Jan 15, 2025
Congrats on finishing on time!! I had a really nice time reading, a fun, cozy, cute story. I already told a lot of what i liked as i read along, the characters are great and their interactions are very funny. I laughed several times outloud as i read, and i was always rooting for stella and shigure.
What i think the story suffers from the most is what I already mentioned. The moments of confusion while reading, sudden and awkward transitions and the at times lacking a sense of place. I think you might feel overly eager to move the story foreward and we move on too quickly to the next location or segment without getting to feel the transition as readers. Another point of criticism i would give is i feel like this novel fell victim to the contest's 1.5k word limit more so than other stories i read. There were moments where i felt a chapter went by and the story barely moved a step. I assume this was due to artificially having to cut the chapter short due to the word limit, still i feel like the story would have probably flowed better had it been constructed with those limits in mind rather than sometimes having a chapter or two of the story just standing in place, making us wonder where is this going.
Even with those critiques i still loved the experience. The zany and wacky situations, along with the fun charaters always brightened me up when i picked up to read and the story has a great theme, finding puprose. It is a universal and eternal struggle and as silly as it often is, the novel never gets lost in the sauce over what it's themes are and what it wants to convey. I am sad you had to cut Robert out due to time, that is if you did plan to keep the encounter in (i could've felt like a smartass for predicting their meeting😂). Overall, great work and i think you should be proud of it!
(Should've had a scene where stella talks to the other catgirls and says "what are we, some kind of robot catgirls philosophizing on the moon?")
