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Review #4194549
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Review by edgework
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This is some impressive writing. I see a good bit of Neil Gaiman being channeled, maybe some Stephen King, but honestly, I think your prose has the potential to beat them both at their game. It's rich, highly imagistic and economical to the point of parsimony. This last can be a problem, as in this sentence:

He snapped his fingers, gaze on the darkened sky.

It's not immediately clear if gaze is a noun or a verb. All that's immediately apparent is that either way, it's incorrectly used. Stylistic license can cover a multitude of grammar and syntax violations, but you need to be wary of intentionally tripping your reader. They'll usually work with you to decipher difficult texts, but you risk much if you just come off as trying too hard, shooting for poetry and stumbling awkwardly instead.

One thing both Gaiman and King have locked down is story. I can't say how you stack up in that department. This feels like a teaser pitch for a much longer work, an epic novel, I'd say. If this is all that's meant to be, well, you do one thing that I always advise, which is to simply drop your characters in the universe you've created for them and set them in motion. The reader (the kind of reader you want, that is) will intuit much simply by seeing their activities and interactions unfold. But again, if you send your reader off on a scavenger hunt like that, you need to make sure there's something for them to find. I confess that, for me, things grew seriously obscure once they entered the factory. And the connection to colors never actually seemed to be anything other than grafted on. An afterthought. Take all the color references out, the essential action would be unchanged.

I skimmed through some other pieces in your port. One thing I noticed that you need to get clear about: the differences between past and passed. You used it wrong in two different stories. One is a verb, the other (the way you want to use it) is a preposition. I leave it to you to correct the error.

Clearly I liked what I read. It didn't make a whole lot of sense, but it made enough to suggest that the missing pieces are all there, waiting to be uncovered. Mostly, I want to see more. You have the energy of a high-end graphic novel in your writing, but you manage it with prose alone, a neat trick. However, keep in mind, prose suffers none of the built-in restrictions that face a graphic novel, where short-cuts are the required norm. Short-cuts in prose can make for an energetic narrative, but we read prose, not for an approximation of a graphic novel, but for the long, unabridged version of events. Your challenge is to fill in a few more blanks while keeping the energy high.

I'd bet you can do it.
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