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Part 2, Ch.8-12
Part One of Review

Here it is, the first fabled second part of a review that I promised to do. We pick up where we left off in the last section with Mr. McEdgelord doing the magical science in a rock group’s basement. This goes on for a little bit until our resident bioraptor decides to enjoy himself a rock concert before enjoying himself a nice bit of alleyway shanking and a wee bit of homicide. Eh, I’ve been to L.A., that’s just the local greeting. From there we get to see even more of the cave troll we call a main character before ending the section with a nice trip to see the authors reinterpretation on a canon episode that gives us our second proper combat section.

So, one of the biggest things I enjoyed about this section is that most of my criticisms, sans writing (see negatives section), was gone. The edgelordiness we see in the first seven chapters mostly goes away and is replaced by the snark-master. For the most part, the main character starts to become more fleshed out and three dimensional. While I am confused as to what makes him tick, I at least get to see an actual person when I read about him doing something. This is in addition to the fact that things that are happening are a lot more vague in this section compared to the last one and are not just told to you, making things feel a lot more like a mystery, just how I like it. Finally, just about every trope I talked about in the comments section was either disproven of heavily curbed. OP? Gets stopped fairly heavily and is no longer 3 steps ahead at all times. Likeable? Still fairly true, but his personality being so caustic is getting him some more blowback so I am happy there. Good at heart? He is now more morally grey than actually good per se, need to read more to get an actual read in this regard. In all, this section feels distinctly different from the first one.

So to begin with the criticisms, there are far too many errors when it comes to the writing. There are issues with the grammar and several instances where the author put out some major mistakes that should have been seen as they are rules breaks that one learns fairly early on in English. And something I feel I need to address; colons, semi-colons, and commas have very particular rules for their use that even I am not entirely comfortable with, so when I see them used willy-nilly and incorrectly, I become a sad panda. Past that is the characters. They were… weird is not the best word but it comes pretty darn close. The chapter introducing Celestia and the subsequent conversation that ensued being the prime example. The way the characters talk and act just seems… off. I don't know how to properly convey what my issue is, but they way interact with others is just not how I think of people acting. Everyone is simultaneously entirely open with their intentions while also doing their best to hide them or be cryptic. Probably the best way I can convey this is that I could never get a solid read on the characters to determine their true intentions as there were too many flags that I use to indicate a lack of openness being raised, resulting in me being on edge and suspicious of absolutely everyone. If this is what the author intended, that is great, but if they want their audience to trust anyone except the cast that was introduced in the first three chapters, than something needs to be done. Additionally, the necromancer eyes seem fairly inconsistent in what they can see and how they see things. And finally, there is a bit of an issue with pacing. While there are indeed a lot of words between things that happen, something I advocate for, there just isn’t the right amount of substance. The incident with Shining and the whole first thing with Celestia just sort of happen without buildup and don't seem to really stand out as critical to the plot, they almost seem to happen and then be forgotten about.

[Also, an important question for me, in chapter 8, how do mermaids reproduce? I am a biologist so I can name at least five ways that a monosexed or similar species can facilitate procreation, so the answer is in no way obvious to me.]

Final scores;

Writing; 6/10, This was rough, there definitely needs to be an editor looking this over as I had to stop several times to figure out if what I was reading was right. Better care needs to be taken in the future to mitigate these issues.

Character development; 8/10, This was handled really well for just about every one that was used. For individuals that were introduced here we get some solid intrigue while already established characters get some more screen time to become actual people. The only exceptions being Shining and Celestia, with Fancy Pants being either handled extremely well or very poorly, depending on how I am meant to feel about him.

Pacing; 7/10, This… is strange. It's hard to express my issues properly, but my best approximation would be that I have no idea how fast things are meant to be happening. I have experience with stories that drag, mostly because that is what I do, but I am also familiar with stories that have a snappy pace. This is the ungodly love child of both. We have sections like the concert that is well paced and keeps things moving and the meeting with Fancy that shows things down and lets things fester. But then after the concert, a thousand things happen in short order, and none of it is given much time to sink in and just happen. This might just be a problem I have with how the paragraphs are formatted, having a massive space between each one, but it just felt to me like chapters were far longer than I was led to believe but without the required substance.

Total score; 21/30 or 7/10, There is a strange thing happening with this story. It's not a bad one, not by a long shot, it's just that I have no clue what is going on in terms of how I should feel or how this thing should be written. While the writing and grammar are in obvious need of fixing, the overall structure is in need of a fine tuning to iron out some issues I had with the pacing.

colons, semi-colons, and commas have very particular rules for their use that even I am not entirely comfortable with

Aw, colons and semicolons are two of my favourite punctuation marks -- aside from em dashes, that is

Great review, Schatten! Though you might want to link the first part of the review for easier access

Thank you for your reviews, I found them very helpful and have taken them to heart. They were a wonderful read. As to the how Mermaids reproduce, well, it is implied that they forcefully take the males of other species and since they clearly don't mind chewing on a pony, it would not be far-fetched to assume they do the same to the ones they took after a while. Why the spoiler? Oh, well, it is because it is explained later in the story.

I was planning to rewrite some sections and you are in no way obligated nor am I asking you to re-read them. I am just seeing some occasional problems, such as not enough information given or too much and am planning to fix them. The problem with the pacing you are experiencing is because the story is still in it's early stages, I was planning around 200 chapters, so the pacing will always be off when taking a short segment of it, but my goal is to achieve a story that if you took as a whole, is a comfortable read.

Once again, thank you for your work of reviewing my "Bioraptor", it was worth waiting. Your humour actually made me smile, lit up my evening.) Have a safe and wonderful life. I might request another review down the road, if both of us will still be around on this site.

PS: I actually just remembered something about a discord chat you were talking about.

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yeah, I have a discord I use to talk with people I edit for and for people to use if they want me to give them advice. The review group also has a discord so you could use that too. (just remember to @me because I tend not to read messages or threads I am not mentioned in due to me being part of so many groups on discord)