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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10282
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10282
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

To start with, you have too many invented terms without definition all in a row. Hearthsoul, assassin pouches, luck fairy?

You also have enough mistakes that I really can't tell if some of these things are typos or more jargon. His enemies tailed? The _land_ drifted? What does that even mean?

You "recite" something which is repeated or often said; it's not just a synonym for speaking.

The narrative voice goes back and forth from almost a prose of his thoughts to standard third-person omniscient. Pick one.

He fixed her with whose stare? That's incoherent.

There's in medias res and there's WTF is going on. You aren't setting the scene enough for us to understand what's happening.

In short, slow down, explain more, and quit trying to impress us with your cool world-building until we care about these people.

* * *

**ETA** You want more? okay...

> This was a stupid idea. Heh, like all his others.

the "heh" indicates that you're narrating his thoughts. Either do _all_ the narrative text like this or _none_ of the narrative text like this. You can't have it both ways. It's like switching to first person in the middle of a paragraph, just for one sentence.

> He was headed downwind towards the warp,

A new undefined term. You did much better in your revised para, but we still don't know what this is. Geographical feature? Building? Weaving item? Part of the _Enterprise_?

> until finally the air became sour and torrid.

"Torrid" means "passionate." Unless you're describing how the air is filled with pheromones which cause every living thing breathing it to suddenly start humping whatever's nearest (which would be a very different kind of story), this is not what you want.

> Then the land groaned, shifting, and sped him along with it.

**THIS IS A BIG DEAL.**

Land does not _move_. You don't indicate that it's an earthquake; the protagonist acts like he just stepped onto an escalator. You are introducing a HUGE world-building element here — that the land is capable of motion — and you ignore it. You don't have to _explain_ it, but you do have to give us enough context and detail that we understand that you meant to do this, that it's a natural part of this planet/dimension/etc., and what the planet, flora, fauna, architecture, transit, society, government, and characters have done to adapt to "ground that doesn't stay put." I could go on for a page and half about why this is such a big fat hairy deal.

> “Found the gem, mate,” he recited.

You explain in the comments that this is their passphrase. You do not indicate in the _text_ that this is their passphrase. If it's a call-and-response, then you have to show one or both characters treating it _as_ a passphrase.

> He thanked his luck fairy—it was safe

Not only is this an undefined term, you have an ambiguous pronoun. Is he literally saying a word of gratitude to a sprite? Is s/he in his pocket? What is "it" that he's grateful for? Is he thanking the fairy, and then also grateful that the fairy is safe? Is he thanking the fairy that the gem is safe? Thanking the fairy that Zaithe, who is later a "she," is safe?

> It meant that the warp must have been south- or westward.

So the land warped in this direction? I finally got that after the _eighth or ninth read._ I previously thought this might have meant the wind.

> Ruso tried to envision which of the three wheels this would involve

If this means "wheels under the planet's surface moving the ground around," I will at least buy it for now. The previous eight times I read this as some kind of religious gibberish like "the wheel turns, and sometimes you end up on top and sometimes you end up on the bottom."

> He fixed her with one of Echeris’s flat, grey stares.

Is this supposed to imply that he's looking at her the way, what, their old shared teacher or commander used to do? Because otherwise he's literally borrowing someone else's face to look at her, which is incoherent.

* * *

There's a chance that this works in a longer excerpt, but broadly, you are throwing too many terms at the reader which are invented and out of context, and expecting us to not just catch up but already understand and follow along.

Additionally, because you have mechanical errors, our attempts to divine meaning and context from what do you give us are thwarted because we can't understand what we _can_ read.

Original score: 9