Thanks everyone for the kind words. There's a high standard to measure up to around here. It's great to have my first attempt in this genre well received. Chuck: too many adjectives? It's certainly possible - quite easy, in fact - to have too many. Generally, the fewer adjectives the better. Strong nouns and verbs do a better job: adjectives and adverbs often feel weak. I'm not sure there are that many in there, but there's certainly a lot of description so that may give the same impression. Most of the adjectives are concerned with colour and tied to the dead man, because the story opens and closes (or rather, closes then opens) with his eyes. And, yes - someone got brought back to life :-)