At 04:24 AM 6/13/96 -0700, Robert K Bentley wrote:

              I've decided to try this first person POV as a test, this is
technically the second time I've attempted this type of writing the first
time was a very early version of the Beginning back five or six years ago.

1st-person can be tough. A 'fic I have in stasis is first-person, and man,
do I miss the good ole omniscient narrator ^_-

		Welp, that's it, comments and crits are welcome nuttin too big
or too small.....if I don't get any I start taking Space Gophers as hostages!
;)

Not that I've joined a Space Gopher Preservation Society or anything, but
since I've gotten this unsupervised job entering records into a PC, I've got
a lot more time to read/write/critique 'fics ^_- So here goes...

their screams as I coward in the city that I helped build. I watched them be

		      ^^^^^^^
Spelling... well, OK *grammar* errors like this seem to be pretty frequent.
You're using the wrong word, but it's spelled correctly, so a spell-checker
won't nab it. In this case, it's 'cowered'. I probably missed a few, so you
should check this over yourself...

like Cassi, so that is what you can call me. I was borne into a family of

						  ^^^^^^
'born'. This one shows up a lot, so I'll only mention it once, 'k?

       After the tests I was given the opportunity to either choose which
cruiser I wanted to be on or let the Acedemy Council randomly choose which

				     ^^^^^^^^^
Academy

>from our journey. The male to female ratio on the ship was a little biased in

my view, the Captain only got to choose her command staff, anyone else was
chosen by the council. We had people from all walks of life on board,
scientists, warriors, civilians. If you hadnÆt guessed there were more women
on board then men. I would bitch some more about this but what kind of story
teller would I be?

*snip*

this changed when long range sensors reported another ship in our path. I
ordered the ship out of hyperspace, the shipÆs tac drives were brought down

So she's the captain? I had to reread this a few times to make sure. You
might want to actually state that near the beginning of the second paragraph
for slowpokes like me ^_^

       "Move out of the way, Ciro, we need to get through." I replied and
held back the security guards. I glared down the religious figure, the one

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That makes him sound like a statue. And either change 'glared' to 'stared',
or 'down the' to 'down at the' - not both! I'd go with the latter,
personally, based on the dialogue that follows.

as their mystic energy surged from their bodies to their only weapons. "We
cannot allow to go any further Captain, we have orders." The younger female

	        ^
Add 'you'

disciple retorted and looked away from my ole holy then thou donÆt piss off
the Captain death glare, something I had begun to perfect almost to a T. "Only

'Holier than thou'? The line is cute, but difficult to digest.

of paper out. I know he didnÆt hear one of the guards say "if he does that one
more time do I have your permission to slap him around, just a little sir?"
"Cassi would be too but she filed her papers before we pulled anchor. She
should qualified by now. So are you going to let us both pass or are you going
to stand there and let us wait until you pass out or your power runs out."

Who's speaking in the latter quote? Alex? Oh, and indent it, too.

       A sharp wine caught my ears, the sound was coming from the damage

"Captain! This is no time to be drinking!"

Sorry :) Change it to 'whine'

       "Twenty seconds!"
       "Our shields are powered by your Mages, right Ciro?" I asked him, he
looked at me and for the first time he seemed to know what I was thinking.
"Mages and Pryors give off a sphere of power that surrounds them. The first
gravity well didnÆt harm us, the second one doesnÆt like the Arts." I stopped
in my thinking, a light came on. I looked down at Ciro. "Was Knol here?"
       "Captain?!"
      I punched the comm tab on my armrest for the shield/weapons bay.
"De-activate the shields, now! ThatÆs an order!"
       I heard a series of voices about to object but the head Mage shut all
of them up and cleared the channel. "Aye Captain!" I closed the channel my
gaze locked with CiroÆs. "What was Knol doing here?"
       "Ten seconds, nine, eight, seven." The bridge lights flicked off and

That seems a lot of stuff to be happening in a 10-second span.

       I rolled over in bed and curled up tighter around my stuff animal. My

							^^^^^
'stuffed'

my bed. My nice warm fuzzy, filled with water, bed. "IÆm having a good dream,

'nice warm fuzzy waterbed'?

carpeted my quarters. I stopped in front of the full length mirror and ran a
finger nail across my rather full breasts. They rippled in response which
answered my question. IÆve had on my body shield since we found KnolÆs remains.

Personally, I don't like this part. It disrupts what was an otherwise
amusing scene.

Let's see.... it's a good story, with an intriguing premise. The
first-person works well ( except you occasionally switch between present and
past tense ). There's just the disjointed sentence here and there, and the
occasional spelling/grammar error. Nothing major to fix, but they do detract
from an otherwise solid story. Just go over it a few times and you should be
able to weed out the problems.

Oh, btw, sorry about any odd-looking characters in the quoted text. Those
are my fault :)
                                                                        - MW