Why This Item?

I'm helping out the "Fantasy and Science Fiction Society"  team for GoT this year, and your name showed up on a battle list (a to-be-reviewed list). I chose you because I remember you from your newbie days here... and you just passed your 2-year anniversary! Amazing!

As for this particular item, I write mostly poetry myself, but I love short stories and flash fiction. In real life even, I read more short fiction than novels. And why? Because I love scifi. Science fiction and short stories go hand-in-hand.

So... I went to your contest writing folder because I figured there would be some flash in there. Science fiction is one of my two favorite genres to read (that and horror), and I adore war poetry, fiction, movies, etc. The horror of it. If you've never read it, Halderman's The Forever War... a must read scifi war novel. So good.

Favorite Aspects

The idea here is cute. Sort of reminds me of an Alfred Bester short in which certain humans learned how to live solely in dreams after the world was destroyed by war, but the rest of humanity couldn't join them there because they needed a poet to bridge the gap and help them do it. There were no poets left.

I tend to like those sorts of things.

The hook was nice too. I half expected him to be a robot or cyborg or something from the opening line... pleased that it wasn't that obvious.

Technical / Grammar / Syntax

Honestly, the grammar was the roughest aspect of the piece, so I'll focus there. The narration is pretty perfunctory as well, but I suppose that is to be expected if the narrator suffers from the described affliction. It wasn't super engaging in tone though, so I might look at that as well.

"in a more than decent neighborhood" - 'more than decent' is a compound adjective. Should be "more-than-decent".

"So no one took the Tenyans’ threats of retaliation serious" - this is conversational as far as syntax goes, which is fine. "Serious" still modifies "took" though, so it's an adverb-- "seriously".

"the war would already be over" - Split infinitive. "already would be over"

"We’ve even dropped to negotiating with them" - Awkward and a split infinitive. "Have dropped" is the predicate, and you have "even" thrown in the middle. "We even have dropped" is correct, though I'd cut "even" altogether. Also, I'd suggest "dropped negotiations with them" instead to remove the awkwardness.

Effect

Overall, I love the idea. The execution could be better. For a quick contest entry though, it's quite entertaining. Thanks for the read!




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