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Review by boolithium Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
First off, this was very well written. I appreciate the clean and crisp sentence structure. In many ways it reminded my of an Isaac Asimov short story.

From a structural point of view, I would say "The Last Question" by Asimov is what I'm thinking. It also has a similar thematic quality, and the same matter of fact presentation. This makes it easy to read, which I feel is an underrated quality among many authors.

Now Asimov is a widely loved author, so any criticism I put forth here must be put in context of style. Many people love this the style of story, and if you are happy with it, keep writing this way.

Okay, let's see if I can explain why I gave it a 4 rather than a 5.

When your character tells his story, he is drawing from memories. Each moment is a bubble, in which part of the story is revealed to the reader. He isn't laying out a timeline, rather he is telling a story through memories (aka Scenes).

Now the scenes at Mark's house in chapter 5 were flushed out pretty well. As was the wedding scene at the beginning. The date in chapter 2 also could be pictured easily.

But these other bubbles in time seemed more like newspaper clippings than memories. At times this made the transitions kind of dry and lacking narrative drive.

Perhaps reflect on telling a personal story to yourself from your own memories. You'll find that memory is less about chronology and facts, and more about textures. I think this story would benefit by allowing the main character to explore these memories more vibrantly. Perhaps he talks about their first date sometime after the wedding, when another memory reminds him of it. Maybe he goes off on a tangent memory unrelated to technology.

I know as a writer one of the hardest choices to make is how much to set up a scene, and how much to let the reader just get on with the story. I'd just say that a little more color might punch up the reader's experience here. Let them occupy the head of this man as he sorts through what went wrong with the world.
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