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(+3)

I found this difficult to follow with an overwhelming number of concepts, names, cultural ideas, and historical and political divisions being introduced very rapidly. Compounding the issue, the shifts between different perspectives (3rd-person omniscient to historical account to history text) were too abrupt and too frequent.

There's a time and a place to introduce a fully fleshed-out and unique culture in its entirety, and a 1000-word short story is neither the time nor the place. I would suggest that a piece of this length stick to a single perspective - or, at most, two - and as much as possible use old words to describe new concepts.

That said, I think the culture you've created here is an interesting one, and in a novella or full-length novel which has the time and wordcount to pace its introductions to that culture and its history, I'd love to explore it. There are some great turns of phrase in the piece as well. I really liked "enjoying the silence of absent artillery".

Appreciate the notes, especially on the technical point of perspective, which is something I went back and forth on. I don't regret getting it out of my system, but I probably wouldn't do it the same way again. Something I'm taking away for my future work in this setting is to focus on distilling things to make stronger standalone pieces for entry into the larger fiction so that the details can compound over time. Again, thanks for taking the time to write this up, I really enjoy the stuff you've written.

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I'm glad you found my comments helpful. Re-reading my own post I think it comes across more critical than I intended it to. I did like the piece, and I can see you've put a lot of work into the cultural and historical background of your setting. 'Distilling' things to smaller elements that compound over time is probably the way to go; what I've found works for me in my own worldbuilding writing is to pick one or two core ideas that I want to introduce in that particular work, and minimize or hide everything else.