I'll approach this review from the perspective of a reader and potential fan.
You tell a very good story. I would like to read more of it. I think not only you, but this particular story has a lot of potential and what I go into below may seem like a lot, but should be swiftly accomplished in most cases. In a few cases, what can I say? A writer's work is rarely done!
For the most part, your pacing is pretty good. You have set some believable scenes.
There are some problems with it, the vast majority of which are cosmetic in nature. The rest of those problems I'll try to cover more generally.
I've pulled out a few phrases as I came across them and will comment on them as examples:
"All of them loved, all of the cared for." - sometimes a letter is missing, leaving a real word, just not the correct one, this phrase should probably read 'all of them cared for.'
You've heard of 'smoke and mirrors'? - When the sheik replied no, maybe some sort of explanation would be called for in this scene?
"late-August" - the hyphen is a distraction to the flow of the reading.
"In his experience with people he had learned that the eyes were an entry to the soul." - there are a number of places that are bordering on, if not outright cliche or trite. Occasionally, it's alright to use one to move a story along in an unimportant place, but there shouldn't be more than one or two in an entire book. This was part of an intensive scene and probably deserves a unique description. When readers come across too many of these, they think they've already seen all this in life and their minds start to wander away from your story.
"Theodore read Yigal's eyes and saw in them a staunch determination. A wave of pride fell over him, a pride for Yigal's inner strength and character." I don't think you meant pride, here. What had Theodore done for Yigal to feel any pride? How can he feel pride for what is innate in another person? Admiration, maybe but pride?
"Neither was keeping me hostage on a deserted island." - This is confusing. The island was full of people - maybe not natives, but they met the plane. It was not deserted.
"But aging blackness overtook her." - Was a word replaced or left out here? What is an aging blackness?
"heavy enough to prompt her to ground her knuckles into them." - I suspect you just tried to rearrange this sentence and the tense got turned around - shouldn't this be grind instead of ground?
"It was a side of her she had never seen" - A man and a woman are talking, him/she or her/he.
"his mouth watering as the translation to on meaning." - some words just got left out here.
"Churchill" - This comment is about your dialog in general. While it is very good and moves the story along nicely, I think you may have to work on giving each character more distinctive voices. A case in point is Churchill who was famous for his oratorical wit and grandiose generalities. While he may cuss and swear in a small meeting, in this small scene, he otherwise sounds like the guy next door. When you read through this again, I think you'll see that your spies or agents pretty much all talk alike.
"I'm afraid you're going to have to. What we did last night was part of your test. I had to know if you could play along, if you could be loyal. Now I know you can," she said." - Earlier you were talking about how he loved his wife and thought of her when he had to be with other women for the job. So loyal is probably not the correct word to use in this scene - it just seems contradictory.
I know, this sounds like a lot, but most are probably fixed rather quickly. These are only examples. When you proofread this again, you'll need to be on the lookout for similar things. I especially noticed quite a few two letter words that were just plain missing.
As I said, I really like your story and with some attention to detail think it could be great and most likely salable.
I look forward to reading more of your work.
My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Go Noticed" . |
|