R.’s Comments (group member since May 22, 2014)

R.’s comments from the Genre Specific Review Groups group.

Authors:

Congratulations on completing all reviews.

Thank you,
R.

Authors:

Congratulations on completing all reviews.

Thank you,
R.

Flash Authors:

That was just as much fun as the first one. If I don't start a new one quick enough, feel free to request another Flash Fiction review group in the Review Group Requests folder.

R.

Francis wrote: "The Trap
by Francis Mont

Jeff Grey was mad as hell. He’d had enough! Relations with his manager kept going from bad to worse. They all knew he was the most brilliant software designer in the depar..."

Flash Stars Rating System:
Structure: star
Storytelling: 1/2 star
Writing: star
Characters: 1/2 star
Twist: 1/2 star

Total: 3 1/2 stars

This is a version of the "Oft gang agley" theme. It is well written, and the narrative flows easily. The twist ending is somewhat predictable but still works.

I found Jeff's character a little mercurial. For example, he wants a relationship with Susan but then thinks of her as a "stupid girl". Jeff's feelings for Susan are central to this story, and they seem to me to be difficult to pin down.

I found it a little unbelievable that Susan would still be willing to see Jeff, after what he put her through. I think we need to see a bit more of her character in the beginning to understand her reaction at the end. For example, if we found out at the end that Susan reminded herself that she never failed to load the gun in her purse, her reaction would make a whole new kind of sense.

We get the point of view from the three main characters, Jeff, Barry, and Susan. This sets up the circumstances quite succinctly. I think the order would work better for the story, if Jeff's plan is presented before the others. Then the reader can be presented with the suspense of not knowing who will fall into the trap.

There is what appears to me to be a logic error: Jeff thinks of Susan as "a stupid girl who got herself in this trouble by sneaking around". The problem with this is that Susan explained to Barry how she fell into the trap, before Jeff is called into the office. So how does Jeff know that she was "sneaking around" instead of let's say looking up something using Barry's computer with his permission?

Here are what I believe to be the links for Sanna's review of The Rising on Goodreads and Amazon. I did not find the review of Amazon UK yet.

R.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

https://www.amazon.com/Rising-Superna...

Authors:

I believe that all reviews have been completed on time. Congratulations.

R.

L.N. wrote: "The Hysteria was real

30th of October, 1938: the day of the CBS radio broadcast of ‘War of the Worlds’

It’d just turned 10:00pm, eastern time. The streets of Grover’s Mill were filling with peopl..."

Flash Stars Rating System:
Structure: star
Storytelling: star
Writing: 1/2 star
Characters: 1/2 star
Twist: star

Total: 4 stars

This is an interesting twist on the alien invasion scare theme with a little bit of clairvoyance thrown in for good measure. The writing was pretty good, although I personally felt that contractions were used a little too much. Occasionally, I had to go back and reread portions of sentences to understand them. The first person narrative suited the story well.

Molly wrote: "I'd love to join - if too late, maybe next time.

But I don't need much time to read and review. So add me in if you can.

Thanks much, Molly

My book: Bipolar 1 Disorder - How to Survive and Thri..."

Actually, we have lost a member of this group. You are welcome to join for the second round of reviews in his place. Your assignment is to read Angelique Bochnak's book. Christy Nicholas will be reviewing your book for the second round.

R.

Francis wrote: "The not so Quick Review of "Dedicated Time" by R.

This is a time travel story that is based on the familiar plot of time-guardians or time patrols. The fact that this plot has been done before, do..."

In response to the quibbles:

1. "Schrodinger's Paradox" applies in that, like the cat, the state of the time travelers transported to a time prior to other incidents of time travel remains undetermined until it is examined. It is a common issue in time travel stories, how the disruption of time affects the time traveler. This was my interpretation of how.

3 & 4. Actually the agent's intentions were implied, but it may have been too subtle. Early on, Franklin mentions "the wild days of early time travel". This was meant to imply that there had been some problems then. By delaying the development of time displacement technology, the agent intended to put the development where her people believed it belonged, at a later time when people would be more ready to use it responsibly. There is no way for Alice or the agent to know whether either of them comes from a distorted timeline or not.

The ending is intended to be a "Lady or the Tiger" kind of ending, leaving it to the reader to ponder Alice's dilemma.

R.

Robby wrote: "The Experiment

The main character tries to build a time machine
while the author experiments with second-person narration

Robby Charters

So, there you are, a failure before you even start, in a..."


Flash Stars Rating System:
Structure: star
Storytelling: star
Writing: star
Characters: star
Twist: 1/2 star

Total: 4 1/2 stars

I was a little concerned, when I saw that this story was going to be written in the second person. That is unusual for a good reason; it often does not work. In this case, it made sense and actually added to the story and the twist.

Even holograms -- which do not require as precise alignments as described in the story -- require special attention to stabilizing the fixtures. A car driving down the street can shake a table inside enough to throw the exposure off. So I think that this story would benefit from some consideration for that issue. Maybe special gimbaled tables equipped with specially designed gyroscopes to keep it steady down to the micron.

It was a little unbelievable that someone would be able to "home brew" a time machine, but, since this was written largely tongue-in-cheek, that hardly matters.

These issues aside, the story reads well. The characters (speaker and subject) are well enough drawn to keep the reader interested. The twist is nicely presented if a little predictable.

Authors:

The review schedule has been published in the initial post of this topic. Note that a Free-for-All round has been added for additional fun.

R.

Carolyn wrote: "What if we finish ahead of schedule? Would that throw a spanner into the works?"

Not at all.

R.

Dedicated Time

The roar of a saber tooth cat interrupted Alice Trent's sleep. In truth, she had not slept all night once, since being assigned to Last Chance Station. Franklin told her the cat's scientific name, but she forgot. So Alice ran through the alphabet trying to remember its genus name, hoping that mnemonic process would bring back sleep before the name. It began with an "M". It started with a girl's name. "Meg" something. "Megan". "Megantereon". That was it. Succeeding in remembering its taxonomy, she failed her primary goal of boring herself to sleep.

Why had she volunteered for this duty? Eighteen months life span spent in the company of thirteen people just as lonely as she was. They were isolated in a backwater of time because of Schrodinger's Paradox. Two million years back was far enough before the evolution of Homo sapiens sapient to protect them from the effects of any time tampering. Like a seismograph, information trickling through the portal gave them telemetry on the pulse of time. Tiny bumps were okay. Just the normal fluctuation of key events as they mundanely unfolded.

There had never been a major event. Not in the sixteen year existence of Last Chance. That was not until the morning of Alice's thirty-second day on-station. Claxons went off. The sound of pounding feet echoed from the corridor outside her room, some feet bare and slapping, some shod in thumping soles and heels, and at least one in hissing slippers. Lights came on, flashed several times, and then steadied.

Alice joined that stampede to the portal room. She had avoided it, ever since coming through on her first day. Now there was no other option. It called to her like a Siren.

Franklin dove for the button on the counter to shut off the alarm's wail. Once it was quiet, he settled down into one of the chairs and checked the console. "We've got a hell of a spike here. It's centered around San Jose, California in the fall of 2113. I'll be able to be more specific in a few minutes. Oh, bollix. I thought that rang a bell. It has to be. It's Peter Zeist. Nothing else makes sense."

"You're kidding. Who'd go after the guy who made time travel possible? Wouldn't that create a paradox?" Mike Lenz plopped heavily into a chair next to Franklin.

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Mike. We don't know that for certain."

"Which? That they're after Zeist or that a paradox would cause a rift in time?"

"Either. Both. No one's ever created a paradox before. So, it's just theories about what might happen. Maybe nature's more resilient than that. Who knows? In any case, we need to send someone to check it out. Who's up?" Franklin looked around the room.

Alice did not need to look at the duty list. This one was a cluster bomb with oak leaf trim. It had to be her. She asked herself a dozen times why she volunteered, while Marianne checked the list. Alice turned and walked to the transit suit locker, even before Marianne came back with the answer. Alice did not hear anything that was said after that. She could feel everyone's eyes laser etching into her back.

Even in the bulky transit suit, Alice still looked small and childlike in front of Franklin. He towered over her, gently resting his hands on her shoulders. Alice wished she could feel his hands through the suit. That would have been reassuring.

"Don't go overboard. We've never had an alert like this since the wild days of early time travel. It might not be significant. Just get all the information you can. If you think you're out of your depth, come back and we'll sort it out. We've all got faith in you. You can do this. Remember your training. Anything anachronistic could give you away."

"Yes, sir." Alice wished her voice sounded more confident. All sorts of scenarios ran through her head. Some where she turned the Earth into a charcoaled burrito and others where monkeys were left as the most sentient species on the planet.

Feeling like an automaton, she stepped into the portal's field. Timelike waves eddied about her. They were not visible but gave an eerie shimmer to everything around her. Alice could feel herself being pulled away as if a monstrous tide was drawing her out to sea. Panic rose in her chest, but she had been trained for this. It might be her first live mission but not her first time transit. She closed her eyes and waited for her mind to stop swirling.

And then she was gone.

The dumpster behind the library was not the most picturesque or pleasant place to materialize, but Alice appreciated the relative privacy while she stripped off the transit suit. Once off, it automatically sucked in its carbon fiber fabric into the size and appearance of a glove. Alice stuffed it into a pocket and double checked that all her period attire and accessories matched the customs of the time.

Now came the hard part. Somehow, she needed to identify the time interloper and figure out what he or she or it meant to disrupt. The time distortion had been localized to within a hundred meters of Alice's transit point. Behind and to the sides of the library seemed implausible sites. Bushes and single family homes had a low probability of affecting Zeist, since he did not live within the event perimeter. The library was the most likely epicenter.

Alice worked her way around the library to the front entrance. At first glance, it might have been a public building from any era, including her own. Then she recognized small details that betrayed its place in time.

There were a few hybrid automobiles in the parking lot. It would not be long before they were banned. Even now, it must be hard for their owners to find fuel. A public water fountain set in concrete and stone buttressed against the side of the building right beside the door. She resisted the urge to go over and push its button. With the massive droughts of the early twenty-third century, such wastes of water were relegated as hallmarks of nearly forgotten eras. The sign over the entrance was printed only in English. In Alice's time, all signage were required to include Symbolese. Conversations she overhead were peppered with words, idioms, and references that she needed to replay in her head to remember what they meant. People walking by wore clothes and hair styles that struck her as strange, although she had been prepped to look just like them. Alice continually reminded herself not to stare. That might be excused as the behavior of an out-of-towner but also might be recognized as that of an out-of-timer, too.

Inside the library, everything looked normal. Alice began to panic again. What if her quarry walked right past her? The interloper might be altering a nexus event in one of the small offices along the back wall, and Alice would never know. The enormity of how she might fail in her first mission grew like a volcanic bubble in her chest. She calmed herself and settled into a chair behind a small metal desk along the wall. Pretending to access the library system through her computer, she surreptitiously scanned the patrons, looking for a clue.

Time passed. It struck Alice as funny in an ironic way that she, a time traveler, felt the urgency of the passing of an hour. Then something caught her eye. That woman's shoe. The gold oval disk on its heel should not be there. Moebus Heels did not start using that emblem until well into the second half of the twenty-first century. Alice was not certain, but it was worth checking into. She followed the woman out the door.

The woman stopped. She turned toward the fountain and stared for a moment. Then she went over to it, pushed the button twice marveling at the water spout, pushed it again and took a drink, and then pushed it one more time fascinated with its functionality.

That convinced Alice.

She walked up behind the woman. "We need to talk."

Startled, the woman turned her attention from the water fountain to Alice. "I beg your pardon?"

"You had very poor training, didn't you? That expression won't come back into common usage for at least another 50 years. And your shoes. Who dressed you? Whoever it was, they sure didn't know much about this time. What do you have there?" Alice reached for the cloth bag on the woman's arm. That was when she attacked Alice.

Alice backpedaled, fending off the blows. The woman might have lacked proper preparation for acclimating to this era, but she was well schooled in a particularly aggressive martial art. Maybe Kempo? Alice knife-blocked a straight punch smoothly guiding it and her opponent past her. Off balance, the woman could not stop Alice from snatching the book from inside her bag. Alice kept the book in the woman's face, using her Aikido training to keep her opponent off balance and on the defensive. Suddenly, Alice dropped the book and caught the woman in a wrist lock, taking her to the ground.

Out of breath and suddenly conscious of the stares they were drawing from the library patrons, the two women sat on the grass of the slight hill next to the entrance. Alice laughed, and the other woman laughed back. Whether it was through nervousness or tension, their laughter resulted in head shakes and dirty looks rather than a call to the police.

Alice looked at the book, The Negative's Tale.

"Look at the dedication," the woman told her between gasps for air.

Alice opened the book. The dedication read, "To Alfred Bester who inspired me to think with other minds and to Dr. Ronald Mallett whose dreams of time may take us to the stars."

"That book is total fiction, but it's based on the real science of Mallett's work on time travel. The Negative's Tale never really got any notice. That's one of the few hard copies ever printed. But reading it as a boy inspires Zeist's life work in developing practical time displacement technology."

"So you were trying to prevent him from reading it?" Alice stood up and walked over to the automated book return inset into the outside wall of the library.

"No. Just delay it. It's available online. He'll find it eventually. So why are you here?"

"To stop you from disrupting time," Alice replied.

The woman laughed.

"What's so funny, now?" Alice pressed the button to open the book return slot.

The woman propped herself up on an elbow. "I wouldn't return that book, if I were you. If you'd asked me why I'm here, I'd have given you the same answer you gave me."

Flash Authors:

We are now seven. Note that all stories have to be posted to this topic by this Thursday (9/8/2016).

Let the Flashing begin. (Wait a minute. That didn't come out right.)

R.

In joining this review group you have agreed to review the novels assigned to you on a two month schedule. This review group is now in the review phase and no longer open for new sign ups.

This is Flash Fiction review group 2. (The maximum size is 2,000 words. It will work a bit differently from other review groups.) As with other review groups, you will be expected to read and give an honest review of the works assigned to you. Assignments will be made after the group sign-up has filled.

On the first day, each author will post his or her Flash Fiction in a comment here. (Comments are limited to 12,000 characters, which will act as a de facto word count limit. If the story cannot be fit within a comment, then it is too long to be considered Flash Fiction.) By the second day, a schedule of reviews will be published here. Each participant will read the assigned work and post his or her review as a reply to the comment containing the story.

All stories must be posted by the end of the day on Thursday (September 8, 2016).

A new feature of this Flash Review group is that after the two rounds of scheduled reviews, we will have a Free-for-All round. Read any stories you like. Review any stories you read that you feel like reviewing.


THE AUTHORS ARE:

1 Annie Arcane

2 R. Leib

3 Francis Mont

4 Steve Ross

5 Robby Charters

6 L.N. Denison


ORDER OF REVIEW:

September 12 to September 13

Annie Arcane reviews Steve Ross
R. Leib reviews Robby Charters
Francis Mont reviews R. Leib
Steve Ross reviews L.N. Denison
Robby Charters reviews Francis Mont
L.N. Denison reviews Annie Arcane

September 14 to September 15

Annie Arcane reviews Francis Mont
R. Leib reviews Steve Ross
Francis Mont reviews L.N. Denison
Steve Ross reviews Robby Charters
Robby Charters reviews Annie Arcane
L.N. Denison reviews R. Leib

September 16 to September 19

Free-for-All

Okay, guys. That was fun. All reviews have been completed. I will be starting a new Flash Fiction review group soon.

R.

Vera wrote: "Closing Time
by Vera Mont


Four long years he'd waited in suspense. His leap-year theory might prove wrong. The ancient building might have been converted or demolished at any time. Rodgers had be..."

Flash Stars Rating System:
Structure: star
Storytelling: star
Writing: star
Characters: 1/2 star
Twist: 1/2 star

Total: 4 stars

For the most part, the writing flowed easily with only a few breaks in pace. There were a few words that seemed a little out of place. (e.g.: "Abstract" took a moment to realize that the meaning intended was the less common "take" rather than the more common meanings associated with thought.) The idea is quite cute and inventive. I did have a little difficulty buying into that a four year difference from 1996 to 2000 would be enough of a culture shock to dissuade Lolly from returning to her own century. Maybe if they missed a couple of February 29ths back in the 19th century, it would be more convincing. I did like all the different ways Rodgers bollixed up his plans to take unfair advantage of the time portal. All in all, quite an enjoyable read.

R. wrote: "Francis wrote: "The Truth
by Francis Mont

John Masters was torn between love and hate for his wife. They disagreed on everything. He was a staunch conservative; she, a bleeding-heart liberal. He a..."

I sent Francis some detailed notes privately. (I do this for just about all the works I review on Goodreads.) He requested that I publish them here. So, these are the thoughts and impressions that occurred to me while reading "The Truth" and that are the basis of my review:


"She could see in each surreptitious lingering gaze and hastily averted glance, feel in each unexceptionably proper helping on with a coat or handing of a drink, that Michael’s feelings mirrored her own."

This is a rather convoluted sentence that disrupts the flow of the narrative. Try something like:

"In each surreptitious lingering gaze and hastily averted glace, in each unexceptionably proper helping on with her coat or handing her a drink, she could see that Michael's feelings mirrored her own."



"with the stunned expression her face turning gradually to one of anger." This is a bit of a puzzle to put together. Try something like: "with her stunned expression gradually turning to one of anger."



In general, the writing is good. There are, perhaps, a few too many adjectives and adverbs. In places, I stumbled over some convoluted sentence structure. (Any time the reader needs to stop and go back to piece together what is in a sentence, the suspension of disbelief is damaged.) Otherwise, the narrative flowed well. It is clear from the beginning that John is going to get his just desserts in the twist ending. The twist itself is well placed and architected. There are a lot of characters for Flash Fiction, but, by separating their exposition into individual sections, I had no trouble keeping them straight. Nicely done.

Robby wrote: "I missed this one! I have a few flash fictions. Are there any more coming up?"

Robby:

This one is proving to be a lot of fun. I have every intention of starting a new Flash Fiction group soon.

R.

Francis wrote: "The Truth
by Francis Mont

John Masters was torn between love and hate for his wife. They disagreed on everything. He was a staunch conservative; she, a bleeding-heart liberal. He appreciated manly..."

Flash Stars Rating System:
Structure: 1/2 star
Storytelling: star
Writing: 1/2 star
Characters: star
Twist: star

Total: 4 stars

The Truth fits nicely into the Flash Fiction mold. There is just enough character development, just enough story development, and a nicely turned twist ending.