In the Absence of Stars - 3.1

Hi there! Oh my goodness, your writing skills blew me away!

There are a few sentences that could use some work.

The desert stretches far and wide to the north as we leave the little port town behind, the hum of life giving way to the purr of the engine beneath my feet and the whistle of wind across the broad expanse of sand threatening to swallow us. I don't get a chance to ask about what Cat's doing with this whole shipping thing, even if I wanted to; he rushes me from point A to point Z and through all the rest like a hurricane.

Somehow, this is how things are supposed to be instead, this trail of blood behind me leading back to that broken red clay and my mother whispering to my sisters how they should leave. How it's not respectful to mourn, just like it wasn't respectful for me to cry when I was putting him in his Sunday best, just like it wasn't respectful for me to snap at First Lieutenant when he blamed me—but hell, isn't it my fault?

Maybe I can't run from things that happened a month ago, when this same moon was looking down with the same blasted dark craters in its side as it limped through the sky...but hell, give me another year and I'll have forgotten Vestry Road ever existed.

This trail of blood behind me leading back to that broken red clay and my mother whispering to my sisters how they should leave. How it's not respectful to mour.

Hi, Felistia here with a review for you on this wonderful day.

Nit-picks

"Buff's paranoid. He thinks anyone he doesn't know is there to personally ruin his side of the trade route." Cat shrugs and rolls his window down,

"You can't walk here." That was the short one, the one with the doe-brown eyes that glimmered like blood under the streetlamps. He was the one who pushed me first, from behind, into the brick wall of the cinema while his friend jeered. I didn't hear what he asked me, don't remember what I was supposed to say.

"You dumb, sweetheart? You an idiot or something?" the other one asked, her mouth full of chew as she leaned in close to me. She pulled one of my hands up to examine, like she was making sure I was a mutant—like she could have missed it from such a short distance.

Neither had a mark on them that I could see. They could have walked out of the pages of a magazine.

"I'm sorry, I—" I didn't know. I couldn't have known. I tried to get out of their way, but they had my back against the wall, the girl's hand planted firmly on my chest as she turned to her friend and laughed, loud.

"Sorry doesn't cut it," the guy said. He pulled something from behind him, something that he jammed up under my chin before I could see. It had to be a gun; nothing else was so cold and deadly dull. I closed my eyes, then, knowing it would be fast. Hell if I hadn't thought about it myself a time or two, stealing my dad's pistol and doing my mother a favor, but I owed my family too much for that.

Grammar and Punctuation

We're past the border before the sun can even think about setting.

Hey, Jericho,

So today we're trying something a little crazy and reviewing chapter 3 without having read any previous part of the story. Sometimes it happens like that, and hopefully fresh eyes on the story can give some perspective that can help in some way!

I think the first sentence actually sounds like the beginning of the story, even though I know it's not. It's strong and gives a sense of past and action, which is necessary in any beginning, because something always can before and something else is coming after.

What's interesting is that I feel like this could very well be where the story starts, and that's probably supported by the great flashback you included here. I feel like I know that the narrator is trying to cope with the death of family and friends, perpetrated by whatever gang was ruling where she lived. She's now on the move to a safer place, so whoever is here in the car was friendly or took pity on her, even though he seems to have dangerous not quite so generous friends. I would feel pretty good about starting the story here. So you have to consider what that means. What is the information in the first two chapters that I've missed that I should have? What do I not even know that I'm missing? If there's not much, maybe this is the real beginning of your story.

I guess I'm probably missing Page. That seems like an important event to this narrator, probably what enabled her to cut ties with her home city and leave, maybe? But beyond that, a great piece of advice I heard when in school for writing was that usually the first page and sometimes the first whole chapter just needs to be cut by default because you take a while to warm up into writing and into the action.

Hopefully some of these thoughts are helpful to you! Let me know by reply or by message if you have any questions or comments about this review.
Good luck and keep writing!

Hannah