Clay and Aether

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

In a galaxy full of cutthroat pirates, haughty despots and slavering beasts, Talon Squad has their work cut out for them as they explore worlds unknown and protect the Griffon Republic from a multitude of threats.But Vanbrook, the smartmouth swashbuckler; Raivyn, the reserved but powerful psychic; Reclan, the often whiney but incredibly capable technologist; D’Jarric, the enigmatic electromagnetic warrior; and Doc Manford, the grumbling Robotic medic and sharpshooter are ready for the challenge.

Join Talon Squad as they cross swords, exchange laser fire and telepathically grapple with the worst the galaxy has to offer!

This story updates Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Information

Status: Hiatus
Year: 2024
Author: Dave Schmidt

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.8/ 5.0
Followers: 29
Views: 3,681

Chapters(10 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(1)

Regolith42Royal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
Style: I did have some gripes regarding the POV switches. Especially in chapters nine and ten it feels like you're ping ponging a bit between the different POVs. I think the author might be served by adding a label or header to each POV to remind the readers of their faction/squad alliance/basic data. Species and some other data maybe? I don't know exactly what should be included. It was a little difficult to follow some of what was happening with so many factions and characters involved in the situation.
Grammar: Perfect as far as I could tell. Didn't spot a single grammar mistake my entire time reading so far. That's not something that I can say for almost any other story that I've read on this site. Good job.
Story: A new planet is claimed by one group, and several different factions are fighting for control. At the moment we're in the initial stages of scouting groups, but we'll see if the conflict is resolved diplomatically or if it escalates into a full scale war. And while there's a sense that this is a somewhat big deal, I didn't get the sense that the Republic was overly concerned if they did end up losing control of this particular planet. An important, but not existential loss to them. But they might have a very large galactic empire, so maybe losing their claim on a planet or two isn't too big of a deal?
We sort of jump right into the action with little context to the setting or wider galaxy, so it's difficult at this point to think about how significant or not any of these battles or the value of the planet/ancient technology actually are to anyone at this point. Perhaps we'll get it fleshed out in some more detail later on.
Normally this slow reveal setting and worldbuilding is fine for character work and discovering things slowly as the story unfolded, but since things quickly going into galactic politics right from the start it feels a little odd having so many blanks in the equations.
Perhaps keeping it a bit more focused on the main squad and not t