Talk:The Abalone Thief/@comment-25383866-20150201063556

As requested, here's a review of your story.

You have a strong introduction. I immediately want to know what's happening, why humanity is going to end.

Contrary to Banning, I actually rather liked all the science talk about the abalone. It gives the story a solid grounding in reality, and lends credibility to the protagonist.

I liked all the little details about the town. It paints a pretty accurate picture of life in the Pacific Northwest. I liked the mention of the microbrews, as they're near omnipresent on the west coast.

I liked the protagonist's interaction with Suzy. It was very believable that a little girl would say those things. I appreciated that you didn't just write a small grownup for her.

Having grown up reading Lovecraft's "short"(let's face it, the guy wrote fucking books) stories and immersing myself in the Cthulhu mythos, I really appreciated all of your imagery of the fishmen, and of the air of impending doom the protagonist's dreams foretell.

The end was a bit of a shock, even though you mentioned that he felt the need to worship a higher power. I would have thought that there'd be more of a brainwashing arc; after all, he did freak the hell out about the little girl getting sacrificed. Even people who find religion aren't just suddenly okay with infanticide and putting on a scary robe.

There were many small technical errors I found that I'm going to edit out and I'd appreciate if you'd look them over before snap-undoing the edits.

A couple of things that I noticed in particular:

"...beings much greater and more powerful than our own..." This sentence is weird. I understand it, but the wording is really off. Maybe "...beings with powers much greater than our own..." would make more sense here.

"He was the sheriff. Even if he was an overweight, pot head, he was the sheriff, and I had no choice but to listen to him." This sentence reads weird as well. It's like you stopped between two different versions of it- one where you go on after overweight pothead, like "Overweight, pothead, redneck..." for example, and one where you stop there: "Even if he was an overweight pothead, he was still the sheriff." Either way, just take a out a comma and it should be rectified.

Some tips regarding hyphens: whenever you're separating parts of a sentence, put a space on either side. It's called an en-dash. It looks like this: "... paid them no mind - live and let live, right?" I don't personally do this in my writing because it puts too much space between words, but I don't like tacking on my dashes to the beginnings of words, like this: "...paid them no mind    -live and let live, right?"

Overall, really solid story. It was a bit of a nostalgic ride for me. I hope to see more from you in the future.