Sep 17, 2025
I won't lie, the constant flip-flopping between past and present tense is kind of distracting. I get that this might be a stylistic choice, since it seems like it's mostly her Arika's thoughts that get 'present'-ed, but it clashes with the narration quite a lot.
Another thing that clashes with the narration is Arika's inner monologue. Whilst it's okay for the most part, she often overexplains her observations to the point where every scene balloons in size. There's a lot of fat in this chapter that's mostly just Arika being too thorough in describing the minutiae of her actions or some reasoning behind her thoughts.