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 Review #4835330 |
World Was  [E] The Galactic Hopping Adventures of Bahb & Errl. Exploration/Survey Team Zero-Alpha  |
| (4.5)| Hello, dropping by with a review of your short story as requested on 'Please Review'. These thoughts are all my own and meant to help; take what you find useful and ignore anything you don't! Initial/Overall thoughts This is a fun short story which speeds along, entertaining the reader until you deftly sweep the rug out from under us with a surprisingly poignant climax. What I liked: The tone reminded me of Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, with a couple of hapless explorers bouncing around the galaxy seemingly from disaster to disaster - well done, it is no mean feat to successfully live up to Douglas Adams' brilliance! I particularly liked some of your quick back-and-forth dialogue e.g. "A black hole should not play fetch." You set up a nice bait and switch for your characters and for the reader thinking that the earth was shooting at them - after all, it's not an unreasonable reaction to aliens turning up in our orbit - but then it turns suddenly tragic when we all realise that we've actually turned up just on time to watch the nuclear apocalypse unfold from space. You convey the tragedy effectively with just a few well-chosen phrases - "They sat in stunned silence…", the description of the world as a "rare jewel" that ends up in "choking darkness" and "Radiation'll last longer than we'll be alive." Things I "bumped" on: Nothing much at all! In fact, this tale is so entertaining that I only picked up on the third or fourth read-through that you don’t actually resolve the issue you introduced in the opening with the black hole that seems to be chasing them. If you want to keep as a very short story, then that might be something to come back to, even if only a line or two to resolve it at the end; on the other hand, if you wanted to expand this into a longer piece, it offers you an interesting thread which you could get into in more detail later on. Technical: You need to work on your spacing, as it's a bit difficult to read at the moment and takes away from enjoying the story. You should have a clear line of space whenever there's a new speaker in your dialogue, as well as between your paragraphs - for example, between the sentence that ends "…gas giant's embrace" and the one that starts "This time, they approached cautiously…" Overall, this is a great short piece which kept me gripped and entertained throughout! Keep writing! Affiliated with:
 My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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