Dec 09, 2025
Three nitpicks before I move on to some meaty commentary:
* What's with the constant random capitalising. Are you writing these on your phone?
* Where's the fantasy in this urban fantasy?
* What's up with the cuneiform? Cool gimmick, but House of Leaves ain't a LN. Also 'help'.
Reading this story I'm left with two impressions: you care more about worldbuilding than anything else and your prose feels like a necessity more than something you enjoy. Let's unpack each of them individually.
The worldbuilding aspect. Everything has a name. There's history lessons. There's alt-history lessons. There's a huge treaty at the start of the novel as a companion piece. We're at a historically significant location in a historically significant time. All of this is cool, but it feels like it's driving the story more than any semblance of plot and character, which is something that only works for such a select contingent of people. Now don't get me wrong, I can see how this would entertain someone with a mind or eye for that. Lots of tickling to be had from all the references (Robin Williams, you legend.). But at the same time, I'm around 5k in and I have a couple questions:
* Who is Anh? I know what she does, but I can hardly get a feel of her character. Sequences that would be revelatory for her personality are rather few and far between, often interrupted by an amount of worldbuilding that feels like narrative ballast. Notably, I couldn't tell you of any 'active' moments she's had up until this point, where she's still put in a 'reactive' position. Perhaps it's intentional - maybe this kind of instinct-driven narrative is a tool to show the dehumanisation of people in the wake of war. Or perhaps it's not. Either way, it's hard to tell.
* Why should we, the reader, be invested in Anh's story? She isn't particularly likable, her job isn't particularly interesting, the situation she's in isn't all that common and her personality doesn't have any streaks we can latch to so that we can enjoy the ride. Does she have any flaws that she's let on? Is there a particular archetype that she embodies, which could be in some way relatable to the reader? Does she signify an ideal or an attitude that someone might be able to identify with? Because the answer to all of these rhetorical questions seems to lean towards no...
The prose... It's very utilitarian and lacking a crucial thing: voice. We'll overlook the lapses in tense cohesion (why are some of the 'cold opens' written in present tense?), abundance of passive voice and the very telly tone. A lot of the sentences here are simple declaratives. This was X, that was Y, she was Z and he was A. There is no flow to the narration. It all has the vibe of an old 80s flick full of silence, establishing shots and jump cuts, neither of which make for a particularly healthy impression in a work that relies on writing as its main vehicle for storytelling. I can appreciate this might be the mark of an omniscient narrator. I can also appreciate that said omniscient author has been quite keen on following Anh and Anh only thus far, so that's probably not the case here. But more to the point, it would really behove you to look at 'prettifying' your writing. Even wartime stories carry a certain poetry to them, as brutalist and depressing the narrative requires the prose to be.
Good luck in the contest.
Bubbles, out.
