February 9 - "Witch War"

“Witch War”
by Richard Matheson
I Am Legend (1995)

* * * (Good) Supernatural

Seven girls sitting in a room must stop an advancing force of troops no more than two miles away. Once the order comes through – after securely storing their chewing gum – the girls unleash an attack the likes of which the oncoming soldiers have never before faced.

What a rocky start to a story. The first two sections – the first two pages – were almost unreadable for me. Matheson made the decision to describe the two forces on collision course through some very choppy prose. The stilted sentence fragments became nails driven into my brain, poking my patience nearly beyond its limit. But, when the battle started, and the sentences began to flow, the story picked up and became quite enjoyable. I’m sure that later on when I’m thinking about this story again, I may change my mind about the beginning (I am actually a huge fan of sentences fragments), but for now, it was off-putting, to say the least.