   Moberemk
2008-08-21 . chapter 9Finally dug up this particular dinosaur of a fic during a trawl through the Orion Awards list. It's well done on the whole, but there are some issues here and there with the story itself.
Stylistically and grammatically, there's nothing severely wrong with it. The dialog is consistently well-written and the writing itself is good with no issues such as 'single-quote dialog', run-on sentences, or exceedingly long outfit descriptions. (That last one is more of a pet peeve then an issues, but I digress) Oh, and is several places you spell "mesmer" as "messier".
On the story side, the plot itself is rather clever, and several things (the blood in the compressor standing out) were honestly surprising. The way that you tell the story is another matter-at times you make it all too obvious what is going on, and the plot itself might have been better if it were played closer to the vest, as it were. By not having the plot explained so early on, it would have kept some suspense to the story.
On a similar note, some plot threads just petered out in the story-what might have been key plot elements like the ring (why does it say "The Spark"?) or who Demon is. It seemed like there was a big reveal coming on that front, but it never happened. At one point, I was even tempted to believe it to be Trouble's hitman psychopath alter-ego, but that was ruled out. That's too bad, because on the whole Demon could have made for an interesting character, but here he was more of a plot contrivance, whose motivations were never really revealed to my satisfaction.
Similarly, Artemis Fowl II himself was more or less reduced to this status. At first, it seemed like he might have served some purpose to the plot, and that his story would go on side-by-side with Holly's. This never happened, and instead he got a few appearances here and there, until he finally ended up taking down Sool single-handedly. While it was cool to watch him demolish Sool step-by-step, the setup was missing, and in the end it felt like more of a deux ex machina "The Wizard Fixed It" kind of ending. It would have been nice if you had put him in as a full story or just small glimpses as opposed to this twilight existence as a character who is there seemingly only to fix things. The way that he, in one sentence, had all the charges dismissed was a good example of where it would have been better to either give detail or just cut it entirely. The same could be said of Mulch, too, as his kidnapping of the good councillor could likely have been written out entirely.
Now then, on to the ship. The story here is a Holly story, definitely, something that is evident from the first. The Trouble part of the story is brought in subtly, almost too subtly, and the evolution of their relationship is somewhat...jumpy. It's not that I don't like the ship, but the way you've written it they go from good friends to the reluctant stage almost instantaneously, and then they're discussing kids and moving in together? It all felt too fast for me to realistically believe. I suppose maybe your intention was that they were almost a couple before and this cinched it, but that's not really the vibe that the early parts of the story gave me. It just seemed that the pacing of it felt rushed, and if you had slowed the story down a little bit it would have been stronger for it, because you could have had more time to spend on the development of the story and the characters-all the characters-then you had here.
Overall, it was a strong story that was hampered by uneven execution.
(Whoa, that was longer then some of my school essays) |
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