For reference, the Amalgam saga is a series of seven blogs written by TheSomnambulist. They have a set order: Prestidigitation, Urban Malefic, The World Through These Eyeholes, Cold and Lonely Days, Metaphysical Fiction (plus companion blog Dawghouse), and No Gods No Masters. This post contains the first four.
Prestidigitation
Prestidigitation is a 23-post blogpasta about Marcinius Trowess, a student who hears things in his sleep. Over the course of the story, the things he hears are analyzed and looked into, dismissed as hallucinations caused by sleep paralysis, and then revealed to be something malevolent that controls him and drives him to homicide.
The story is simple, and the presentation is easy on the eyes and quick to read. Marcinius is presented as an apathetic teenager, his blog set up only for a school assignment, and so TheSomnambulist chose a generic blog template to better get this across. He did a good job with this.
Really, Prestidigitation isn't much. It takes a few minutes to read, the story's really easy to follow, and.. there's nothing wrong with it. There's a lack of punctuation here and there, but that works with Marcinius' nature. What I do particularly like about the story, though, is that it can easily work even outside of the Fear Mythos. There's no explicit mention of Fears (though the forces Marcinius listens to are most likely The Choir); the story is simple enough that anyone could read it. It works very well. It's just.. really simple. But hey, we're just getting started with this saga.
Urban Malefic
At 42 posts, Urban Malefic is much bigger than the first blog, this one being more of a blogella, and the story has a lot more going on. The posts are considerably longer on average, though there's so few line breaks that it can feel like constant walls of text.
The story's about a man named Portnoy Augustus who wakes up trapped in "the City" (The Empty City of the Fear Mythos). Thanks to a bit of science fiction, his thoughts are transcribed onto the blog in a stream-of-consciousness format. Throughout the course of the story, Portnoy explores a large variety of increasingly surreal locations that don't run on the conventional laws of physics. It's revealed to him that he's going through some sort of test that won't be explained (as this would influence the course of the test), and he goes through personal trials involving his past and his issues with isolation. Towards the end, he develops a firm understanding of the physics of the City, even an ability to manipulate his environment, only to find out through a parallel self (it makes sense in the story) that the test the City was coaxing him towards would result in the entire Earth being absorbed into the hellish surreal environments of The Empty City. With this knowledge in mind, Portnoy refuses to comply with further testing, and uses his environment-manipulating abilities to end the blog.
Really, it's a cohesive narrative with a very entertaining narrator. Portnoy's commentary is amusing as hell, which is exactly what the story needs to keep the reader going through the constant walls of text and confusing events. Because as interesting as the plot is, the actual story can be difficult to trudge through. Most of the posts are labelled as nothing more than numbers, and most posts are a big wall with no line breaks, leaving a rather monotonous reading experience. But if you stick to it and focus on reading, Urban Malefic provides a quirky and mind-bending tale.
The World Through These Eyeholes
Even bigger than the last, The World Through These Eyeholes has 98 posts to its name, presenting us with not a blogella but the Amalgam saga's first proper blog. It's about the Faceless Bastard, a man who wears a mask at all times to cover the remains of where his face once was, a man who lives with a flock of birds nesting inside him at all times. The birds (The Convocation of the Fear Mythos) are sentient and give Faceless jobs to do, often jobs that other twisted creatures need doing (the Fears). As Faceless does his jobs, he uncovers a Fear named The Brute who is dormant and trying to rise again, and with the help of The Convocation, Faceless is able to subdue it again.
During this lengthy story, we get to know and learn to love the Faceless Bastard and find out how he got to be this strange figure he is. Honestly, he's one of the most memorable protagonists I've seen in a Fearblog. He has a wit about him that I can only assume means TheSomnambulist has a knack for observational comedy, especially when coupled with Urban Malefic. Though Eyeholes falls into a similar problem as the previous blog, in that there are an awful lot of walls of text making it daunting to read on. Luckily, this problem appears considerably less as the story goes on.
I don't have many complaints; the story's really well put together for what it's worth. The characters are memorable (The Faceless Bastard appeared in the Fear Mythos RPG, and The Brute's legacy is still being discussed to this day), the way the story connects to Urban Malefic isn't too blatant but is still greatly written, and the story itself is filled with addictive twists and turns to keep you reading.
Cold and Lonely Days
Cold and Lonely Days has 39 posts, presenting a blogella about twelve-year-old Megan Jilees, a girl who becomes a servant to The Cold Boy and whose brother has sharp claws. The story consists of her being taken through a confusing and not-often-explained journey featuring a lot of Fears that hunt her without outright harming her and a mysterious figure named the Muffin Man who helps her find answers.
The thing is, not many answers are given. It's rather frustrating, especially considering the story is told through such an unreliable lens that even simple details are obfuscated. But towards the end, Megan makes the comment that she doesn't want to know the answers because they're unimportant, and this.. well, I feel like that was a great comment to make. It made it clear that this was supposed to be a confusing experience, just like it will have been for Megan. And when viewed like that, I definitely enjoyed this story. Again, TheSomnambulist gives us a memorable character with the Muffin Man. And if the cliffhanger ending is anything to consider, he'll probably see more use in the upcoming blogs.
But I have to be honest, I didn't enjoy this story as much as the last two. Honestly, reading it gave me a bit of a headache. The confusing nature was great when it was over and I looked back on it, but the actual experience was just.. frustrating. I felt like the posts I was reading didn't matter, since they were told through a perspective I couldn't connect to or often understand. And the blog's colour scheme was fairly monotonous, just blue and white.
So what we have is an interesting story with some details explained and others kept a mystery. It's not perfect, but it gets the job done.
Read the second half of the Amalgam saga review here.
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