Reviewer: Zoreb Signed [Report This]
Date: October 05 2026 9:40 PM Title: Chapter 1: Dean

Read this story after reading the far superior 'A Paler Day' and would recommend others doing so as it works well as a stand alone.  'Violet Night' would then provide background on the main characters who got shrunk and the preceding events.  I had sympathy for some characters in 'Paler Day' but no longer do so (for after reading the first novel I realized they were jerks and some deserved what they got).  As I did like having sympathy for them being in that situation reading the stories out of order was more enjoyable.  This isn't a criticism of the author who developed the characters the way he did but I would have viewed 'Paler' differently if I read it after 'Violet'.

One character steals the shrinking device and thinks that he will have wealth and power even though he doesn't know how it works.  In real life if he didn't disappear into a NSA black site the Russian Mafia would have kidnapped him and after a thorough interrogation (with the possible painful removal of some body parts) when they realized he knew nothing and had no value but got the name of the inventor, liquidated him and moved on.

Outside the story plot, the writing wasn't great (it improved greatly in 'Paler').  I'm not going to detail it all but will provide two annoying examples.  Characters tend to make such statements (mainly in their heads) like 'His blazer cost more than my car.'   While this itself isn't a problem, when it occurs like 12 or 20 times with different characters making similar comparisons with various luxury items, it becomes trite and banal.  

Secondly, how did the characters know that they were 5 millimeters tall?  More than one mentioned it.  It wasn't like there were rulers lying all about.  As the author he could have let the reader know to what size they shrunk without the characters knowing anything more than that they were small ('they shrunk out of their clothes to 5 millimeters' would have worked fine).  This story takes place in LA, so being Americans they would have used inches (0.1968503937 to be exact though it doesn't type well and would be even more ridicules for them to say). 

There were size inconsistencies.  A few people who saw the victims thought they were mice or rats.  We know the sizes of those rodents and no one would mistake them for such.  This was annoying as well as how they were locked in a room and had to await someone opening it to escape.  C'mon, they should be able to crawl under any door unless specifically sealed like a walk-in refrigerator. Twice they had to do so in situations where a gap would certainly exist.

My advice is to read 'A Paler Day' first then read "A Violet Night' for background information on the characters and the preceding events

Reviewer: barabba9000 Signed [Report This]
Date: June 06 2026 11:33 AM Title: Chapter 1: Dean

Seems interesting