Hope everyone has had a good month so far. We're getting closer to wrapping up the Improve & Encourage feature. This month we have a critique on Carlos Hazday's story Solcar. Let's take a look at Parker Owen's critique!

Solcar

Carlos Hazday

Critiqued by: Parker Owens

Please give us a short summary of the story you chose.

Solcar, once a High Lord of Star Clusters and a member of the Council engaged in a proscribed act. He made love to a human. He is sentenced to suffer for five thousand years; the story tells us of them. 

What do you see as the strengths of the story/poem?

What makes this story so good to me is the depth and variety of the many kinds of love described in the story. A broad picture of love and relationship is described; some wonderfully innocent and happy, some painfully poignant, some delightfully quirky. Carlos is excellent at putting this reader right into a scene. There is an immediate idea of place in almost every phase of the story. One can see, hear and sense what the characters experience so much of the text.

What do you see as the weaknesses of the story/poem?

Carlos is such a strong and compelling writer, and this was his first posted story. That was enough to hook me. On the other hand, as this is a sci fi/fantasy story, I found myself wanting a more concrete look at the world and universe he had built for it. Because Carlos is so good at giving us visual and sensory descriptions to bring the reader fully into a scene, those sections dealing with worlds beyond earth lacked the usual color and taste of those taking place on Earth. Of course, that may have been intentional.  For me, another difficulty I encountered was tracking the many swift changes of scene. These were necessary to the plotline, and I understood them better after a second and third reading. However, a casual reader might get confused.

How do you think the story/poem could be improved?

The one thing I’d suggest would be to consider helping the readers understand – see, taste, touch and experience – the universe as the High Lords do. This is a very tall order. These beings do not think or sense as we do, and believe themselves to be on a much higher plane. Yet building their world a little more vividly would make these creatures more dimensional and comprehensible.

What was your favorite part? (scene/sentence/etc)

This is like asking which of the jackpot dollars you like best. So much of this story is about love and loss, yet Carlos paints each portrait in ways to make the reader smile. I particularly liked the chapter devoted to the man who followed his dream into Major League Baseball. Here Carlos deftly crafts a picture of a simple, uncomplicated love, and the tears that flow when it must end.