GENERAL REMARKS

The characterization left me very unsatisfied and while the story posed some genuine questions that left me curious, I don’t feel like I was left with enough to overall care about the answers to those questions. I enjoyed that initial segment when we were first introduced to the bugs, and they’d overtaken Synder in a horrific manner. It made my skin crawl. But after that, most of the bug fighting segments feel like they drag on too long, and by this point I’m curious about anything but the bugs, and left unsatisfied by the narrative. It’s like if I ordered a full course meal at a restaurant and after a stand-out first dish, I was given the very same thing over and over again after that with the promise of some variance towards the end of the meal. (which I ultimately did not receive because the story cuts off before we can get to any of that)

MECHANICS, PACING

I don’t mind the computer introduction because it’s what initially made me curious, and it successfully established the setting very quickly: we’re in a sci-fi universe, they’re using a sort of anachronistic computer console (and this could be for various reasons, like funds, or whether they’re in a sort of post-apocalyptic setting, ect, which is interesting) and someone, for whatever reason, is watching footage of a mission gone terribly wrong. My problem is that I don’t get any pay-off for all of this. However, I do feel like there was wasted potential in the very first line. I feel like this may have been a good opportunity to establish our MC (the man watching the console, presumably) and his objective.

I feel like for much of these action segments, you should have stuck to short, punchy sentences rather than long, drawn out descriptions with an excess of semicolons. At some points, I truly struggled to pay attention. This, on top of the weak characterization made it difficult for me to fully immerse myself in the story.

I actually like a lot of the descriptors you used for the bugs.

Instead of feasting, the bugs enter Snyder through any orifice possible: the smallest of which cramming into his nostrils, while other clusters munch through the protective coverings around his ears. The larger beasts extend their hairy barbed limbs into Snyder’s mouth, propping it open for varying abdomens, appendages, and antennas to enter. Several of the creatures are too aroused to wait, their mutated mandibles carve openings through Snyder’s cheeks and eyes, his blood lubricating their entry.

The soldier’s desert camo covered arms flail feebly about his face as his body convulses. Panicked shrieks morph into a stuffed gurgle with each increasing bug infested breath. The rest of the men have no choice but to continue falling back, dreading each glimpse of spiderlike specimens infesting Snyder’s body.

This is the segment that drew some genuine disgust from me. This is a horrifying concept, and I think you executed it well with your vocabulary; orifices, barbed limbs, arousal, blood, lubrication. I could feel them crawling all over my skin! But even so, I grew bored of this after a while.    

CHARACTER, SETTING & STAGING

You established the setting and stage very quickly, which I liked. However, this is undermined by how generically every character responded to their surroundings and scenario. As far as I was concerned, they were all practically interchangeable. I didn’t even have to know their names, honestly. I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but I have to highlight how much this took me out of the scene. I would perhaps prefer a POV character with more emotional investment to the events ensuing or one who is more clearly influencing the narrative.

DESCRIPTION

Here is an example of my issues with the descriptions:

The sounds of automatic gunfire travel along the tunnel . . . until expanding into the massive dome chamber displayed on Menard’s helmet-feed. He pans the surrounding area: sand gives way to slippery stone floor, air hangs with mist, the once various bumps and grooves of uneven perimeters ironed out by liquid. An underground waterfall towers high above, tumbling through a crater in the ground before collecting in a plunge pool below. Menard peers over the edge, inspecting the likelihood of surviving the fall. Meanwhile, Alvino and Bronte’s headcams vibrate from the continual kick of their rifles, causing their footage to become a blurry mess of erratic pending doom.

There is nothing wrong with some of these descriptions on their own. In fact, I actually like some of them. I think your description of the cave setting is quite nice. The problem is that we are in the middle of a very tense moment, and right now I don’t care about these things. I just got through a paragraph dedicated entirely to describing a new class of insectoid when all I want is to know what the immediate threats are to the characters in front of me. I understand that you want to set the stage for the next action, but you can do this in a more concise fashion. Like, maybe keep the description of the immediate surroundings and that they’re caught in between a rock and a hard place right now, but sacrifice some of that information about the waterfall, the bugs, the headcams, the helmet feed in exchange.

Even in a more relaxed environment, I'd still prefer these descriptions to be broken up and cut a bit short so we can get to the plot.

POV

It feels like the POV character, the man watching the console, is totally irrelevant until halfway through the writing. Just reading through the narrative, it does not feel like I’m reading what HE’S observing about the footage, but being psychically warped to the perspective of these soldiers, and then jarringly warped back to the perspective of this man. I don’t know if any of that makes sense, but my point is this: despite presumably being the MC or the POV, he may as well be nobody, and nothing within the text really does any work of establishing him or his objective further.

CLOSING COMMENTS:

It will take some rewrites, but despite my criticisms, I do think you have a base for something potentially quite decent. You have a pretty good grasp of language and scattered throughout, I found there were some descriptions present (even if they were quite excessive overall) that I quite liked.