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@filewriter

1. the overall flow of your story is solid.

there’s a lot of info dumping in your prologue which is usually saved and spread out along the first few chapters.  prologues are an attention grabber; more snappy and say “mysterious.”

your paragraphs are very long which can lead to them being clunky.  there’s nothing wrong with large paragraphs but when in a prologue or first few pages they tend to scare/intimidate potential readers.  I suggest shortening your paragraphs for the prologue and saving the longer ones for later chapters when your reader’s attention is already captured.

2. I can understand what’s happening.  it’s very clear and I like how you drop some “easter eggs” of events and things that have happened.  it makes me want to read more to find out what happened.  however I would be a little more subtle in writing them.  🙂

other thoughts:

-I like how you showed Frederick’s capabilities as a leader by how analytical his thoughts were.

-at first this sentence reads that the young scientist is named Frederick which is confusing.  I’d add punctuation in order to clarify it.

in came the young scientist Frederick had come to know quite well since “the H Project” had started making some real progress.
“What news do you have for me today, Augustine.?”

-I suggest trimming your prologue down to less than 2,500 words by not giving away as much information and maybe by being a little more “mysterious”.  Your prologue is your hook; you don’t want the reader to know a lot after they read it since you want them to continue reading in order to find out.

-I’d shorten some of your sentences or break them up into two sentences because a lot of them are long and tend towards being clunky.  interspersing them with short ones adds interest and style to your prose.  it can also recapture your reader’s attention.

it can help to read your piece out loud to see where the prose gets bogged down.  🙂

closing thoughts:

all in all I think you have a solid beginning and I’m interested to see what happens next.  🙂

~Lydia