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| A joke about progress on Two Moons. |
On occasion I find myself checking my books rating on Amazon and Goodreads, and find another review. In this case I found two reviews, one totally by accident, but both of which pondered why I wrote so much or didn't write more about certain elements of story.
First the short Goodreads review by Donald Mclean. Thank you Donald for taking the time to write.
The review starts with describing military SF as a weird genre, and that I had used every acronym and bit of jargon I could find. Absolutely true. Guilty as charged.
My training emphasized the role of the nurse as being able to follow the jargon of al the doctors and other medical professionals, and also being able to talk to the patients too. So I don't find jargon and inter-professional language a problem. Obviously, I need to work on making that less didactic.
The other question is repeated in the other review from Frigid Reviews by Garvin Anders and Dr. Ben Allen whose comments were highlighted in red. Thank you both for an interesting discussion.
The review starts with a brief bio, and with regards to being Ashley Watkins and now Ashley Pollard: I wrote OHMU Warmachine thirty years ago, marriage is a thing.
The first question is around the setting, and how and why I didn't go into any great depth about the changes from the United States into the North American Confederation made up of Confederated States.
The reason I didn't delve into the background changes was simply that I wasn't interested in writing about it. Another reason was simply to signal that this is a story in a science fictional future. I would also add that the subtitle for the series: Military SF set in a Holographic Multiverse.
Similarly, what does it mean that China now the Democratic People's Republic of China? I refer everyone to the answers above.
My assumption is that change is a thing, and change is hard to predict. So I just ran with my imagination to make a setting that was interesting. As for the world building feeling a bit slim, the story is not about politics, or at least not directly. It is about conflict, this is just the way I wanted to tell the story I told.
The next point the review raised was about focusing on NCOs and officers and not talking about the junior enlisted.
It's a good question.
I would say that a story has to have a character that has some agency and I'm probably not a good enough writer to tell the story from the point of view who has no power to influence the outcome.
I'm probably wrong but I thought that a sergeant was probably the lowest rank that could influence the battlespace that the story required. I'm happy to be corrected, and this has certainly made me think about a junior enlisted point of view.
The reviewers were not 'crazy' about the title. I wonder if they linked the play between the title and the Hemingway quote? If everyone dies like a dog, then the title is a play of the theme of the novel; as in dying on the same day every day is a bad day.
