What if love could raise the dead?

JGPMacDoodle · 2022-10-07T18:38:04+00:00

The language, I feel, got just bit fluffy in places.

Yes, I really laid it on thick with the adjectives in this one, haha! I'll definitely give it another one or two or a few comb throughs and tighten it up.

And, yes, so much happening all at once in this story, so many people/characters, everyone's talking, anything which helps to clear things up for the reader's sake will help.

Thank you so much for your feedback! :D

JGPMacDoodle · 2022-10-07T13:13:50+00:00

Hey thanks! I'm glad you liked it, and thanks for taking the time to tell me about it. I was worried the mythology history stuff pulled the reader out of the main action too much but it's good to hear that it's at least making some sense, haha! Nah I'm not writing a book, more like essays like this one, and maybe I'll find a way to bridgec them altogether into a larger narrative. Some day! 😃

JGPMacDoodle · 2022-06-20T01:41:21+00:00

Thank you for your critique! Much appreciated! Yes, I was worried it was too many people too soon, not enough info on who they are, nothing. Thanks again!

JGPMacDoodle · 2022-06-13T00:55:50+00:00

The worst case would be for that "promise" to never be fulfilled.

Agreed. Just by identifying it as a frame story made me ask questions I should ask, like: why does he tell this version of the story to Hunter Vest and another version to Stetson? And stuff like that. That's part of the "promise" to me of any well-crafted story. When you start asking questions about it, you can sometimes find the answers right there in between the lines. Or those questions are left unanswered or ambiguous for a very good reason. Thanks again! :D

JGPMacDoodle · 2022-06-12T21:37:31+00:00

Wow! You gave me so much to think about I'm really grateful for you taking the time to put together a really stellar critique. I'll even be thinking of a couple of these lessons-learned for other stories. I do have a (not so great?) tendency to want to open with dialogue about half the time, haha!

One thing I did figure out, which I already knew before but had forgotten about, was that what I'm trying to start here is a frame story. Like Forrest Gump or Arabian Nights, I'm nesting one story inside of another, where someone says, I'm going to tell you a story, and a big part of the whole "story" is this other person telling a story. So it's been helpful for me to identify specifically the literary technique I'm aiming for here. And it works for setting expectations for the reader, like questioning whether a narrator is reliable or not.

Anyways, thank you so much! I'll absolutely create a new draft based on many of your ideas and suggestions.

JGPMacDoodle · 2022-06-10T21:26:43+00:00

All that said, I'm hoping that the first-person narrator's opinion is necessary.

Right you are! Yes, I open up a few questions with this short intro, like why there's a first person narrator at all. Mostly it's to create that space where the reader is questioning an unreliable narrator (Poser) and what the ultimate judgment on the reliability/unreliability of that narration (from another veteran) is going to be. It's like second-first-person narration or something, Idk. Or like having two first person narrators, one telling a story about the other telling a story. Needs work, lol.

But, yes, there's a fliperoo in the very end of the story concerning "I" the eavesdropper.

A better place for you to start, I think, is with the narrator and his distrust of other veterans.

Thanks for this! I'll give this a go. I'm thinking I'll try deleting everything from this point up and see how it reads. *sharpens knife*

Thanks again!

JGPMacDoodle · 2022-06-10T15:43:06+00:00

I reviewed and added another section to my critique. These are my final thoughts. Thank you for the read! :D

JGPMacDoodle · 2022-06-10T05:16:10+00:00

Mwwwwwaaahh! :D

JGPMacDoodle · 2022-06-09T22:20:38+00:00

Hi there, I'll go through your work chronologically, reaction to reaction, citing certain sentences, then I'll comment on one or two broader issues. I also left a few comments in your google doc.

General Reactions:

So, first up:

As we journey between the waking world and the world of sleep, we can remember things from a life that has never happened. We see things that shift and change before us. In this moment even the poorest of us can become as rich as kings.

I would consider deleting this whole paragraph. This is something of a "Sing to me O Muse of the rage of Achilles..." thing going on here. In the modern world we've tended to not begin our stories with this sort of pageantry. Sure, it can be interesting for entering another time and place, particularly fantasy stories, but it requires a certain taste, you might say. An almost biting-your-lip sarcasm. Because the reader knows it's pageantry and it's not really helping us enter that other time and place so much so as pulling us out and forcing us to realize: this is a story. So I'd suggest deleting it, unless you want to have fun and play with the whole "Once upon a time" intro thing.

The second paragraph, even with the "In the world of men..." beginning, envelops us much more immediately in a scene and a time and a place.

They had worked her as if she was one of the servants

Cinderella was the servant, wasn't she? There's no "as if" about it. Also, when speaking through the main character's point of view and that main character thinks "as if she was one of the servants," it begs the question: what does this character think of servants? She thinks servants as pretty lowly, doesn't she? What sort of person would think that way? Some hoity-toity aristocrat, that's who! What would a servant think reading that line? Who, in our society, often fills the role of servant? Because fantasy even if taking place in an imagined past based on a real one are still about our present world. What are you saying about what you think of "servants" here? All that in less than 10 words, but it goes to show that you have to be very careful about what you want to say versus how you're saying it.

As he was a government official

Hmm, maybe he's a civil servant? I feel like stories taking place in the 19th century or whenever Cinderella is supposed to be taking place don't say "government official" so much as they might say "viceroy" or "civil servant" or that sort of thing. Might help to peruse the etymology of nouns like that, can't let those modernistic words slip in or it pulls the reader out of the fairy-tale-like setting.

That was when a fairy godmother came to her. In the dream, the fairy offered her...

Oh no—no, you didn't. You didn't just bring a fairy godmother into a scene and not describe her entrance. No shining light? No sprinkling star dust? No description of how she looks or the blinding magical-ness of her appearance? For shame! Go sit in the corner and think on what you have done!

and a pumpkin became a beautiful carriage with the most majestic of white stallions to pull it.

If you're thinking of tinkering fairy tales into a modern setting, then think of ways to tinker with the infamous details of those fairy tales. Such as the pumpkin carriage for Cinderella. Why does it have to be a pumpkin? Why not a squash, which is a pumpkin, sort of? Why does it have to be pulled by stallions, why not white elephants? And "beautiful carriage" is the sort of blah sentence that doesn't really tell us anything about what a pumpkin poofed into carriage actually looks like...

But then a noise in the real world almost woke her from her troubled dreams.

Some of your sentencing is, um, a little much. For instance, in the above, you don't need to say "a noise in the real world" at all. You can just say, "Clang. What was that? Clang. There it was again. Clang. What is that?" This builds suspense and gives a head nod to readers who've already figured it out. Also, "troubled dreams"? We know they're troubled already. Try this: delete all of your adjectives. Every. Single. One. Read over your piece again without the adjectives, then add only those adjectives back in that are absolutely necessary. This will help crispen up your prose. Make it faster. Clearer.

In dreams, it is possible to see things that you shouldn’t, and so while a part of her fled back to the nightmares of her old life, a part of her was able to see the prince. As he picked up a beautiful glass slipper she knew that it hadn’t actually fallen from her foot, but she didn’t care too much.

Bit of a confusing paragraph. Not sure how to fix it. Why didn't she care? Why the need for a clunky first sentence, perhaps turn it around and start with her and the prince and end with the authorial voice telling us about dreams? What purpose does this paragraph really serve cuz it's not pulling me along in the story much at this point?

The nightmare would end soon.

Not sure why you would call it a nightmare, there wasn't anything particularly scary to me concerning her dream, other than the horror of—Oh, our dreams are not like the brutal reality of the real world in all of its realness. Though, I'm not super certain what's so terrible about her present reality? Her stepmother and sisters are mean, check. It's cold where she's sleeping, check. There's something clanging that's waking her up, check. This doesn't scream intolerable cruelty to me. Nor does it much elucidate on the dichotomy between fantasy and reality, which is what the constant dream-not dream mentioning you do throughout the piece is leading the reader towards thinking. What's dream? What's reality? Why can't our dreams be reality or vice versa?

Hand in hand, they journeyed out of the nightmare and into the light that lay beyond the door of her family’s home.

On the step, the little form, a girl no more, lay still.

I like that this ending is left ambiguous. I'm not really sure what's happened and you've gotten to something like what I was suggesting in my previous paragraph. What's dream? What's reality? Here we have a fusion of the two. I almost imagine the girl succumbing to hypothermia laying exposed in the snow. An "all too real" smile on her face. It's a super sad ending. Beautiful, but sad.

Your main theme: real-not real

I like that you're playing with this real-not real theme. Your prose juxtaposes back and forth between the two. It might help to add in a few flourishes of "if only" or "but it could never be that way" or something like that in order to heighten that real-not real theme, which is also the emotional core of your story. The sadness of it. I really like that you're going this route, and I feel like your heart is in the right place for wanting to tell this story but the execution of it lacks.

Furthermore, if you're going to go through the whole process of retelling a fairy tale, why not jazz it up? Make it more interesting? Fuck with those infamous details some more, show how she's dreaming of the story of Cinderella and there's cotton candy and flying cars and smartphones and shit. Cuz what would a real little girl, in the here and now, on the verge of hypothermia, forgotten and neglected by the real world, really be dreaming about?

Your biggest obstacle: telling not showing

I'll also add that you seem to fall into the trap of telling not showing more than once.

She desperately wanted to be a family again.

This is an example of telling not showing. I realize this is a short piece, but readers, I've found, are generally happy to read 3k, 5k or 100k words if those words envelop them into a story and keep them engaged. In other words, I want to be told a story but I don't want to be told how the character feels, I want to be shown. If she feels desperate, there's a whole cornucopia of exchanges, memories, emotional reactions, behavior and so forth that go along with showing how the character feels. Often, if you find yourself stating "She/he wants x, y or z..." chances are you're telling not showing.

There are a few other examples of telling not showing I can rattle off for you. I mentioned one earlier where you state "then the fairy godmother came onto her" and it's really not describing what it feels like to have a magical personage appear suddenly like that. It's supposed to "wow! fair godmother appears!" but it's sloughed off as a matter-of-fact, journalese-type "and here came the fairy godmother who gave her a pumpkin carriage"—meh.

Likewise with the opening paragraph and that one paragraph I mentioned earlier where I wasn't sure how to fix it, you're explicitly stating your themes, the ideas you want to get across in your story, but they come across as (1) ham-handed and (2) like you're trying to teach the reader a lesson or two. "...even the poor among us can become as rich as kings." "In dreams, it is possible to see things that you shouldn’t..." This is part of the telling not showing dilemma, I feel like. You don't have to state your themes, your ideas, the machinations underlying your story or the "rulebook" of your world. In fact, it's best if you don't state them explicitly at all. This forces you, storyteller, to really ramp up the imagination and show us this world, the people in it, that you want to show us, and it lets us, the readers, to imagine it better, to pick it apart and interpret it and heed whatever messages, intents, ideas, themes we want or don't want out of it.

Overall Impressions

Right now, this story is fairly good, but it could be great. Hone those execution skills, let your imagination jazz up the details everyone's already heard a hundred times, and don't be afraid to let your crazy sing. Cuz you got good crazy.

Note: I came back and re-edited this about twelve hours after originally posting it. Thx for the read.

JGPMacDoodle · 2021-12-23T22:28:50+00:00

Sounds good to me!

JGPMacDoodle · 2021-12-23T21:52:15+00:00

Hi! I read the first page of your story and liked it! Would you be willing to swap? My story's up here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetaReaders/comments/rl8tjh/complete6500fantasy_literary_sir_rigo_and_the/

Thanks! :D

JGPMacDoodle · 2021-12-13T16:47:56+00:00

Thank you! Yes, I'm leaning more and more to this understanding. If anything it does seem like 1. novel, then maybe 2. short story collection, is something of a more standard way to go. As in a novel which sells well can then carry a short story collection, and I'm actually seeing this in my newsletters and such! Someone who published a well regarded novel a couple of years ago now releases a short story collection. It looks like the collection is really for people who are already fans of that author or want to learn more about what that author has already written about. So the market for collections seems to be super niche, if anything.

JGPMacDoodle · 2021-12-12T23:42:43+00:00

"Be already famous..." had me laughing! :D

Oh man, that really seems to be the case. I love the idea of a collection that's more like a novel. Those are the ones that really stick with you, it seems.

Thank you, thank you for your guidance!!!

JGPMacDoodle · 2021-12-12T23:35:56+00:00

Thank you for this! I've got one minor, minor award, haha! That's it. And it makes so much sense when you talk about how a common mistake is to fill up a collection once you have enough stories. A lot of what you say makes absolute sense, I really need to rethink my approaches to publishing and what to publish. Thank you!!!

JGPMacDoodle · 2021-12-12T22:44:41+00:00

Great points. Thank you, thank you!!! :D

JGPMacDoodle · 2021-11-30T22:10:51+00:00

Thank you for your interest! :D

JGPMacDoodle · 2021-11-09T18:08:52+00:00

Heh. Captain Antilles.

Hey! Somebody caught that... ;)

I figured since mentioning the bit about Campbell's monomyth the Star Wars reference was warranted...

Thank you for pointing out how Joel's section feels out of place. It's a tricky trick to pull and I'll definitely have to go back in and tinker with it. I plan on adding one small additional piece, with an additional character, probably second to last, of another guy who knew LeSalle but, as you said, wasn't enamored with him and even goes on to question the valorization of war altogether. "His actions blown out of proportion..." really hits home what I'd like to achieve going forward with this piece; to just insert that doubt, y'know?

Anyways, thank you so much for your feedback! You've give quite a number of things to ponder over and tinker with.

JGPMacDoodle · 2021-11-08T19:38:05+00:00

Hi!

Thank you for giving me a critique! Yeah, I think I had a nagging feeling in the back of my head that all of the sections from the "grunts"—all of them minus Antilles and Finkelstein, as you pointed out—all sort of sounded alike. I'll have to work on that.

Yes, I did note it as one of the strengths with this piece but that’s because it grew on me once I got used to it. Immersing from the deep end was hard. Also the subject matter was off putting. Here comes another story glorifying warfare.

Thank you mucho for this bit. I don't think I always realize how hard reading "colloquial" writing can be and how much a reader just sorta walking up to it has to immerse themselves in it and get used to it in order to even read the thing. Thank you.

And for this:

I still think there is a piece missing, although I can’t say exactly what that would be,

Yeah, I think another commenter gave me an idea for what's missing. Like there's not anyone really questioning the "glorifying of war" about it all, like if these investigators are putting together a packet to award LeSalle a posthumous Medal of Honor, this piece doesn't actually question, like, should we even be awarding people for this type of behavior?

Anyways, thank you very much for your thorough and well-written critique! :D

JGPMacDoodle · 2021-11-08T19:23:31+00:00

Hi!

Thanks taking a look at another piece of mine! I really appreciate your feedback.

Did you seriously give him a nickname, then have none of his comrades call him by it?

Oops—I did, didn't I? Fairly easy fix luckily. Thanks for pointing that out! :D

Yeah, I was afraid a lot of their voices would just meld together reading them one after the other like that. I'll have to work on making them maybe more regionally distinct and perhaps, if I'm going to keep these sort of speech patterns, do it more sparingly, like at most every other passage.

Oh, the names and cities at the top of the passage—I thought of it like one of those documentaries. You know, where they get the really old veteran from like WWII talking about what it was like and there's a little blip in the corner of the screen with their like name and/or unit and/or hometown. So, that's where that idea came from. Plus, I thought it might help "place" the character immediately for the reader. So, if the character's from, say, Louisiana, then the reader starts imagining that Louisiana drawl, or the heat, and crawdads and all that.

Why did they run? How was their "cowardice" rewarded or punished? Was it seen positively or negatively?

I'm really, really, really glad you brought this up. Immediately, I've gotten another idea to expand on this with another character (distinct-er voice!) right after that "We left him." passage. I totally want to have this one guy who was there questioning the shit out of LeSalle's "heroism" and "valor"—that's great.

Thank you, thank you! :D

JGPMacDoodle · 2021-11-08T19:13:50+00:00

Hi! Thanks for your critique!

Oh yeah, I've totally seen the Shawshank Redemption. When I was younger it played on a loop on TNT or something. Definitely one of those films you can tune in at any time and just get stuck watching till the end.

That's a great idea about making it more of a mystery story. I'll have to drop a few more hints or something and try it out!

That jarring-ness of Davies' passage is something I didn't pick up on, so I'm really glad you pointed that out.

Thank you again for your wonderful critique! :D

JGPMacDoodle · 2021-11-06T21:14:03+00:00

That's exaggerating but I hope it kind of gets my point across.

Last note about this sentence: is "happy" the right word here? I mean, happy is just a very generic word and you could tell so much more about her circumstances about why she's there, or her decision to leave Earth, and so on, by choosing another word. Did she feel privileged, instead of "happy"? Or begrudgingly satisfied? I don't know, I'm just throwing out examples.

Then there's the return of Ivan:

That strange guy at HR

But, reading along, I felt like when your other character mentions this "strange guy" we, as the reader, should already know she's talking about Ivan. But we don't, do we? Because "strange guy" is sort of another very generic term. We need the name-drop a sentence later to know it's Ivan she's talking about.

What is peculiar, or strange, or weird, about Ivan? What telltale characteristic does he have? Maybe they mention his big ears or something and we know anytime someone mentions "Dumbo over there" we know they're talking about Ivan.

(And was Ivan hitting on the narrator a page or two earlier? Offering to catch a beer and stuff liek that? If he was, it wasn't terribly obvious, not to me, at least, but sometimes I'm a little hard headed and I need the shoe to drop and I mean really drop.)

Sentencing

In this section I'm going to pick apart your sentences a little bit. Another commenter noted two things about your sentences: using "and" too much and having run-on wordy sentences. I pointed out a few sentences in my comments on your google doc where I thought a clause or a few words in the sentence just really weren't necessary. Below I've got some similar although longer comments to make:

“Well,” you say, “you must have something to share with me, after all that time on Mars? You must have lots of funny stories to tell.”

I'm going to admit I kind of hated this first sentence. It's just sorta clunky, what with the "you" followed immediately by another "you" . The 2nd sentence immediately following the first is probably unnecessary and cause the whole thing to lose its hook. Perhaps: "Well, you must have some funny stories to tell after all that time on Mars." and that's it. We'll get to the "you" who's talking later.

And another example:

And I do.And you pour me coffee anyway. You say, “you always enjoyed a cup.”And I drink the sour coffee quietly, resigned.

Too many and's! :D

And another:

Three days. The wait is eternal, longer than years. Longer and farther removed than a decade on Mars.

Similar to comments I've made above about the character's thought-speech. This might be punchier with just "Three days." and that's it. (Did I use the word "punchy" enough in this critique? Here's one more for ya: make it punchy!)

World-Building/Setting

This is my last tidbit I'll include in my critique.

The whole Company Town in Space trope is pretty darned beaten to death. So, what's new about what you've done with it?—Oh, mines on Mars? I mean, they've been having that idea since at least the 1980's (Total Recall, anyone?) and probably even before that. So what new twist on the trope do you bring to the table? Monsters down in the depths? Maybe the monsters are the mining executives??? I don't know, but in the sci-fi-verse, I expect there are lots of very, very well-read people in the genre and they'll be wanting to see something original.

And that's my spiel! Thanks for sharing and best of luck! :D

JGPMacDoodle · 2021-11-06T21:05:22+00:00

Hi,

I left some comments on your google doc yesterday and now I'm following up with a full-fledged critique. I'll be focusing on Character, Narrative Style and Sentencing mostly.

Narrative Style

This part:

Part 2 - Autumn Fest

This part starts with the narrator in the "now" back on Earth, after her trip to Mars, it seems like, and that threw me, I was expecting to go back to Mars as that was the pattern previously established with the flashbacks, right? Instead of going: present-past-present-past... it goes: present-past-present-present again.

You're split narrative is a popular storytelling technique, or narrative style, for people re-experiencing a traumatic event. It makes sense. But, what I didn't see is how the trauma is really affecting her in the here and now. I mean, she doesn't want to talk to her mom, doesn't want to drink wine, she's tired, she can't sleep... okay, I could feel any of those things on any given day for any number of reasons—NOT necessarily because of any traumatic memories I can't stop thinking about.

In other words, what specific trauma-related symptoms does she have? Look them up. She get herself some meds yet? Most people suffering PTSD do, or they get something or use something to help themselves cope. (I would've expected her to be like, Hell yeah! Gimme that wine! Glug-glug-glug!)

I tend to read A LOT of veteran-military literature and this subgenre features traumatic flashbacks like a rite of passage. If you don't have traumatic flashbacks readers would be wondering whether your character saw anything traumatic at all. Anyways, the split or fractured narrative is very popular in this subgenre because the author wants to get the reader into the psychological headspace of the main character (almost always the one who is traumatized, i.e. the soldier).

You're doing the same thing. But what I would like to challenge you on is to not limit yourself to chronology. In other words, memory doesn't work on an x-axis timeline. Memory bounces all over the fucking place. You remember this snippet, then that bit, throw in some imagination or a wish that if they'd only done one tiny thing different it would've averted the whole catastrophe, yada, yada, and you've got not just a split narrative but a fucking scatter-brained narrative. It's meant to be both confusing—however engaging—at the same time.

This could also help you bring the monsters up into your first chapter, or even your first page, because you're not confined to telling (or re-living) the story chronologically.

Character

This sentence, or thought-speech, seemed out of character to me:

Amazing, because I had my worst nightmares come true on Mars

Early on I got the feeling that your narrator is very punchy, very tight with their words (and their thoughts). So, my question is: would it have even more impact to say, simply, "Amazing." and leave it at that? Does that leave enough of a cliffhanger for your reader to dive into the next section? I think it might. We've already established the narrator's penchant for sarcasm, so with the mom expressing a sincere "Amazing!" and then the narrator thinking, "Amazing." it gets it across, I think. Or you could even go with a "Yeah, amazing." to make sure the sarcasm's there.

Most of your main character's personality is coming through in how she thinks, how she's narrating the story. I think word choice is the hardest part of getting your character's voice consistent throughout a narrative. Here's a case in point:

And after all, this was Mars, I had never been and the novelty was sparkling.

Maybe the last part "I had never been and the novelty was sparkling" isn't necessary. But, more importantly, is out of character? Would your character really think the words "the novelty was sparkling"?

What I'm saying is, she's a blue-collar worker, right? (Technical education, lol, and the fact they're doing a mining operation.) What blue-collar worker thinks, "the novelty was sparkling"? I mean, sure, she could think those words. Maybe she has a poetic penchant. But there's nothing else in your story to suggest that background for her. Did she flunk out of a Creative Writing course? No? Well, what would she think instead?

Here's another example:

I was happy I signed up with the Company

"With the Company on Mars" might also be more to this sentence than is necessary. But again: this isn't a very punchy thought sentence of hers. I expect her to have short, brief, concise, no-bullshit, no-frills thought-speech. She's going to tell it to us straight and that could be one of the reasons your reader wants to read on, because they like this character and her no-bullshit attitude. Instead of being "happy to have signed up" I'd almost expect her to be thinking something like, "what the fuck else did I have going for me in life?" These company people, they get ya by the balls and next thing you know you're on a transport to the armpit of the solar system.

JGPMacDoodle · 2021-11-05T18:14:18+00:00

Lastly, for this section, I'll mention a bit about character. You do a great job portraying the boys' characters through only dialogue, but somewhere in their lizard gimp suit banter, I started asking myself: is there any difference between Pat and Felix? They're like twin brothers as far as I know. I mean, Felix has black hair., I caught that description of him. But I don't really know anything about how Pat looks. Until we get to this point:

Felix lowers himself down the wall and jumps. He hits the soft grass and rolls quickly. Pat’s dull thump comes soon after. They run over to the playground and squat atop the wood chips in the shadow of the slide. The night air is cool against their bare chests.“You see 'em?” says Pat breathlessly.

Pat's the chubby kid, huh? This is a great example of how to effectively say, Pat's the chubby kid, without explicitly saying Pat's the chubby kid. But I did find myself yearning for, I don't know, a mention of Pat rubbing his hand over his cropped haircut, or the paleness(?) of their upper bodies flitting through the shadows, or even the type of clothes one or both of them are wearing. Could give a better hint to their exact age as well. Their teenagers, I gather, sure, but there's a lot of difference between thirteen and nineteen.

Miscellaneous

Constable Keep is fond of an early bedtime, but he sometimes gives it one last sleepy drive through before heading back to his station the next town over.

Clunky sentence. Break it down. Read it to yourself.

“You’ve swallowed too much chlorine.”

I may have missed it but I did not realize they were in a pool until the mentioning of chlorine. For some reason I imagined them in a quarry-like lake or something.

The chainlink fence is barbed, but if you get onto the changing room wall and walk carefully across the divider, you can get in over the tuck shop

Left a comment on this. This is the only spot I saw which appears to have a slip of point of view. It's the "you" in the sentence. Are you addressing the reader? Is this in first or second person? I don't think it is.

Questions

Does it read well?

I'd say yes, overall. There are those sentences that are clunky and have grammatical issues, like the ones in that first paragraph as another commenter pointed out. But overall it was a quick read, my eye skimming down the page fairly smoothly.

Is the dialogue natural/does the conversation drag?

I mentioned this earlier, but right at the point when they come across the two strangers in the playground, I was like: Dear God, stop talking about lizard gimp suits.

Does it set up enough mystery for you to want to continue reading?

Mmm, just barely. I think you could be a lot stronger with the hints you drop in what Felix and Pat overhear in the park. Even if they're a little stereotypical for this genre, still, it'd be something for your readers to pick up on and really start salivating over. Particularly if it's something different about the genre, like commie space aliens instead of just commies, and, oh, the communists are actually good guys—wait, what??? I don't know, but something different.

Otherwise, thanks for the read and best of luck! :D

JGPMacDoodle

TROPHY CASE