Kat's Reviews > Old Media
Old Media
by
by
All tell and no show.
The story feels very juvenile. There is a lot of repeating of the same points and it all felt rather rushed. The thoughts aren't coherent and parts of the story are expanded on that need not be, while other parts that seem way more interesting (like Michael's past) are not further delved into. The escape with Med would have been an exciting scene to include rather than glossing over it.
I understand that that was not what this story was about, but those seemed like much better stories than the one we got.
Here is one example of a case where a sentence could have been cut out to make the story flow much better, give the reader much more credit, and show rather than tell:
Med had been begging the administration for money to cover an update to the lab’s protein library. John sat up to face her. “Did you get that funding you needed?”
“Ugh. No. They don’t understand why we need new protein data when we already have a library from five years ago. Plus some bullshit from the dean about how I should make the students discover new folds themselves, and not just copy from a database like a bot would.” [...]
The first sentence explaining Med's goal is completely unnecessary. The next phrases and paragraph just repeat what was stated, and us, the reader, would easily be able to grasp what Med's goal was by the explanation in the next paragraph.
And lastly, the flipping back and forth between John's perspective and Michael's was not well done. I continued to get confused by who was talking, and characteristics from each of them were not well stated to a point where when they resurfaced later on, I had initially thought it had been part of the other. For example Michael's scar, and John's hair.
(Sidenote: What was the point in mentioning John's hair? It serves no purpose and there is no context given as to how it relates in this world. No information is given as to if this is normal in their world or how it's even possible.)
If this had been a novel I would have DNF'd it early on. I finished it only because it was so short.
The story feels very juvenile. There is a lot of repeating of the same points and it all felt rather rushed. The thoughts aren't coherent and parts of the story are expanded on that need not be, while other parts that seem way more interesting (like Michael's past) are not further delved into. The escape with Med would have been an exciting scene to include rather than glossing over it.
I understand that that was not what this story was about, but those seemed like much better stories than the one we got.
Here is one example of a case where a sentence could have been cut out to make the story flow much better, give the reader much more credit, and show rather than tell:
Med had been begging the administration for money to cover an update to the lab’s protein library. John sat up to face her. “Did you get that funding you needed?”
“Ugh. No. They don’t understand why we need new protein data when we already have a library from five years ago. Plus some bullshit from the dean about how I should make the students discover new folds themselves, and not just copy from a database like a bot would.” [...]
The first sentence explaining Med's goal is completely unnecessary. The next phrases and paragraph just repeat what was stated, and us, the reader, would easily be able to grasp what Med's goal was by the explanation in the next paragraph.
And lastly, the flipping back and forth between John's perspective and Michael's was not well done. I continued to get confused by who was talking, and characteristics from each of them were not well stated to a point where when they resurfaced later on, I had initially thought it had been part of the other. For example Michael's scar, and John's hair.
(Sidenote: What was the point in mentioning John's hair? It serves no purpose and there is no context given as to how it relates in this world. No information is given as to if this is normal in their world or how it's even possible.)
If this had been a novel I would have DNF'd it early on. I finished it only because it was so short.
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Reading Progress
June 9, 2019
–
Started Reading
June 9, 2019
– Shelved
June 9, 2019
–
Finished Reading