BookRix

Hiya, Matt. Reading your story, several things jumped out at me, quickly.

The 1st of these is that your ability to spell and your vocabulary are a cut above the norm. You'll find as you read submissions from others that this is a pleasant rarity. It's obvious that you take pride in your craft.

The next is that you have a fine sense of phrasing. For the most part, your descriptions paint a picture that is both recognizable and often, dramatic. I think it's that which draws folks deeper into your storyline.

There are two 'alarm-bell' issues for me. Things which might be adjusted and yield an immediate improvement not only in the quality of the story, but in the reader's experience, as well.

The first of those is the lack of 'white space.' I don't know how to label that better. What I'm referring to is consistently dense blocks of script that continue for multiple pages. From the standpoint of your audience, it can be overwhelming. (I felt that way, right off the bat, and before reading very much of 'Servant', I skipped forward to see if it was going to continue.)

A number of things can be done to improve visual appeal and lessen the intimidation posed by this.

Concentrate on creating paragraphs which can stand alone. Many of your passages have a variety of ideas in them which could, and should, be rendered as individual paragraphs.
Craft those, add a line between them and, voila! Instant white space. Readers can approach your story with less trepidation and should they need to leave your story and return later, it's far more convenient than picking out where one left off in a solid block of prose.

Another way to do that is to set off dialogue and isolate it, where that makes sense, on a line of its own.

For more ideas regarding audience immersion issues, see this link. The first part of the article deals with the method the author uses to quantify things. What will interest you is 'The Taxonomy of WTFs' that comes a bit further into the article.

http://creativityhacker.ca/2014/08/26/the-5-most-common-writing-mistakes-that-break-reader-immersion/

The other alarm bell I mentioned was tripped by some grammar errors. They are not pervasive, but given how well you wrote the majority of your story, stuck out by default.

I'm of the opinion that you would probably have caught many of them during your own editing. You strike me as quite competent.

For an accessible and extremely helpful assist with those sorts of pesky issues, I highly recommend WWW.GrammarBook.com. I use it religiously and always have it open and ready in a tab of its own when I scribble.

I enjoyed 'Servant' and am looking forward to further installments.

Have a really shiny day, Matt

Jeff

Very well written It really holds your attention. Only one suggestion.

I think it would be good if you would introduce Fulmino earlier in the story. The beginning was so descriptive of the environment I almost lost track of the fact that it was a story about a person.

The descriptions were very well done but I wondered when we were actually going to get to the story. Just the mention of the protagonist at this point would add much to the interest.

I was sorry with the rest of his family that Fulmino did not get a positive test. I loved the way that you drew me into the story as if I were also a part of the family.

Very well done.

Loved it. A promise of more to come.

The story line sounds really interesting and update am curious 2 know about the fulmino :)

You write well, and considering the genre (it's fine) appropriately popular.

A few things that hit me (I'm glad you used "farther" instead of "further").
White Space. Consider breaking your paragraphs up. Long narrative blocks tend to make the eyes weary.
Your opening sentence: The dusky sky within the trees...? You might want to rephrase that.
Character: So far so good. I get a " definite feeling" concerning his place, and his attitude/mental state. Nice dilemma you've begun to fashion for him as well.