Memento Mori

You have a wonderful imagination and a gift for being able to put it all in writing! Well crafted and smart! BACKED

Liz
The Cheech Room

You have a fascinating and original plot. You jump straight into your story, after the brief prologue, with John Doe hearing the voices of the two doctors from his hospital bed. You build tension and excitement as he recovers the use of his limbs and senses slowly, and the detail you give us of this recovery is careful, precise, and very convincing. The final revelation at the end of this chapter, that of the five men discovered frozen in a crashed aeroplane and thought to be dead, 'The fifth man is you,' is a dramatic and shocking surprise, even though we know something like this must be the truth. Your writing is clear and straightforward, and the Prologue, with its much less factual approach, shows us that you mean to go deep in your exploration of John's personality. Backed.
Gerry McCullough,
Belfast Girls.

Dear Joe Gotham,

Thank you for sharing your story with us. I love your opening, having the protagonist struggling with consciousness and his enfeebled senses. Your comparisons help me fully experience this wild scenario, such as “a tattered rag on a stick” and “a shudder ran down my spine like a bullet train”. I also like “felt stranded within my own body”. Great detail that a cold feeling preceded regaining control of that limb. The goal of survival gives the reader something to hope for. The wound healing is curious. Also enjoyed “waves of fatigue and nausea rippled over my ribcage”. I’m not sure I need to know all the surgery details. The brain damage from oxygen deprivation will believably explain the amnesia. Bravo for “pain bulleted from my head to my feet”. Equally epic: “brain capsizing, spinning”.

In my fallible opinion, your story starts better without the prelude. The rule of thumb is if the prelude can be cut, do it. In this case, it didn’t give me anything concrete to grasp, unlike the tensions in your first chapter.

I enjoyed your story. Bravo! Backed, and best wishes.

Great prose and the short prologue was a powerful read. I slid easily into the story from here. It was a little stop, go in places but that’s minor tweaks. You have a strong writer’s voice. I hope this does well for you.

.Knowing Liam Riley
Sue Mackender

Fascinating and compelling premise. But I think it might be a good move to rethink the title - as this is so-o close to a well used, uncouth, saying and implies - well it did to me - something else entirely to your edgy, brilliant concept and really quite serious work. [ Which might explain why this isn't getting more deserved attention!]

The two World Wars will remain, for a long time, I think, great sources of story ideas, and this is one of the best.

I wonder about the first-person narrative; I often think that it's used out of laziness and lack of skill, that many novice writers just find it easier to write in a voice that they can think of as their own, but I think it's actually useful here. You are making us identify with a character that we might, otherwise, despise, and you're giving us a unique perspective on events that are never going to happen to us - I hope, which is quite a feat for any writer.

Your voice is rather nice, too, and I like the staccato nature of some of the early prose; that said, you must regularise your grammar, which is a bit all-over the place at times, and breaks the rhythm from time to time. I'd love to get my blue pencil on this! Thank goodness for indenting, though; as hard as it is to believe, almost no one formats their work to resemble a book, so I'm very happy that you have.

I'm backing this for being very good of its kind, but I hope you'll work on it so that the prose is a little more elegant and seamless, and the grammar more assertive before this gets to the desk.

Best of luck,

Adelie High (Naming Names)

Hi again...I enjoy your work and like the comment before this one am stunned that this and the others are not more widely read.

The premise in this one is marvelous... dark and edgy writing the words flow in a fashion I personally enjoy...I am not recommending any word be changed each word does as it should it informs us it moves us forward or backward as the writer decrees...or in this case especially as the characters decree. frighteningly possible...excitingly possible...cryogenics have long held my fascination as does the history of World War 2.

You have a gift which you allow us to share.
Bravo
backed
Suzannah Burke

I got through the pummeling of Craven at the end of Chapter 2. I do not understand why no one is reading your work. It approaches that of genius. Quality, unfortunately, does not rise unheralded here.

I backed this at first on the cover :) But then read a few chapters. It's good stuff! You need to watch your wording. The first sentence of the Prologue is a great example.
"There is never a slaughter in which one person does not come out of it to tell the tale."

Maybe this could read, "For every slaughter, there is one survivor to tell the tale."
Something like that.
Just an opinion.

Great read though!
Backed,
Dan-
Eunice Stubbins, among others...

Great pitch. The short prolougue is powerful and heralds a dark tale about to unfold, although I think a
liitle editing could lift it to another level. The opening narrative moves quickly, wasting no time as it takes us to the hook at the end of Ch 1.
Backed
Ian Gosling - Lying to God -