Hello Azrael Tseng!

I'm offering this review because you're a new member. Please remember that everybody has different tastes. This critique is the opinion of only one person and offered in the spirit of constructive criticism with a hope that it will prove useful if you decide to further develop or edit your tale. Approaching your writing, I'm searching for specific elements that I shall address under separate headers.

Hook — does your story opening have something that grabs my attention and makes me want to read on?


This was a fantastic hook! Focus. This is life and death. If she’s not one of us...

The threat of death or injury is always a fantastic hook in a story opening. You establish the woman very well in the first paragraph, as well as his feelings toward her. Excellent distraction technique on his thoughts about her since he appears to be speaking of lust when he's actually speaking about something completely different.

Characters — do they feel like real people?


Yes, you did a good job of immersing the reader in your protagonist's mind. Both characters are developed really well, especially the lady.

Plot — does your story contain a clear plot with a strong resolution?


Awesome plot.

Have you seen the TV series Dark Matter? In that there's a rebel group of Androids who have found a way to pass as humans and wish to integrate with them, pretty similar to your story premise.

Personally, I had no problem at all following your story and what was happening, but I'm wondering if some of the technical stuff won't lose some readers. It's shocking, you know, but there really are people out there who don't know what an emp pulse is. Really. Toward the end, it felt a bit rushed. I suspect you wrote this in one sitting with the end in your head and realised you were going to run out of word count before you got there. What I'd advise you ALWAYS to do is to over-write in your first draft and don't worry at all how long it gets, then go back and remove anything you believe you don't really need to make it work. In that way, you'll get a better overall shape of story. You'll always have to "murder your darlings" somewhere in the story, but it's the overall flow and shape you want right if you can get that.

Your resolution is fantastic, but it could do with a bit of clarification, imho. I have no idea what the "dead room" actually is, and I'm not sure if the actual fight wasn't all in her head from the beginning. But, I'm probably over-thinking it.

Overall, a really clever plot worthy of Philip K Dick!


Pace — does your story feel like it's going somewhere?


A little rushed in the end section, but overall great pacing.

Language and voice — can a reader feel your story?


There's a wonderful clarity to your narration, and the story flows well because of this. However, I note that you do use the old "to be" verb a bit too often. You should really look to see if there's alternative ways of writing things to avoid overuse.

Just consider a paragraphs from the beginning:

It was what she was doing that was the real giveaway. Stretched out between her hands was a foldout map of the city center, which she must have obtained from the bookstore behind her. Paper was antique, and he was surprised that she had managed to obtain an item of such pristine condition from that particular establishment. It wasn’t a trendy street, and was populated by only a handful of archaic stores that carried sentimental paraphernalia from a bygone age.

Do you get what I mean? Consider:

Her actions gave her away. A foldout map of the city stretched between her hands, which must have come from the bookstore behind her. Such a coveted antique was an amazing find—paper, no less—in such a dingy establishment. Not a fashionable quarter, only a handful of rundown stores populated this street, hawking sentimental paraphernalia from a bygone age.

Not perfect narrative, but note the stronger word choices, such as "hawking" rather than "carried" to imply sale of low quality goods, and "dingy" rather than "that particular", since "that particular" tells us nothing about it, but "dingy" says a lot in one word. Make each word you choose carry a heavier weight and, if possible, communicate two or more things at the same time.


Settings — have you grounded this reader in 'real' scenes?


Absolutely fabulous setting details, especially the technical specifics, but beware losing your readers. I mean, it's like when I read an epic fantasy and suddenly I'm presented with a ten stanza long poem in the middle of a chapter. Do I read it? Hell no! I skip the bugger and move on to the next bit of narrative. So it is when you try to get "too clever" and insert things that 9/10 of your readers don't get, so you'll lose them at that point and they'll start skipping. Once they're skipping, they're not properly engaged, and you've lost 'em.

Let me tell you an anecdote now. When I was very young, early twenties, a geeky friend of mine dragged me into a public lecture given by Stephen Hawking. (Yeah, that S Hawking). Now, this was before he was famous, so it was a free public lecture in a hall anybody could enter, believe it or not (I think these days it's about £10,000 a pop to see the guy ). And, the good doctor was lecturing about black holes.

Now, am I a theoretical physisist? Hell, no! I can't even spell it! But, did I understand every word that came out of his… er… speakers. Well, yes. Because, you see, he's a genius. So, he found a way to explain stuff that even idiots… worse… even I could understand what he was saying. He had these cartoons up on a projector (presumably drawn by an assistant) of a giant carrot being towed behind a space rocket, and a hungry, black "PakMan" type black hole chasing after it, discussing the thoeretical possibilities of harnessing energy for a black hole and the practical issues regarding the storage of such when if placed on the surface of the planet, a tiny black hole would drop to the very core of said planet and begin digesting it, slowly… slowly…

You see, thirty years on I still remember what he was telling us. He IS a genius, and that's why the book he then went on to publish became one the the best selling books in history ever.

And you, my friend, need to learn from people like him. See how the great sci-fi geniuses (Assimov, PK Dick, Crichton etc) show readers tech stuff without losing them.

Themes — is this reader blown away by mind-blowing philosophy or originality?


Loving the ideas here, though they are getting pretty common at the moment. I mean, I presume you saw Ex Machina last year?

Conclusion — a summary of how this reader personally felt about your story.


You've really done yourself proud with this. This is an awesome take on the prompt and I'm sure you'll do well. I'd suggest you put some thought into where you can lose a few "was" type verbs and insert stronger replacements, but the core plot and characters (the important bits) are awesome!

Thank you for sharing your story with me. Since you're a new member of this community, please check out "Newbies ONLY Short Story & Poem Contest" We want to award the best new authors on this site, so please enter either a poem or a short story. Read the rules before posting an entry.

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Newbies ONLY Short Story & Poem Contest  (13+) Opening in January for entries! #1873271 by ~ Santa Sisco ~

Best wishes,

Bob




My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .