industrialistDragon

This is much improved! Chapter one was good, but could probably stand to be streamlined a little bit. I liked the way the dread built, but then it sort of stagnated after the reveal, with everyone kind of turning in circles going "what should we doooo" over and over. The action in the second chapter was described well, in that I had a pretty good idea of who was where and doing what, but even then it started to get confusing by the end. It's a pretty long fight. I agree with the others that more characterization for Ily would help a lot. Right now, I don't care very much for her, and I'd be more interested in B as a primary protagonist, but that's mostly because we get so much more of his personality, and are shown a great deal more of why he cares about the things that are important to him. As I go: "B turned from him as he spoke" -- from here to the end of the paragraph (six sentences) I have no idea what's going on. seas, eyes, eyes in the seas in the mind in the eyes and someone's dead only not because sea-eye-minds? Honestly, no clue. Dawnshadow -- MUCH better. much. If I'm right in thinking it's a replacement for the other name. "especially on the women" So the idea that women look better than men in the armor is really skating awfully close to the trope that women's armor has to look good and be fanservice-y whereas men's armor can be just practical, and that's really not great. I see @kais covered this pretty well, too. I'm also a little bit wondering why in the middle of this supposed massive crisis he's remarking that his women soldiers look well in their uniforms. I'm catching a fair number of grammar issues, spelling errors, and things that're capitalized that probably shouldn't be -- types of wood, random verbs or other nouns, things like that. It gets especially heavy in the second chapter, so much so that I had to reread a few passages to understand them. I'm a bit confused by the imaginary friend? I thought it was one of the street rats from last time, but it's not? She seems to not do terribly much, either. I'm also a bit confused by the random not-bridge and the water. Ily's got all this fantastic power and she falls for a lowbie illusion? Can she not detect other magic somehow, along with all the other stuff she's got? Who's casting the illusion, because it seems like that's a huge range if it's B or one of the soldier-people... I am mostly just confused at this point and don't feel anything about the fact that she's drowning.

Hello and welcome! Here are some tutorials on how to do double spacing on a few different word processor programs: MSWord: From support.office.com and from a different site ; WordPad: From WikiHow ; GoogleDocs: From support.google.com and from WikiHow ; Apple (* -- I don't actually have a mac so I can't verify these instructions. They look right though) from support.apple.com ; Adobe inDesign: (* -- again, I don't have inDesign, so I'm mostly guessing. Seems decent, though) from forums.adobe.com . Double spacing really helps with readability on screens and is a pretty common function, so if you can't find a website with a walkthrough, usually your program's help file will have an entry about line spacing in it. Now that the administrative issues are taken care of onto the comments! As I go: "had often found ... were ... unbreakable." So Ily has tried breaking these walls before? That's interesting. " had been assembled for twenty years" So... assuming at least age 15 to sneak into the army to see that kind of fighting, that puts Ily at around 35+ years old. That is also interesting. I was assuming him to be a decent amount younger... I'm having a hard time reconciling Ily saying to the boy "you got yourself into this" with the force of his reaction when the boy dies. The switch seems very abrupt and I'm left thinking "well, what did he expect to happen?" honestly. I am also wondering why the powers-that-be sent someone so horrible at negotiations to negotiate. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. ---- Overall -- This is well written, especially for how young you are. I know I sure didn't sound this poised at 13! (and I thank all the kitten gods of the internet I had the foresight to keep those awful early writings off the web for the most part XD ) There are a lot of summaries and explanations in this chapter, and I think that is making the situation seem less tense than it is supposed to be. I was also thrown off a bit by the "negotiation" conversations. That section in particular seemed more stilted and abrupt than the rest of the piece. It's a solid premise and I am interested to read more, but I had a bit of difficulty keeping focused on what I was reading, and I think that's because I didn't feel a lot of tension or emotional investment in the scene.

This one feels a little muddled at the start. With the clear nice twist at the end of the previous chapter, the beginning of this one feels like it lacks direction. I like the parts about Q worrying about the f-in-law, but the rest of it it just feels jumbled to me. I like the breakfast scene, it feels very real, however I agree with the others that the car ride is where the chapter gets a little long and saggy. Once they get to the accident site it starts picking up again for me, but I do admit to skimming some of Q&M's actual arrival there. I'm not entirely sure I need more info about the client so much as I'd like to have more reactions for Q&M about the client. If they were more invested in him, I think I would be, too. I consume a LOT of crime drama television, and I've seen it both ways: where the show spends a good portion of the first act getting the viewer to feel for the victim/villain, and where all of the investment is in the investigators and the dead body is just a thing for the plot to revolve around. I do like the idea of M using the crazy car ride to answer/ask personal questions. it seems very like her to pick the most uncomfortable, distracting time for something like that. Very good end line! (and lead up to it!)

Hello and welcome (back) to Reading Excuses! This seems like an interesting premise, and the modern language is easy to read, but some parts are confusing still and I'm still not sure the fake opener works. As I go: -- I'm seeing a bunch of tense switches in this first chapter, and some of the word choice is sounding a bit overwrought to me for a modern novel... -- I am wondering if the genderswapped oddly-colored elf mightn't be cutting things a bit fine to already-licensed material. An oddly-colored elf in generic fantasy settings isn't copyrightable, but the name worries me. -- Ah, I see. I like that the ruse didn't go on for very long. Coincidentally, I'm reading Melissa Scott's "Burning Bright" right now, and it also features an online rp-type game of sorts prominently throughout the novel. What Scott does with the names is for the first appearance of the rp-character, list the chara name, then a slash, then the player name. So like ElfWizard/John Smith. Then for the parts that are in-game, only the rp-chara name is used, and any reference to the player is the player name. It still took a bit of getting used to, but it let on right from the get-go that something was up with the scene. In addition to in-text clues, the story might need a visual marker like that to really point out to readers that this scene isn't "real." -- As an mmo gamer, I've never begrudged anyone a bio break, especially if they announced it before starting a mission or boss fight.... And, I'm kind of wondering where the women are in this guild? I don't think I've ever been in a guild/clan/dojo/whatever that didn't at least have one female player, and more than just a casual player, too... -- I'm having a hard time telling these characters apart, like, a really hard time. They all kind of sound like the dudebros I see in mapchat and immediately block just so I don't have to cringe at their chatter, so I'm not terribly invested in any of them, and especially the ones who complained about a biobreak. -- I'm not sure how well what i'm guessing is the premise-of-the-book speech actually works as a speech from a character. It feels fairly info-dumping this early in the book, and somewhat random given the nature of the scene. I do have guildies who pontificate like that, but their lectures usually at least start related to either the dungeon we're doing, or the topics we were yakking about beforehand. -- I'm... not sure that's how off-campus research trips actually work. You might want to ask @kais about her trips with her students into the rainforest every summer. This also seems shoehorned into the story so far. I don't know anything about these dudes and honestly, given their interactions over the game, I'd not have guessed they were very good friends, certainly not good enough to be willing to drop an entire semester's worth of classwork just to go rib a friend. Overall It's an interesting premise, but I had trouble telling who was speaking, and I'm not really sure the theme-of-the-book needs to be laid out that plainly and that obviously in the first couple pages of the book. To answer your question, i suppose this is setting up a boys-night-out adventure with these 3 (or four? i couldn't tell) guys wherein they discover It's All True and make snarky modern references while encountering fairytale-related modern fey and/or get transported to another world. I can't really say I'm looking forward to it, given what of these characters I've read so far, however.

Why are sleazy and peace opposites? pua don't generally threaten violence...

I think it's the typo and not the capitalization? I could be seeing things too. It's been that kind of day. campaiNGers vs campaiGNers

Comment on how stupid my life has been this week, I completely missed this! I am absolutely nerd enough to talk about citation formats! So, my brain is saying [Name of artist], "[title of work]," [medium or location completed if needed], [year completed]. example: Yves Klein, "IKB 79," acrylic on gessoed board, 1959. (PS i'm making that up because i'm really tired so that's like super wrong. (but also IKB is an awesome color and I love it)) And after that, any subsequent referrals in text would just be [title or short title], [ year if needed (like if they have 8 installations named Cathedral or something and you need to differentiate)] MLA style has it [name of artist], [work title]. [years worked on/completion date], [medium and current location information]. APA is weird for full cites, but also agrees that in-text short cites after the first are italicized title or short title. CMS redid their website since I last checked there and I ran out of spoons to go unearth it, but my guess is it'll be similar to APA, but without APA's love of brackets. I'd go with MLA, and drop the medium and location info. So, tldr: just, like, italicize the painting title and you're gold. :/ lol, not gonna argue there... XD

I'm dying. No amount of coffee can overcome this fatigue. Sorry this is short. Of the three parts, this one is the best. It has a beginning, middle, and end and they all flow decently into one another. I still don't understand the card game. It feels really random still even though I can see it's been given more justification in-story. All the same, it ultimately doesn't do anything. We learn everything about Yo, Ne, and the job from their other interactions, and its ineffectiveness just makes it look like filler. I agree that the rapid-fire questions go on for far too long. Pick two or three of the best ones for each character, maybe, and give Ne a chance to halfway respond? It might help to space them out a bit. Also, I think you could probably up the sleaze on the smarmy pua/celebrity stalker. It was amusing when he got punched, but Yo's repeated beating on him made me feel for the poor guy. :3 Agree with most of the other comments, too. I'm lacking a lot of buy-in still, and a decent sense of the stakes. So far, Ne's only managed to look like she flies off the handle for barely any reason, and I know that's not the case. And I still think Ne + Journey Youth would help some of it.

Sorry, I'm having some ongoing fatigue issues so this will be short. I agree that the first recap feels a bit shoehorned in; the second does similar work in a smoother way. I think it's the combination of "would respect you more" with "civil tongue" that comes off as cringeworthy. It's perilously close to "people would like you better if you smiled more." or like "We believe women who don't wear makeup look less professional (and that's why we're not hiring you)." It feels like a bit of a non sequitur, too, which doesn't help. Q can certainly want M to clean up her language, but phrasing it like that doesn't seem to really fit his character or the convo they're having.

Hello and welcome! I'm sorry this will be so short; real life is kicking me in the teeth at the moment. Basically I'm just going to echo what others have said: that this is well-written, but not terribly interesting to me. I'm seeing a lot of genre cliches being played very straight, without much to separate them from the other versions that I've read, and I think just about every comment here has mentioned it. The thing to remember here is that Tropes Are Not Inherently Bad. They're also not inherently GOOD, either. They're tools, and shorthand, and some are far more problematic than others. They can be deliciously subverted, or comfortingly met. They can be horrifically overused and terribly written, too. If the tropes are desired in the work, then what readers need to see, and see clearly from the start, is how the author is differentiating their characters and plot from all the other stories using the same archetypes. How the author is turning the work from just another Trope X tale into something uniquely their own. Readers of genre fiction like to see how this story makes something new out of something familiar. Or at least, that's what I look for. I also agree with the general sentiment about the prologue. Besides being disfavored by the current market, prologues always make me wonder two things: First, is this information necessary to the story; and second, if it is, why isn't it incorporated into the main body of the work at the point where it will have the most impact? If it's not important to the story, why is it in the novel at all, much less in the critical opening pages? I certainly don't mind reading a hero's journey, and I enjoy coming-of-age stories probably more than I ought to, so I do think this has potential. Keep at it! I look forward to your next submission.

All caught up, look at that! I am once again finding this M-an rescue summary to be longwinded and somewhat unnecessary. The story had some good atmosphere going with the sights and sounds of the spaceport, and it just gets completely derailed by a flashback. The important parts -- she was left to die with vids of what she can never have; she was rescued by heretofore unknown offworld connections possessed by her otherwise straitlaced uncle -- I feel like those could be better sprinkled throughout the entire text, rather than bunched up at the beginning. Reading a bit of FF's So still in Ne, especially in the wishing she had training in emotional resiliency. Like, if there was that kind of class, and Ne was in it, she'd totes have hated it, lol. aha, I see it gets a retread at the end of the flashback. And another retread of the current scene, to get back on track. I like the retreads better than the flashback, even though they're a bit repetitious. :/ I don't really have too much of a problem here with the R interaction. It could probably be condensed a touch, but I didn't really mind it that much. I'm going to have to disagree with @Mandamon here and say I didn't care for the back half of this story, after the time jump. I felt like it went on for a bit too long, and I didn't quite get as much emotion out of it as maybe it was supposed to convey. I would still like to see more focus on Journey Youth, so we agree there at least (thus preserving the ascendancy of #iagreewithmandamon). I would also like to know the shape of this thing so I can figure out how to critique it. As a short story, it and the previous one need some work. They end with more of a cliffhanger than any kind of finality. Even serial short story series have finality to the end of a particular episode. As chapters, they're decent, if on the more meandering side. If it's something else... I don't know. That might affect how I view them. I'm still on the fence about whether or not I actually needed this much info, this in-depth about Ne's exile and "origin," and I'm still struggling with overall buy-in.

Finally getting caught up, yay! "snowtex" Thank you for the extra letter :3 "(long story)" not sure how I feel about the parentheticals. They might be putting a bit too fine a point on the section, especially since it's supposed to be an internal monologue and I don't know, for me at least, I don't tell myself "it's a long story. I'll tell you about it later." "slough, slough, sloughing" -- Sough? Slough i thought was for things that slide off like dead skin, or, like, slogging through something. Sough is the one about wind or breath, yes? "Take that android" Agree with the others that the wolves still need some work, but love that last line. Nailed it! The part of me that spent 4+ years in art school wants to quibble about the formatting of names of the paintings, but the info's all understandable so, eh, whatevs. ". Idiots and conmen" No one understands modern art, and yet, it was vitally important in its time... It didn't feel to me to be "jumping in too much in the middle," but then I've read v1, so take that fwiw. This was a very fun read. A bit more work on the wolf section and I think you've got it.

...grumble grumble pantsers grumble grumble...

Hello and welcome to RE! Sorry for the late reply, hopefully this will still be marginally helpful. As I go: -- Not digging this prologue. It isn't hooking me much, and I'm left wondering at its purpose. I'm getting a murky sense of the world and what might be a main protagonist, but it's a prologue, so there's a good chance Ils is just a one-off POV and thus not worth becoming invested in (note from future me: I see that Ils is a protagonist in the next chapter too. Yay!). My experience reading prologues and other "before the theme starts" button scenes is that the characters in them tend to die, be dead, or are otherwise irrelevant to the main story, to the point that I will sometimes skim or even skip a prologue in a book to get to "the real stuff" sooner. If it's important to the story, then it should be the first chapter (or moved to the place where it is most important); if it's not important to the story... why is it here? -- I'm seeing some grammar and word choice issues, but you didn't request line edits (and I'm sure @Robinski will catch most of the one I'd find anyway), so I'll leave them be. -- ils' POV is oddly ageist for being the inside of a confident 10-year-old's head. Like @kais, I don't mind the maturity, though I might agree that upping her age to 11 or 12 might read better to others (certainly no higher, though, as then you're going to run into the baggage that comes with a teen protag), but lines like "it still should be impossible for someone of her age and stature" keep popping up and those are what's kicking me out of her worldview in these early pages. Like, that feels like something an adult would think of a child, not really something a child would think of itself. -- But I do enjoy the street rat and thieves guild tropes, so I'm already hooked and enjoying things! --" she was Stormborn" is she a mother of dragons too? I will be disappointed if there aren't dragons and she doesn't befriend some and/or all of them. Those two words together in a fantasy novel come with expectations nowadays and I adore me some dragons, so bring 'em on! -- " her gift was rare" she doesn't know what money is, but knows the relative occurrences of various types of magical powers and how they relate to her own? Not that a kid wouldn't be interested in comparing itself to others (kids love hierarchies), but this ... I guess it feels a bit like telling rather than showing, since it's such a bland statement. -- The fat man's name is P? Ouch. Nominative determinism can be fun and all, but that's a bit on-the-nose. -- " he wasn’t in the business of being liked" <> I'm not here to make friends. -- I definitely agree with everyone else about the fat=greedy trope. He can be fat, and he can be greedy, but to one with the other as the work seems to is problematic. This section was a rough read for me and should probably be overhauled, if for nothing else than the way P thinks about himself. Again, a confident person who accepts their body doesn't disparage it left and right in internal monologues. -- Also-also agree with @kais with regards to using "beast" and other monstrous, inhuman imagery to describe persons of color. That's.. that's just really, REALLY bad. Serious Unfortunate Implications territory, no matter WHAT the intention really is. For a real and significant part of history inhuman or animal-like terminology for African-Americans and other people of color was used to legit do things like excuse slavery. Even now this kind of terminology will pop up to "explain" systemic societal issues instead of doing the actual work of addressing the actual flaws. I get a youngster's idea of scary and intimidating will be painting with a broad brush, but this is just bad. The image can still be giant and imposing and scary, but either the skin color needs to go, or the beastlike descriptions do. -- I am having some trouble with the blocking for the alleyway scene. I get that it's illusions, but it's very unclear what direction any one entity is facing at any given point in time. Overall: A good start and an interesting premise! I haven't gotten much information about ils, but I like her confidence and competency, and I'm even okay with her age. There seems to be some issues with using caricatures for the supporting cast, that do need addressing, however. I also found the tone and cadence of the text to be a little ... stuffy? Stodgy? Part of it is the epic fantasy subgenre, which tends to sound stiff to my reading ear in general, but I think that it's possible to find a balance between natural flow of language and the elevated tone the story requires.

Well, the sibling is married and the parties have partied, the certificates certified and the bills paid, so now I can think about other things in my free time. With v2 out already and in my list tbr, I won't belabor too much here. I agree with most of the comments already made. What I am mostly struck by here is this: are you writing another book, or a short story? This reads like a chapter, frankly. And that's fine -- if you're doing a novelette or novella or something. Maybe it's what you should make Ne's origin into! The first installment read more like a chapter, too, though not as much as this one. Short stories, even longer ones have a different pattern and narrative flow. I'm not sure every negative or less-than-positive emotion needs to be associated with some flavor of "smug" -- it's one of your go-to words, and it's not bad for some instances, but not all of them. "Sanctimonious" is one of my favorites for "condescension with religious or moral overtones." It feels like to me Ne getting saddled with the Journey Youth designation is the point of the story, and how that goes against the fact that she's been treated as an adult for 4 years prior to this, but that's just covered in the last bit. It's awfully convenient that she knows so much correct information about what I'm guessing would be a pretty heavily indicted, propaganda-swathed, disfavored program on her homeworld. I am much more interested in Ne figuring out her only options are death or another enforced childhood than basically the first 2/3 of this piece. I'd also love to actually see some of these callow, feckless Journey Youth that Ne disparages so consistently. Ni, our only other example of this phenomenon, started off kind of doofy in bk1, but he was a good, competent kid when things got heavy and so I don't think he really counts as an example. He's clearly set up as an exception. Basically, I just want to read space-versions of your best stupid teenager stories with Ne inserted to snark in appropriate places. :3

Sorry for the late reply, lots of Highly Formal Family Rituals happened the last week-and-change, and I had to spend most of the time that wasn't recovering from pie preparing for Fancy Ritual Dress and Rites. Kind of late to the party here, so... hope it went well? Good luck? I'm glad Mo is out doing more things in these later chapters.

Only for the medically interesting. Mincemeat is perfectly safe! It certainly wasn't ever banned in any country and it definitely was never known for causing hallucinations. Nope! Never ever, ever.

I would if I could! It's homemade-from-scratch meat-free mincemeat, and the cajoling I have to do to get average Americans to try it is sort of silly. "Try some spiced apple-raisin-cherry pie? Nooo, it has nothing to do with that scaaary mincemeat!" But if we end up doing REcon, I'll try to remember to pack a jar for you.

No, I clearly remember the pair of us in sailormoon odango, and me with my Columbo trenchcoat, on a big city adventure. With photographs. Which I have all organized with their negatives by date. Must be someone else. Oh and, speaking of kept negatives... Consider them added to the round file. Or the cloud. I always get those mixed up. :3

Er, same. >_>; This is basically a RAEBNC and some after-thoughts... Honestly I didn't even notice the slow start either, but thinking on it since @kais pointed it out, it does take a bit to really get going. Moth gardening was nice, though. I like the call-out to the dead drop from Quirk's chapter, and I kind of felt that was the point of this one, so I wasn't as bothered by the lack of a chapter arc. But, since it's been brought up, yeah, a bit more of a trajectory would probably help things. I've been thinking about the chapter order thing again, and leading with quirk's chapter, then one of the callan POVs for a spacer, then Moth, and that doesn't seem too bad at all! Of course, that's three POVs still in that all-important 50 page window, so maybe two quirk, one spacer, then moth? Would kick Moth out of the intro, probably, but it takes the POV count down. I'm not sure quirk-quirk-moth would flow quite right... Anyway, sorry this is mostly just blather this time around.

Remember the who with the what now? Who are you again? I mean, I have all those old versions and I'm sure I could look up the references if you really wanted... :3

I've done it! All 13+3 holiday mini pies are in the mail or have been delivered in person! This has nothing to do with writing other than pie has been the thing consuming about 85% of my processing power for the last month and a half, and now that I'm free of it I can focus on other things... like 18 pies' worth of dishes. But then writing! >_>;;

Hello and welcome to Reading Excuses! I had trouble reading this piece as well. I actually had to do it in two different sittings, just to get through it. It left me feeling uncomfortable, and not in the way of challenging reads or unlikable characters, but in a way that tells me quite clearly I am not the intended audience for this book. I'm not sure any of my friends, family, or acquaintances would be the intended audience for this book, based on this introduction, either. The writing is done well from a technical standpoint. The technical issues I noticed were not beginner errors. The descriptions are done well, and the world seems interesting. However, there are too many unfortunate implications in this piece for me to ignore or attribute to an unlikable POV to keep me reading, were this the first chapter in a longer work. I agree with everything @kais mentioned regarding the tropes being used here, so I won't belabor them further. The thing to remember here is that Tropes Are Not Inherently Bad. They're also not inherently GOOD, either. They're tools, and shorthand, and they each come with implications and history over and above both the author's intentions in using them and what is presented in the story on the page. Tropes can be deliciously subverted, or comfortingly met. They can be horrifically overused and terribly written, too. Any way they are used, though, the author should be aware of them and their implications in the work. Describing the dead girl as "too pure," making the wife/stepmother into a jealous shrew, portraying the king as sympathetic and honorable in his adulterous actions -- the tropes in use here seem to me to be mostly problematic ones, and the baggage that comes with them, for me at least, is overshadowing the actual story-on-the-page. I agree with @Asmodemon in wondering if this prologue is actually necessary. There's a lot of info just being dumped out here, and at times it reads more like a wikipedia article than an internal monologue. Wiki is many things, but a compelling page-turner of a narrative it is not. Some of this info, such as the aside defining a derrogatory term as a derrogatory term, can be picked up from context. Much of it is good for the author to know and have thought about, but is not the sort of information readers generally need laid out plainly for them on the page, or would be even something a person would normally think about. If the information is important later on, it's usually better for it to be worked in to the story closer to the point of need. Additionally, if the king, queen, brother, wife, and dead girl aren't POVs in the story itself, if they aren't even main characters (or plot elements), what are they doing here in the beginning? The prophesy could just as easily be given to the protagonist by the king, or given to the reader in the protagonist's internal monologue. Or, as Asmodemon says, simply left out. To answer your question about promises, this seems to set up a pretty typical heroe's journey. There's a Chosen One, an evil stepmom, and an unworthy king.

Overall: getting better, but keep going! Here's my as-I-go comments: I think you may have over-corrected this time around. Ne feels a bit more Ne-like, but she's being pulled down by the weight of the definitions that break up her POV. It's a fine balance, explaining enough without adding too much and I think this prologue-ish section has teetered a bit too far in the other direction. I also feel like maybe some of the definitions need to be reworded to be more Ne-like, more opinionated rather than a straight up "look at the camera and define for the audience" type of neutral, if that makes any sense? So something that would be obvious to her -- like maybe the third parent definition -- and can be inferred from context decently well are probably unnecessary, but something like the Old Blood description could stay, but with more opinion in it? Maybe? Ne's bro is kind of a jerk. I don't like him much. He's using Ne as a patsy. The jump from the new prologue-ish section to the prior version text is kind of jarring. I think I'd like to have a bit more transition than just a sentence. There're leftover first-introduction descriptions in the previous part that don't really fit anymore, either, with the prologue-bit added to the front. Yeah, all this "clearly the beginning of the story" stuff is really odd now. The tone is different too... There, like, needs to be a middle ground between the drama of the prologue and the slice-of-life brightness of the old introductory parts. Maybe some foreshadowing? Maybe President Jerkface says soemthing like "you'll have my final decision on this tomorrow" or "the committee is still discussing possible actions and you'll have their verdict tomorrow" or "I have been working with your uncle to find an appropriate remedy" or something so that Ne can do some of the "he won't possibly mess up this crazy important religious thingummy he doesn't have the clout" worldbuilding earlier on? Maybe that would give it more of a through-line? I'm just grasping at random here. The interaction with mother reads better now. Ne is less passive. Moms is like super totes suddenly sicker, though. I don't think there's even one reference to mother's consumption in the prologue bit, but there's barely a mention of her in this part that DOESN'T point out somehow that Death's tapping his watch waiting for her to hurry up and shuffle off. It seems odd to me. "had bribed her into a decommissioned settee " I still don't understand if her brother is bribing the ship owner to let her on because young Ne is already mad for space and it's a big treat; or if he's bribing young Ne herself, to get her out where the ship was despite her not wanting to be there. :/ "she could see the smugness on his face" yeah, def don't like him. Smug is not a generally positive emotion, especially when he's all but taking credit for Ne's hard work. Yeowch. Dude, like, take a step back and let your sister have a moment here. Geez. Also... also it reads a little sinister? Like, is he smug because he knows what's coming? He's not full of happy shiny pride and love but anticipatory schadenfreude? This is my suspicious face... I do like the ending better without the taurs, though.

But we don't know that until nearly the end. At this point in the beginning, he's just some rando (for that matter, so's Quirk, which is part of the problem). Also, again, who's the protagonist? Why are we even following callahan's story? It's not for his own sake, it's because he intersects with Quirk at some point down the line and his POV makes Quirk's story deeper or more nuanced. Or something. Also I spent the day dealing with dye fumes so I'm a little loopy. I hope that made sense. >_>; Yes, I will be happy to read over whatever you want! I will also do that on Monday, when there's a better chance I won't be loopy... Now I feel vaguely guilty... >_>;