Matthew Raup

Small story Sci Fi (my favorite)

Yo. This story man. This story is excellent and every Sci Fi fan needs to read it and take notes because this is how you write Sci Fi. I got feels of Orwell at times, Serling at times, and completely original feels the rest of the time.

The pace is outstanding and deliberate. It's absolutely perfect in its intention. You gradually get a feel for these characters in exactly the right way to understand what's going on and what's at stake.
This takes place on Earth at some point in humans' future history, but there is no time wasted on exposition about it. I was in the world, learning about it as the story began, all at once in perfect harmony.
What I loved most about this is there's a whole world it takes place in, but it's a story about four individuals, mainly about two individuals and it doesn't expand beyond that. It's contained expertly. It stays on course, never wanders. It's a small story inside a large world. I love it. There are so many questions I could ask about the world around the characters but the story about those two characters was all I cared about.
The way the narration describes music and relates it to color is a little robotic and a little expressive and just what I would expect from these characters.
And the ending just had me. I felt some tears coming. But I had no idea how it would end and it definitely surprised me. I was riveted to the page for the final four chapters.

The only criticism I could give is it needs polish. From beginning to end, just like a couple passes of polish. Filter out some of the passive voice going on in there.
As a writer myself, this is the type of story I love and admire. Great work.

Exposition

There is a ton of exposition in this story. I'd prefer being shown than told what was happening. Though I appreciate action sequences, I feel like there was too much. The non-english dialect being used was hard to follow and might not have been necessary to fully portray a race of beings that speak oddly. There's a lot of focus on the ships and explosions and stuff. Kind of reminds me of a Michael Bay film. Run on sentences here and there also hamper the narrative. This is apparently one of a series of stories that don't need to be read in any particular order, however, there was terminology used that was not explained, which leaves me wondering if it might have been explained in prior stories.