Remember when I said I'd read this whole series and then a year and a half passed? I remembered. Well, I'm reading more SCP stuff recently as a preceding to my full return as an author to the site, so I came back to this! I'll be short, but first I just want to say there are far too many SPaG errors in this for an upvote. If you comb through this just to fix those, my downvote will upgrade to a novote. But like, you name a character Robert just to call them Richard every time afterwards, you have repeated words, dropped words if I remember correctly… incorrect words that need replacement… et cetera. This really needs another pass, desperately.
Beyond that, I liked the latter half of this much more than the first. You're portraying some, like, aging and sickly characters as your protagonists, which I find unique. I like the vibe it gives off. That said, the dialogue — especially in the first half — felt very stilted and weird, unnatural. No one here feels quite like a real person, when interacting with other people. I don't have specific critique on that right now but if you wanted to hit me up I could go more into it.
Besides that, this feels like a lot of nothing. I know, that's pretty rich coming from me, receiver of several comments along the lines of "nothing really happens in this tale," but I really feel it here. Huxley and Emma kind of introduce themselves to each other, but establish almost no connection so we're not really watching that grow. Huxley actually introduces as rather sympathetic but right after the interview becomes very abrasive, kind of petulant in his own head even. And all we learn is they're going on an assignment, and then they get on a plane. The interview is an introduction, the gym is I guess character development? Or, exposition? For Huxley's condition mostly? And then we get on a plane. Not everything has to be high action, but this really did feel pretty hollow. Scenes where not much happens are prime real estate for establishing characters and character dynamics, and I think this… nominally accomplishes that, but I don't come out of it feeling like I have a good sense of these people or how their relationship is going to work, which makes the space feel wasted. I'd have to be more awake to diagnose why exactly that is.
That, and this didn't have any moments of really good prose that saved the prologue and first chapter, so my novote leans towards a downvote (where it will stay until the errors get cleaned up).
