I read the prologue part 1&2, and chapter 98. You have a good writing skill, but that skill is your detriment in the medium you're writing. It reads more like French philosophers compared to a typical webnovel. It’s trying to straddle the line between being a gritty dystopian epic and a snappy webnovel, and failing spectacularly at both. The result? A bloated, overwritten piece that seems to think readers have nothing better to do than sift through its mountains of existential dread and those 10 hour long YouTube "documentary" videos.
You, yes, you love your prose. Every sentence feels like it’s auditioning for a Pulitzer, complete with overwrought metaphors, dense descriptions, and enough philosophical waxing to make a French existentialist blush. Instead of delivering tight, impactful writing, I'm dragged through scenes that overstay their welcome, dialogue that sounds like it’s written for a stage play, and internal monologues that are so repetitive they start circling back on themselves. For example:
“Meat hooks pierced the skin between her ribs and her exoskeleton, threatening to scrape against her lungs if she tried to escape.”
This is fine until you realize we’ve already spent paragraphs hearing about Janine’s injuries in excruciating detail. It slows down the pacing. Simple tell would've worked better. You mastered the "show, don't tell" part, and now you have a new mountain to climb, called "SHOW and TELL". Webnovel readers want clarity and momentum, not dense prose that makes them wonder if they accidentally picked up a dystopian poetry collection.
Dialogue is overly dramatic. Sure, it can work, but when NO ONE is talking like real human in those three chapters I looked, it loses the edge. The sheer verbosity makes the webnovel sound like you are trying too hard. Also, in the prologue there's unnecessary profanity. I could've understood if there's was a culture that has those "bad" words (fuck, bitch, so on) in the lab, but because it MUST be sterile, lifeless environment with test subject around, it doesn't feel like fantasy and instead NYC for some reason. NYC is experiment too, but whatever.
The biggest flaw is pacing. I already written because of "show, don't tell", your writing is slow, glacial even. You don't need to detail what you don't need to detail, you don't need to show every thought of the MC if it's suggested by actions. SUBTEXT EXISTS FOR A REASON. Cut the bloat. Focus on what’s happening now. Readers don’t need a 2,000-word meditation on suffering, as nobody except unhinged reads Sartre.
The worldbuilding is ambitious, I’ll give it that. Secret labs, dystopian armies, philosophical wolfkin tribes, and pseudo-religious zealots, it’s all very big. But the problem isn’t the world itself, it’s how you, the writer, delivers it. I'm hit with a barrage of unexplained terms (whitecoats, orange fiends, vivisectoriums, Dynast, Blessed Mother, etc.) without context or pacing. It’s like someone in the game dumping 1000 subquests at once, and saying “Figure it out.” Sure, I could do that, but because it's a WEBNOVEL, I rather go to work during sunday and print those 540 tablets rather than finding what the descriptions of those made by author are. Introduce the world gradually, through character interactions and plot-relevant moments. Let the reader discover the lore naturally, instead of shoving it down their throats like a PowerPoint presentation.
Another issue is that you've writing it like a novel for Kindle. You are clearly writing the next great dystopian epic, but you're posting it on a platform where readers want quick, bingeable stories with clear pacing and relatable characters. It’s like serving foie gras at a fast-food joint, you’re catering to the wrong crowd. Average SH reader wants quick, but not THAT quick pacing. If you want to write for ScribbleHub, streamline the story, simplify the prose, and focus on action and character-driven drama. If you want to write for Kindle, lean into the literary tone like you have right now, but be prepared to lose the casual webnovel crowd entirely.
This webnovel is like a three-course meal served on a paper plate. The ingredients are good, the ambition is there, but the presentation is all wrong. You are trying to do much. aiming for high-concept dystopian brilliance without understanding the expectations of the webnovel format. Simplify your prose. Tighten the pacing. Stop writing internal monologues every two paragraphs. Understand the difference between a Kindle Unlimited epic and a bingeable webnovel. Until then, this story will remain what it is: a frustratingly dense, overly ambitious mess that has no idea who it’s trying to impress. Do better, author. Your readers deserve it, and so do your ideas.
