Hi, I was randomly browsing the site and stumbled upon this prologue to a novel. Unfortunately, this is the I only part, so I can't keep reading :(
I felt this was good from a developmental standpoint. You set up an interesting story. But the quality of the writing was a little hard to go through with long paragraphs.
Hello, I was browsing the site and this is the first Lou Ryan story I've read.
I'm impressed. I like genre fiction more than pretentious literary fiction, and this story was simple and effective.
The only minor improvement I can see is just clarifying the scene when Lou and Estelle sneak out of the speakeasy, since I jumped to the conclusion that there was a bigger time jump.
The quality of your prose and writing were ok... just ok. Obviously, it's much better than some of the stuff here because it's grammatically correct, but it just felt... off to me.
The reason I say "off" is because it was kind of pretentious. I'm not saying it's bad to criticize the current generation and their narcissistic, self-absorbed tendencies, but this is a common theme that has been done to death in more unique ways than your story.
The most engaging part of the story was the "Russian Roulette" part with traffic. The scene with Jesabelle was good too, but pretentious.
Still, I read the whole thing and you kept me engaged. So good job.
Hello, I was bored so I looked through previous reviews I had done to see if I could find something good to read and review. I may not be the target audience since I am not a young child, but hopefully my perspective can help.
I enjoyed this story/allegory. The message towards a child may not be at the right time, though. It would be better suited for an adolescent or young teenager that has to prepare for the callousness of adulthood.
One minor flaw that is an easy fix is the brothers' ages. I for some reason thought they were young, when they are actually adults. Since you said the story was geared toward children, I assumed young MCs since that's how it typically is. A line specifying they are already adults would fix this.
This was a cute story. Incorporating the Harry Potter characters, though it may not have fit in with the time line if events (as far as I can remember), was still good.
As for flaws, there were a couple of places where the prose got clunky. Ron telling Savita she'd fall out of the car was one place; the other I couldn't find on a quick reread. There was one place you typed "willage" instead of "village" also.
Otherwise, I liked your story. I'm sorry this critique wasn't in time for the contest.
One last thing: I haven't read the Harry Potter books in over a decade. What is a thestral?
To be honest, I didn't understand the ending? Did the MC get a miraculous second chance to not murder his wife's secret lover? Did he just hallucinate the whole scenario after killing his wife's lover the first time? Did he get a second chance? Considering how he went back to the same exact hotel room, I don't know.
An issue I had with your prose was that you aren't really direct and purposeful. You seem to go off on tangents at time, making the experience unenjoyable.
I'm sorry if I'm being too harsh. The beginning had me hooked since I thought I was getting a story about a man running from the law. Instead, it fell apart at Anthony Stone's introduction and was too vague to appreciate.
Hello, you asked if the story had clarity, so I will address that first.
I (admittedly stupidly) had assumed Peters was the MC instead of Isaac. This confusion lasted a little bit.
I know you had to cut a lot of words, but more obvious dialogue tags would have also helped.
There was one grammatical error I noticed: you used "to" consecutively about sixty percent in. Otherwise that was fine.
As for the story, you could easily expand on it since there's so many unanswered questions. One question I had was you said when Isaac was a kid, he found a small metallic ball in the yard? What was that ball? Did he show it to anyone else?
Besides all that and the fact that I typically don't like sci-fi (unless it's more of a human conflict that happens to be in a sci-fi setting), I did enjoy this piece.
If you're submitting this piece for a contest, my biggest recommendation to keep a low word count is disregard mentioning the metal ball and use those words for dialogue tags.
Hello, I read your story from beginning to end. The prose and dialogue kept me engaged and I didn't get bored at all.
As for the subject matter. I guess it was touching and sentimental, but I couldn't find myself relating to any of the characters. I thought Noah was a jerk for not wanting to bond with his son, and I don't think you did a good enough job making Isaac developed enough to care. To improve this story, make Isaac more of a unique character beyond "Ten-year-old boy."
As a person that is heavily into spirituality and metaphysics, I happened to understand your piece on a personal level.
I'm not inclined to argue in favor of "God's" decision to make life forms. It feels unnecessarily callous of Him to create an unhappy person when, I would like to assume, He has the agency to create any life form.
That is my biggest gripe with God: since I don't know what His world is, I would assume He has agency. I believe every major religion on the planet makes agency one of His most important characteristics.
If you're willing to DM on this site, I wouldn't mind discussing this stuff with you.
This wasn't bad at all, I enjoyed the quality of your writing. Your prose kept me engaged.
From a developmental standpoint, I had two issues: why did Tom and his friend stay behind in the field by the mote when those three other kids had the sense to run? And, far more importantly, the ending was unsatisfying. This is labeled as a short story and your review request is asking if it's good enough to publish. I wouldn't think so because of that ending.
So, yes, I would change up or expand the ending first, then find a reviewer that reads modern sci-fi stories to answer if it's good enough to publish. I can't really answer that question since I never read sci-fi stories that are published these days.
Hi. So what I liked about this piece was that you did a good job portraying Dexter's pain, anguish, and poor mental state that I would assume came after his son's sudden death. That was good.
What could use improvement was how the first few paragraphs had much longer (too long) sentences that felt like rambling. If you broke up sone of those sentences with a semicolon, it would read clearer.
However, you might want to take that advice with a grain of salt since those early sentences contributed to the tone/mood of Dexter's thought process.
My biggest complaint was that there was just so much more that could have been said. Was Dexter's married when his son died? How did he end up homeless? Does he now have a mental illness? Who is it that Jeremy warns Dexter about? There were just so many unanswered questions, that I don't feel satisfied with the ending.
I liked your story; it was good. I don't normally care for things as sentimental as this, but it was executed in such a way that it didn't bother me. Good job.
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