead them both down a road paved with his good intentions. This road lead to that infamous gate whose inscription read: "ABANDON EVERY HOPE, WHO ENTER HERE!" This was their destiny, he was her Raven, and they would be bound together by bonds of fate like steel that would hold them bound for their forever. Neither would ever be the same again neither could ever be the same again, not after what they had done. What horrors this world could hold and the pain that the tyranny of men could wreck! It was indeed an ancient misery that man turned upon himself as a snake eating its own tail in an insatiable greed. Oh, Woe! Tyranny was thy soul! The very plague of the ages; drenched in the blood of men, it wallowed eternally in this gore and gloried in the suffering of its victims! Beaten down in a flood of fresh blood spilled in Liberty's sweet name, it would but rise again like a phoenix of horror to renewed slaughter. Of all the enemies man had ever faced, man was the worst. Now they, as so many luckless generations before, had to confront this auld demon of death and destruction and face all of the horrors it held. And it would hold nothing of its horrors back, for there was no mercy in its nature."
4. Her habit is somewhere between 3.5 to 4 packs a day (The specific number given is 80 cigarettes a day, so how many packs depends on pack size.)
5. For an explanation of what a Smoking Evangelist is see this reviewer's essay in 'Smoking Fetish Character Types' which is available in the Noble Leaf Library.
6. As described by her mother: "...Tiffany was a proliferator, that one. She adored cigarettes and pitied nonsmokers."
7. Jen, a friend of Tiffany mentioned by name, but not appearing in the prologue is described as having a habit in the 5 to 6 pack a day range.

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