Introduction
Thank you for purchasing my five chapter reviews. Getting novels looked at is difficult. That is why I placed these in the auction package.
Not being an expert in reviewing or writing, I offer these comments and suggestions based on my knowledge and experience. You, as master of this work, will of course, decide the relevance of any points I make. My reviewing procedure consist of two readings. The first is to gather overall and first impressions, look for the hook, and examine overall story consistency. The second is to look for story editing and copy editing points and make suggestions. On longer stories, I may point out some grammar, technical, or word choices and leave repeat similar considerations to you.
First Impressions
The prologue and chapter one are not on the list of five. The back of the book blurb for the overall novel does not sound military in nature. The character introduced here, is a Black Ops Colonel giving this chapter military attributes.
This chapter is well written with few grammar errors, and appears to be a third or above draft by the clean nature of the narration. The voice is third person limited.
Line By Line
Groom Dry Lake, Nevada
Colonel Samuel Remy reclined in his handmade Italian chair, eying a half-empty Budweiser longneck teetering on the edge of his desk. He reached for the bottle, drained it, then tossed it into a dark corner, receiving a hollow clank as it landed in a trash can already sprouting an amber forest of empties.
"Another dead soldier," he murmured.
Your description is excellent, the perfect balance of imagery and words. I love your metaphor.
Bored beyond his usual Friday night self-imposed delirium, Sam lifted a half-filled tumbler to the light, admiring the way the ice cubes sparkled through the ocher tint of Johnnie Walker Red.
If I understand what you are trying to convey, beyond might not be the best word choice: consider despite instead.
Then he dropped the precision-weighted crystal and watched it fall twelve inches before landing flat on the desk with a solid thump. A few drops of liquid splashed over the rim, landing on his new shirt. He dabbed at the stain then gave up with a long sigh, lacking the energy for even a small tantrum. The evening was not going well.
The chair's smooth leather fit Sam's form like a baseball in a well-used glove. His left foot rested on the edge of a solid Egyptian ebony desk carved with intricate cartouches depicting the dynasties of the Pharaohs. The desk had been a gift from President Anwar Sadat only a month before his assassination...a job Sam had declined.
Sam took a long puff on the well-chewed stogie protruding like a cancerous appendage from the corner of his mouth. He eyed a wooden box on his desk, then flipped it open, revealing cigars of impressive girth cased in clear plastic tubes. The inside lid bore a hand-written inscription: Sam. These are my brother's finest from the upper island plantation. Enjoy. Fidel.
Sam's eyes closed, fluttered open, and then closed again. Half drunk, and past midnight, he knew the memories would come, his last mission replayed like a dormant virus waiting for a weakness. Like so many times before, he let them take over with a long, submissive sigh.
I think your metaphor, like a dormant virus waiting for a weakness, doesn't quite fit. You metaphor implies a big one time surprise attack. Like so many times before, shows it a recurring PTSD reaction.
*****
Faces coalesced as his team moved through smoke and flame, the village of Srebrenica, Bosnia their backdrop. The structures that were not reduced to smoldering ruins stood frozen in time...a patchwork of rough-hewn stone and wood hovels fronted by mud streets. Sam shrugged off a chill as he and his team approached the medieval fortress lording over the carnage. Images of bloody feudal lords and dark-age misery oozed from its ancient stone walls, now pocked and peppered with the scars of modern war. Once inside, he went about his work with practiced intensity, but troubled by a curious sense of dread he hadn’t been able to shake all day. His dread soon became problematic.
His dread soon became problematic, does not agree with what happens. The statement implies that the dread itself results in the coming problem. Here are some possible rewrites that I think match your intention:
His dread was soon verified.
The reason for his dread would soon become apparent.
His dread would soon be realized.
"Stop staring at me or I'll kill you again, you murdering bastard," Sam wheezed through clenched teeth, his face only inches from the man he had just killed. He took a silent breath and exhaled in an effort to stem the errant rush of adrenaline. His sudden outburst had broken a personal imperative to never show emotion. And there There it was again, the chill. Okay, shake it off. Move on.
Even though the Chicago Manual of Style (2010 edition) now allows sentences to begin with a conjunction such as and or but, that practice should still be avoided.
Whether they were natural-born killers, mass murderers, or just plain psychopaths, their reactions were always the same—a wide-eyed, dumbfounded gaze of surprise at the moment of death. The shocking death masks had creeped him out at first, but as years passed and Sam became more proficient at eliminating targets, their dying expressions became a telltale sign of his surgical perfection. Yet, for some reason, he had just lost his cool, his Zen. His active sonar was pinging and he didn't know why. Something wasn't right.
The above paragraph contains a comma splice (run-on sentence).
A child cried in the distance. Not a normal sob of disappointment, but a mournful wail full of fear dissolving into a haunting echo. He cocked his head, straining to identify the sound’s origin, then shook it off, knowing that any distraction from the plan at this point would mean failure for his team.
He moved through the ancient halls like a silent Nosferatu, disturbed motes of dust the only evidence of his passage. According to the intel, his last task waited behind the next door.
You and I know what intel means. Will you readers? Even at the price of compromising on reality, consider something like: According to the intelligence briefing, his last task waited behind the next door.
Moonlight beamed into the room through an iron-barred window, the vertical rods casting elongated shadows of dark and light across the floor and up the wall, bathing a sleeping man's torso in monotone striations. Sam's grease-painted visage emerged from the shadow and leaned over, poised, studying every nuance in the man's face, making sure.
To me, the above paragraph is a great use of the English language, but I'm a highly educated individual. Who is your target audience? Consider simplifying this a bit. Monotone striations? Also, the style isn't consistent throughout. Why only occasional bursts of sophistication?
3.01 | Use everyday words. Clarity is everything in writing, and concise writing depends upon your choice of words. When you describe an elevator as “a vertical transportation unit” or you refer to a leaky pipe as a “plumbing rupture,” clarity goes out the window, and so does your reader’s attention span and interest. For fiction, you can write colorful prose but still use everyday language to tell a story your readers can easily understand and enjoy. For nonfiction, communicate relevant facts in the clearest and most direct way possible without sacrificing interest. An emphasis on clarity doesn’t mean you should limit yourself to three-letter words; but use familiar, everyday words as much as possible. Avoid using obscure words most readers won’t recognize. If you have to look up a word in the dictionary, it’s safe to assume many of your readers will need to look it up too. Most won’t bother, so you may lose a large segment of your audience before they turn the page. You can add clarity to your prose by avoiding stilted and unnecessary phrasing, known in some writing circles as “gobbledygook.” Instead, use concrete words familiar to most readers and that have clear meanings.
De A'Morelli, Richard. Elements of Style 2017 (p. 25). Spectrum Ink. Kindle Edition.
The man’s eyes moved under pallid lids, dodging back and forth like trapped insects trying to escape. Age creased his face. A lifetime of harsh environments had tanned his skin to tarnished leather. His lips trembled, then curled in a sardonic grin. It seemed even in sleep he was up to no good.
Once again a child's cry reverberated through the stone corridors. Sam paused for an instant, then focused all his attention on the sleeping man, watching his chest rise with every breath, the veins on his neck pulse with every heartbeat.
A rush of air disturbed the serenity. The man opened his eyes wide in shock as he sucked in a deep gulp of air. His tongue quivered, and then relaxed, his expression of horror becoming frozen in time as the last trace of breath left his lungs with a reluctant wheeze.
Not wasting a moment, Sam pulled the ice pick from the dead general's temple. As always, just a trickle of blood oozed from the wound. He sheathed his weapon of choice and pressed the backlight on his chronometer. Four minutes and twelve seconds had passed since entering the building. Time to go.
(Time to go) is a fragment. Consider: ...entering the building—time to go.
Before he disappeared into the darkness, Sam laid his calling card on the dead general's forehead—an image of the grim reaper. Scrawled across the bottom were the words: I love my job.
*****
The memory faded. It always did. Ten long years had passed, but the excitement of the hunt, the adrenaline rush of the kill, and the frightened wail of an innocent child continued to haunt him.
Sam caressed the stump of his right leg, now just a phantom sensation at the end of his knee. His prosthesis lay on an adjacent end table, an amazing, one-off prototype of experimental Nano-hydraulic technology. Its ballistic skin, texture, and coloration was unrecognizable from the real thing; a vivid reminder to a man scarred both mentally and physically by the ill-fated mission.
Unrecognizable, needs a better word choice. Consider: indistinguishable.
Sam Remy stood six-foot-two. A sinuous rope of a man, his exercise regime never allowed his two-hundred-pound frame to harbor a noticeable amount of body fat. He glared at the starched uniform bearing a rainbow of service awards hanging outside his closet door, untouched for over a year. Is this the end, he thought. Has time finally worn me down to just memories?
Omit the hyphen between hundred and pound. It is not a compound word.
Two antique telephones sat on Sam's desk. A red phone, reportedly given to Eisenhower by Winston Churchill, connected Sam with the Special Operations Commander, General Kohl, a near mythical man who had recruited Sam twenty years before. The precious sentence contains a comma splice (run-on sentence). The phone had rung twice in the last eight years which made it an interesting paperweight in Sam’s eyes. The second phone, a white push button model, origin unknown, connected directly to the base commander, General Powell. Its ring always brought problems. Another cordless phone sat on his right along with a combination printer, scanner, and fax machine. It was used by his engineering team and rang incessantly until two weeks ago when his aircraft assembly plant shut down. At the center of the desk sat a soap stone soapstone paperweight bearing a favorite inscription: "There are always possibilities."
Waiting for a reason, for orders, had caused the adrenaline-pumping memories to resurface. Reliving a dangerous and vibrant time in his life had tweaked his self-control and he was slowly losing himself in an alcoholic haze. Years had passed since Sam had last ended the life of another human and now he was thinking about killing again. With his mind resurrecting lurid glimpses of long dormant skills, his mood had plunged into a dark place.
A phone rang, bringing Sam partly back to the moment. Its distinctive ring and a built-in blinking light gave Sam’s addled brain the surprising indication that the red paperweight had just come alive. When it rang again, he jumped, followed by an irrational urge to stand at attention. Sam gathered his composure. This was unexpected, and untimely. The general had earned his nickname in the netherworld of black ops through his supernatural ability to pull the strings of powerful men. After years of silence, the great Oz wanted to talk to Sam?
I love that last phrase!
The phone kept ringing until Sam realized the general wasn't going away despite his unbecoming condition. He took a deep breath and picked up the handset.
The background noise coming through the old receiver echoed the steady thump, thump, thump of a helicopter in flight, not the standard two-seater's that flitted around the base like angry bumblebees, but a large, heavy-lift unit with twin turbofan engines powering massive rotors.
The above paragraph contains a comma splice (run-on sentence).
Sam waited for a few more seconds then spoke loudly into the handset to compensate for the background noise. For a moment, his memory flickered, sending him back to Vietnam, flying low on an Air-Cav Air-Cavalry strike deep in country.
The same logic as for, intel, above was considered.
"Colonel Remy," he said.
The return voice was both commanding and unmistakable—a boozy, Macanudo-hushed voice that had etched itself like acid into Sam's subconscious at its first hearing. Even though he had not talked to the man for many years, the power of his persona came through the tiny speakerphone like the snap of a bullwhip.
{c:reda boozy, Macanudo-hushed Huh? Even lost me on that one.
"Get yourself together, Sam. I'm coming over to see you. Be there in five. We need to talk face-to-face. Don't you just love this spur-of-the-moment crap?"
"Not a problem sir. I'll be waiting." Sam's brain flashed to their first meeting. "You still drink bourbon, General? Schenleys, if I remember right."
I'm as impressed as the General, nice little detail there.
A curious pause gave Sam the distinct impression that he had surprised the general. Finally, the voice replied, "That's my boy," after which the line went dead. "That's my boy." After which the line went dead.
After which the line went dead, is NOT dialogue attribution, but an action tag. The comma after boy should be a period, and After should be capitalized.
Sam grabbed his prosthesis and attached it to his stub with a slight hiss of vacuum. He stood, his eyes moving from the half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker on the desk to the trashcan full of tall boys in the corner. Sighing, he scratched his two-day stubble, bit hard on the Cuban, and summed up the situation with a single uttered one word.
"Shit."
It's your writing. I just thought the above change made the sentence concise, and powerful.
Additional Unmarked Corrections
There are a plethora of missing commas. You copy editor will fix those. When I add or remove commas, it's almost impossible for the writer to see the changes.
Final Thoughts
This chapter is very well edited, and tells and excellent story. Usually, I do not review samples this well written—congratulations. This is some of the best and cleanest writing I've seen here on WDC. Even I post first raw drafts here, which I realized only a couple of months ago, is't the best idea. Second draft minimum should be considered for posting. As you know from reading my novel, it's first draft missing the last four chapters.
If I had this chapter to read, I'd be satisfied with the quality. I would have enjoyed it. The inconsistent voice sophistication would have raided my eyebrows, but not thrown me out of the story. A couple of the, not quite right, word choices would have. You do need to wordsmith your last revision.
I give this chapter four stars.  I'm using the WDC guidelines on my rating. Five stars is ready to send to the printer for publication. Four star is a high rating. It means, great writing, some grammar and punctuation errors, with some additional considerations like the need for some corrected word choices. In other words, GOOD JOB! Thanks for sharing this with me.
Original Chapter Count: 1728 words
Time For Review: 5 hours 15 minutes
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| (4.5)
| (4.0)
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