 ecwix 2007-09-25 . chapter 1Well, it's finally here. I'm sorry it took so long for me to get back to you, but school and stuff is just ripping my time away from me. The fact that I spend so much time per review doesn't help much either.
Anyway, I have a few comments:
-"You'd be running from angry bankers if the show hadn't taken off, what with the small fortune you spent just getting it green-lighted."
I can sort of tell what you are trying to say here, but it gets sort of muddled in the way you say it... with the "what with the ..." part. I don't know, really, but I'd venture to suggest rewording the transition.
-"That Patriot Nation made you a millionaire is incidental- you love it now for the same reason that you did when you were just a small time reporter in the field, setting [his] camera down and lighting a cigarette."
You use "you" to refer to the main character all the time, and then, right here, you pop in with a "his". It confused me. Are you doing it on purpose? Or is it just a slip-up?
-"You laughed and said, "Twice." [Heh, still makes you laugh.]"
Firstly, you use "laugh" (or a different form of it) twice within those two sentences. Second, the second part just doesn't seem to really fit in. I didn't even really get the tone of it until my third time reading it. To tell the truth, though, this is really just sort of up to you. I just might have missed it, and other people will get it fine. But the choice is really just sort of up to you.
-"Three years without so much as a hiccup, and then the one day that your opponents['] fears [ed?] came true,[;?] there was disaster."
Nothing really major wrong here, it's just that the way you have it worded can sort of trip up a reader, which is never good. I just have a few inserted suggestions, just what I would have done, nothing special.
-"Try as you may to listen to the majority, it's the million that matter[s], isn't it?"
The way I see it, "that" is getting it's number from "million", which is going to be singular, so the verb should be singular. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's just what sticks out at me. Of course, since you're using a sort of narrator to tell the story, it can just be that he/she doesn't speak perfect formal English, which I'm sure very few people actually do. :p
-Overall, I'm very impressed by your presentation of the story. The second person worked very well and your theme was very obvious. It made me feel as if reading this story was actually worthwhile, a refreshing break from a few of the stories I've read before.
Just reiterating a point mentioned before by another reviewer, the jump to the "memory" of being a reporter is sort of sudden and... well, surprising, I suppose. There's no set up for it, and it's just sort of pushed onto the reader.
Well, that's about all I have to say for the moment. If I think of anything randomly, I'll make sure to tell you. Again, I apologize for being so slow to get back to you, and I thank you profusely for your well-written review on Kant. |
 www.authorsjourney.com 2006-07-25 . chapter 1Your prose is good. I found myself moving through the story without noticing the words. The odd tense is a bit disconcerting for the first few sentences, but I don't know how to iron that out, since I have never tried this sort of thing. Once you're into the story, however, it really fits. It's more personal than first-person would be.
One related thing that bothered me was the transition from the party to Romero's days as a war reporter. For some reason, it was a bit jarring. I suspect that part of it was the shift to past tense. However, you're also going from one time period to the other within a single sentence, right before the dialogue with the soldier.
The soldier himself is another concern. To me, his attitude just didn't ring true. I have never known anyone who has been in combat who wasn't changed by it. But the soldier speaks very flippantly, even when claiming to be scared. From the attitude I saw, he could have been talking about the weather or local sports.
Finally, I felt like the wording of the last sentence was out of place. It sounds like the narrator inserting a moral statement, rather than Romero trying to come to grips with his own moral qualms.
Hopefully you find my comments useful. All in all, you've done something very interesting with a challenging stylistic device. Well done. Keep writing. |