Contest #18: Writing challenge - VOTING

[Silverthorn]

Eh, I guess it's time for me to say something as well

Reaper
Giving Template a main-role is unique. The way the story is told is similar to any good thriller-novel, plus the choice of words which is absolutely excellent. Off the top of my head, I cannot really find anything to nitpick on, therefore, ye got a vote from me.

The Lost Global Mod
At first, I thought it was only me who had trouble finding into the story but it seems like there are others around that have a similar issue. As for the content, my greatest trouble was that I could not always know what goes where. At first, we have these acting-like paragraphs, then the point of view suddenly switches. One part deals with Davis etc, another one with Firzen. Some people might like this, others might not. I, however, do like the twist with the pendant. Cursed things are always good things!
Especially the ending could've probably needed a little overwork. Julian is not pleased with how things go so he simply says "She didn't obey me so I have to kill her now! AHAHAHA". Just visualizing this sentence, fairly out of context, I am seeing a grandpa that tells a fairytale. You know, the structure "Event X so event Y will follow". It could be probably told in a more mysterious or infuriated way, not as if Julian explains or even justifies to the others what he's about to do but rather talking to Jan directly. Or something like that. And the very last paragraph seems a bit rushed; it looks like in these few sentences, there is more happening than anywhere else. You don't really have to describe every single step of the fight ("Woody kicked with his knee into Julian's chest which made him cough") but a few notable events wouldn't be bad. This is just one passage that comes to my mind but a few others do lack a bit of enthusiasm, too.
The rest is pretty much said already. Try to vary the sentence structure throughout the text; only when you really want to draw the reader's attention towards something, use repetitions. Also, what I like to do is to have a thesaurus close-by. It's immensely helpful to avoid using the standards words ("X said"). So, that's my point of view. It's certainly not bad but there is still room above
Also, am I the only one that feels bugged about "Jane"?

Azriel
Well, our two stories resemble quite much and could really be two different perspectives in the same environment. Plus, I dig post-apocalyptic scenarios. I really like the way it's told, so there goes my second vote.

empirefantasy
I have no idea if the story was meant to be a little wtf-y or not, but I certainly had a wtf-expression through at least 50% of my reading-time. There are some weirdnesses here and there (Julian kills himself with a single soul-bomb-explosion? Interesting....) and some "awkwardnesses" just sound plainly hilarious to me (I really had to laugh when Monk asked "why are you so moron?"). The missing quotation-marks, however, make it hard to follow. Especially with longer dialogs, a little "replied Monk", "Davis interrogated:", etc. would have made things much clearer.
Again, I have to agree with what the others already said which I don't really want to repeat right now. The story definitely has its very own charm. It's just that my taste differs.


All in all, some really great entries. We are on a pretty high level, so let's see which result the last two days bring