This is fantastically written. If you're someone reading the comments on the hub before deciding whether to read the series, go back, go do that, and then come back. You will not regret it.
But this comment isn't really for you, anyway — it's for Hairy Hank! A lot of people say that your greatest strength is characters. After reading this, I actually disagree with that assessment — your talent lies in depth. That's most apparent in characters, but pretty much every element in this is developed and detailed to hell and back — the characters, of course, but also the Site itself, the layout, the internal mechanics of 43, the logistics, everything. It's readily apparent that this setting and the people in it occupy a frankly-concerning amount of your mental real estate, and every single thought is transmitted to the reader in a flurry of witty, charming, and oftentimes deeply affective (not a typo) prose.
The prose itself deserves a lot of praise — it's pretty much fucking impossible to deliver what's nearly two hundred thousand words to the reader in a way that's engaging 100% of the time, that's just a fact. There were times when I got disinterested and put it down to pick up later, moreso in certain chapters than others. But that's ultimately very minor considering the overall great success rate you have in making your prose incredibly engaging. Your voice sings through it — it's clever, it makes fun of the characters without being overbearing, it's self-aware in parts, and most importantly, it trusts the reader. These are all incredibly smart people, and it takes a smart person to write smart people in a way that's not stupid. At remarkably few points does the reader feel alienated from what's going on.
If the prose deserves praise, the characters in this probably deserve a fucking treatise, but neither of us have that kind of time, so you get a paragraph and you'll like it, damnit. There are a lot of great character writers on the site, but holy wow this is next-level. There's the basic level of characterization where your characters feel like people instead of static cutouts. There's a level of character-writing skill where your characters feel like real people with motivations and feelings. Then there's another level where they don't even feel like other real people, they feel like you, the reader. Everyone can see a bit of themselves in Harry, Ibanez, Udo, everyone else — it's what makes them so fantastically relatable. We live in their heads for most of this novel and it's a great place to be — you relate, you critique, you lament that they're (emotionally) buffoons, you know you'd make the same mistakes. Their relationships are complex and overlapping and complicated and deeply human in a way you don't see very often on this site. Making one character relatable like that is difficult — making seven is a goddamn triumph. And that's not even counting all the other little characters that crop up here and again that are also developed to hell and back. It would've been remarkably easy to fill 43 with cardboard cutouts (shoutout Mukami) to let the limelight stay on the main cast, but you didn't do that, and the story is better for it. I can't overstate how impressive this is to me personally — character writing is arguably one of the most difficult parts of writing, and this takes that and runs the gamut with it.
I would be a bad friend if I didn't include the criticisms I do have with this gargantuan pile of praise — your depth is fantastic for the story, overall. But there are times where it's not in service of the scene. This is most notable for me during action scenes, like the first breach, the Mounties/Werewolves incident, Area incident (though less so here because you went back and explained it in the next chapter), and a little bit during the anniversary breach. You err on the side of being detailed but in quick, fast-paced scenes, detail is secondary to pacing — you want the reader to retain the momentum and feel in it, which they get pulled out of if they're having to consider excess situational and character detail in what are already pretty complex cross-interactions. I also think that sometimes you run into the same problem when it comes to describing the physical layout of the site, but I'm a lot less firm on this one — maybe I just have a hard time visualizing it. I also think there are some light issues with the grander pacing — chapter-to-chapter it's fine but on the grander scheme. But I think we've already talked about those, so I won't belabor the point.
And because I almost forgot to mention it, the art! The art's fantastic. I don't think you can overstate the impact it has on breaking up the text and keeping the reader engaged, serving as a throughline, helping visualize the characters, even underlining particularly dramatic scenes. I read a lot of this in class on my laptop, so I think some of my classmates may have gotten an eyeful in some of the more risque chapters, but oh well, sucks to suck. The art's great, you're a great artist, shut up, etc.
Knockout stuff, Harry. Can't wait for the next one.
As a courtesy to our readers on mobile devices, please collapse long posts. ~Zyn
