The Pilgrimage by Jarvy Jared
Overall Score: 8/10

First Impressions

At first glance this looks to be your average slice of life. Short and sweet, not much adventure going on, but enough poignance from the character to give us an entertaining tale. Maud embarks on a journey, and it doesn’t matter for how long. She’s just off on a journey. Possibly of self discovery, possibly just to get away from “it all”. Or perhaps she’s running from something. The lack of a [sad] tag tells me that last one isn’t likely, but anything’s possible, really. That actually sounds like a nice palette cleanser after the sad and dark stories I’ve recently had to endure. To place a guess, I would think this will fall on the higher end of average, but it certainly has the potential to surprise me. Let’s begin.

The Good

From the first sentence you’ve painted a picture of an elder but not frail Maud, using a lovely line “the later summers of her golden years”, and her gaze down nostalgia lane. This is a good feel. As I predicted, poignant. I could challenge you by saying it could be more descriptive or more poetic, but I feel that it doesn’t need it. You have struck a fine balance of beauty and mundanity.

As we continute, you to a lovely job of capturing Maud’s unique style of viewing the world as well as her stoic nature. Even at the end, the way she acknowledges unpleasantness, yet marches boldly onward for the small drop of ambrosia that she collects from the petals of a thousand flowers. Or rocks, in her case.

I saw no issues with spelling or grammar, and your pacing was pretty good.

Princess Twilight. Aging gracefully thanks to her alicorn magic. She maintained that strained smile as Maud stepped inside but she could not hold it very long.

As I read this, I felt a deep bittersweet feeling stir in my chest. This is described very well, subtly hinting at what is to come, while showing how Twilight tries to remain cheerful in what looks to be an inevitable and undeniably sad outlook. It also reminds us of the old friendship between Starlight and Maud, and shows how that bond they first formed has lasted all this time.

The Bad

Some of these sentences become very long in their quest to sound somber or poetic. A notable example is this:

In the span of not even one pony life these changes had come and almost overwhelmingly so and it had struck just as hard as any other sudden and prophesied foe from those times and perhaps it was a miracle or a feat of adaptive learning on their species’ part that no city or town had fallen to that emerging technology.

 I understand why you did it, but it still causes the mind to drop bits of it and often read the sentence twice just to pick up the lost pieces. I would recommend just a few commas to let the brain take a pause here and there.

Nitpicks

I would have liked to hear about what it was that ailed Starlight, but perhaps it is best not to know. It’s not the point of this story.

Thank you for writing this; it has been a genuine pleasure to read and it will make a fine addition to the archive. I hope this helps highlight the good bits and point out what can be improved, if you want it to. Feel free to respond with any comments or questions either here or in a PM (though at the moment I can’t promise a speedy reply) and as always: Never Stop Writing.

6519982
Thank you very much for your review; your praise lifts me, and your criticisms humble me just the same. It is always a good feeling to be noticed and given worthwhile notes.

With these kinds of stories, where I play around with subtle nods and gestures, I freely admit my naivete. I am a writer trying to discover how best to convey certain nuances that must be shown rather than told, and I don't always think I am up to the task. The key lies in the prose, I have found. The way a writer uses words to pull a reader, either gently or violently, through a story is paramount to the reader discovering what it is really all about.

In stories where, at first, nothing really seems to happen, this is even more important, as now all the information that the reader requires to truly understand a piece must be found within the piece itself; and that which goes unmentioned must do so so strongly that, paradoxically, it is as if it, too, is a part of the prose. Though of course, to do this, one must first understand how prose works and how words and sentences are strung together.

I mentioned in the synopsis of this story that this was written in the style of Cormac McCarthy. His style of writing is unlike anything I've ever read, and yet, much like Fitzgerald, is so influential that even when writing things that are not directly an imitation of his style, I find his way with words leaking into my own. He has a strong voice that is conveyed through his understanding of how to break grammatical conventions in a way that will not impede the work, and it was something I wanted to try out. But I admit, too, this: while imitation of a writer's style is a great step towards discovering your own, all that will be shown is a poor man's copy of that writer. McCarthy developed his voice over the years; I wrote this in only a week or so.

This is why there are moments of long sentences, far longer than is reasonable or grammatical, and though I can justify it through style, looking over the story now, it is clear to me that I could have shortened them or otherwise adjusted them and still retain the key tone.

Imitation falls flat, is what I am saying, and it is important for the author of that imitation to recognize that.

But, I am still happy to see that through the somber tones, bittersweet moments, and betrayal displayed by the theme and repetition, the message of the story has been conveyed: something tragic has occurred, and Maud must continue to embark on her pilgrimage to face it, no matter for how long.

Once again, thank you for the review, and I apologize for the lengthy response. I hope you will enjoy my future works, if I write more!

6520204
Think nothing of the long reply. I am very much accustomed to wordy comments. I tend to write them myself, after all.