Review of Klarity by C. J. Anderson

Klarity by C. J. Anderson is a short story about a scientist who creates a miracle drug that will cure Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases. He rushes to test the drug on his ill son, and while the drug works, it has the serious side effect of turning him into an atheist. As an extremely religious man, this is a side effect that he cannot live with and he must make the decision whether or not to destroy his groundbreaking discovery. While I thought the concept of this story was interesting, and in some ways reminded me of Flowers for Algernon, I thought it was poorly executed. The writing seemed amateur and awkward in many places and the timeline jumping around was somewhat confusing. I also felt the religious zealotry in this story was over the top. I know there are religious extremists out there, but the way it was done in this story wasn’t very believable to me and it almost seemed like it was meant to be satire, but if it was, it wasn’t very funny. I also did not find the ending to the story to be at all satisfying and for the most part didn’t seem to have too much to do with the rest of the story. Overall I don’t think I enjoyed this story very much and wouldn’t recommend it. It’s a shame really because it was such an intriguing story premise, but it could have been done so much better than it was.