Constructive reviews (COMPLETED)

Review: To abide with strays by @KittyDevan

CHAPTERS CONSIDERED FOR REVIEW: 1-14 AS ON 23 APRIL,2023

Note: The review below reflects my personal reading experience when I read the chapters the first time for reviewing. Many aspects of this review might not be applicable as edits were done.

The story so far deals with a team of people comprising of marine biologists, archeologists and excavation crew, attempting to figure out a glass structure they discovered while researching at Batumi site. It portrays the professional dynamic and hierarchy within each team and how they coordinate to work as an inter-disciplinary unit. Power struggles and ego of the people in power is explored in a refreshingly light hearted way. At the end of the last published chapter, the reader can feel the camaraderie between the crew members selected for the operation, offering a peek into the petty squabbles, insecurities and tales of friendship which makes them an effective team. There is an element of mystery regarding a certain event that occurs in one of the project related facilities.

CHARACTERS

Nadya : She is the character who has the most development and a backstory so far. Shown as a less emotional and more academic biologist and grand daughter of a famous Archeologist. She strives to create a name for herself and avoids invoking her famous heritage when people bring it up, opting to not live under that shadow. As of now, the character seems to be prone to panic attacks due to unexplained reasons, involving a person who had snake-like eyes. Other than these elements, it's her interactions with Esfir, her frenemy and Zech, whom she teases often knowing that he has a crush on her, that makes this character tick. Comes across as funny and likeable.

Esfir, Zech and Eldar: The trio, who I think (author can correct me if I'm wrong) are in one sub-team, provide some comedic relief. The conflict between Eldar and Tengiz on what the glass structure is supposed to be is fun. After an episode with Zech and Nadya, how Esfir stands up for Zech (along with Nadya) was a good example of how the team trusts each other. 

As for Eldar, the way he pronounces certain words and how he is forced to pick a team, even if it went against his idea of stacking it with people of his own nationality and the clash with his chief over this is a funny but real commentary on power imbalance and favoritism.

Alyona and Andrei: Their friendship displayed throughout the story, even in times when people doubted them is cute. Their banter is the most fun part of the book even if it is in short bursts.

As of now, other characters do not get enough development or moments to shine.

WRITING

There is a lot to improve here. My reviews are not from a technical standpoint and I generally am ready to overlook grammatical issues if the plot interests me. But here, I was constantly reminded of it. There are structural, immersion-breaking issues with writing. 

Dialogues in the early chapters are very difficult to follow.  Conversation between multiple people are written in a single line without a fixed sequence, sometimes with inner monologues and translations from Russian to English intertwined. I had to spend extra time and re-read multiple times to make sense of it. In the later chapters, it does get better.

Transition between different scenes with no visible separation leads to momentary confusion every other chapter. This issue is easy to fix.

Perhaps the thing that kept me from enjoying this book is the sentence structure itself. Written completely in simple present/present continuous tense, some of it is awkwardly staged and weirdly truncated. Some of the sentences intentionally avoid the subject resulting in just predicates with context getting lost as a result. I will attempt to re-write some of them for this review. 

There are some instances where the author clearly meant something and I am sure when they read it, they can comprehend what it means. But it is so lost in translation, that the reader cannot possibly comprehend what went down.

PACING

It's rapid fire in the beginning, to the book's detriment. No less than 13 characters are introduced in the first two short chapters. These are thirteen names, some nicknames and thirteen designations. Later in the story, when their nationality becomes important to the plot, reader will have to come back to the first chapter in order to not feel completely lost. It's not practical to expect the readers to remember all this information and feels like homework. To optimize my time, I took help of a word document. I'd suggest the author to either include a glossary of characters or try to slow things down in the beginning of the story. The designations can be used as pronouns in the subsequent chapters so that the readers can familiarize with it.

The middle and later portions of the story is paced in a much more gradual and frankly better fashion. 

Everything said and done, I do think this story has potential and irrespective of whatever problems I faced while reading, most of them have been addressed with the recent edits and that is a promising sign.

I did edit the previous version of this review, as some of it didn't come out the way I had intended and I thought it could be expressed better. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Thanks.