Reddit mentions of The Traitor Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade (1))

Haven't done one of these in a while, so I'll be more general as opposed to line edits (as I'm out of practice on those). What you'll get is my opinion of the piece itself in a more broad way, which is probably more useful anyway. It's not intended to be mean or harsh, but honest. I approach these in the way I approach my own fiction, and also fiction I buy off the shelf.

To start, it might seem like a nitpick, but I absolutely hate the protagonists name. It's also said that you want to generally avoid tropes, and being super blatant about the 'teenager trying to escape the small town' thing might get you side-eyed in a not so good way. It's horribly overdone these days. Anyway, that's just initial impressions. Lets dig into the actual writing.

> America Boggs gripped sticky, tattered pleather while the school bus climbed a muddy mountain road. She was the remote route’s only high school student, so her bright green eyes and curly blond hair towered over the surrounding mob of spastic little kids. Sitting alone, she listened to faint music through a pair of duct taped headphones.

Okay, I lied. I'm going to show you a minor edit. It'll mostly include word removal and small editions to keep the structure from being unsound.

> America gripped the tattered seat as the school bus climbed the muddy mountain road. As the remote route’s only high school student, she towered over the mob of spastic middle schoolers. Sitting alone, she listened to faint music through a pair of duct taped headphones.

Like I said, a minor edit. There's a lot of unnecessary detail the distracts from America and her situation. The self-description is also a bit jarring as she would know these things about herself. Describing a character like this should only be included if they're important to the story itself. Does it matter that she's a blonde with green eyes? Is that unique? If so, does she get funny looks? If not, don't bother. People forget these details and largely substitute what they imagine the character looks like. We also tend to only notice our flaws as they more directly impact us, unless someone is a super hot narcissist. Moving on.

> They passed sagging mobile homes roofed in blue tarps. The neighborhood’s displays of poverty provided America with constant reminders that a future beyond the Appalachians might be impossible. She dreaded a hardscrabble life in the dilapidated village and resented the rugged landscape for turning civilization into a dream.

'They' is vague in a strange way. You could say the bus passed, or the sagged mobile homes passed, but 'they passed' directly into 'sagging mobile' feels very passive. In the second sentence, the 'neighborhood's' agency (displaying, providing, etc), reads odd. I'd put the reader more firmly in America's head. I like the use of 'hardscrabble', but it highlights an issue for me. Namely, none of this feels like science fiction yet. That may be by design, but already the introduction is very slow, lacking action, emotion, or firm setting and placement. So far, it reads as very easy to put down.

> Avoiding such depressing thoughts, she signaled her antique cellphone to crank its feeble volume. The phone’s original memory only held twenty songs before her homemade upgrades, but she found and repaired it herself. Plus, her dad paid the bill if she did extra chores.

She's not avoiding the thoughts, really. She was previously reveling in them. She's turning from them, or dismissing them, but not avoiding. If she was avoiding them she wouldn't have really thought about it to begin with.

The detail of the phone: how is she 'signaling' to it? Also, the volume is feeble and it could only hold twenty songs? How familiar are you with technology? Is this set in the early 90s because phones could hold hundreds of songs relatively quickly. I'm having a hard time figuring out the time frame we're in.

> America’s sixth sense for electronics, including her body’s ability to broadcast radio waves, provided many temptations for mischief as modern technology trickled into the isolated region. Usually, she listened to her dad and hid her strange powers.
> “If anybody finds out,” he explained, “they’ll get scared and call the cops. The cops’ll tell the Feds and the Feds’ll dissect ya.”

Wooooaaah okay wait. Super-powers? Note: A sixth-sense isn't typically technomancy, but that's not really the issue here. Why am I being TOLD she has super-powers several paragraphs in? I should be shown this, and shown it much earlier. Also, if she can generate radio-waves, can she also receive them? How does it work? Why can she do it? This detail needs to hit hard and fast in some way beyond her just imagining a conversation she had with her father.

> A boy drowned out America’s favorite song by bracing his blaring video game against the backrest beside her ear. She felt its vulnerable wireless port pulsing an open invitation and pulled out her phone, sending brief bursts of silent, coded radio frequencies to control a customized hacking app. The program’s powerful algorithms discovered his pitiful password in seconds.

Watch the alliteration, because I'm seeing it a lot. Also, this reads as both weirdly specific and weirdly non-specific and, while this may not be the case, it FEELS as a reader like you have a layman's understanding of the technology involved. It uses buzzwords in a way that make it like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU

> Her tiny screen scrolled the game’s operating system until she found and spiked its battery temperature readings. Pocketing her phone, she held tight as the bus crested a ridge and lurched to an abrupt stop. The boy, pummeling his blank screen instead of holding on, bounced his face off her backrest.

'Screen scrolled' <- alliteration again. 'Pocketing her phone' is a dangling participle. You tend to want to avoid those as they confuse (especially in this case) the subject and the sequence of events. Also, the wording of the last sentence seems to imply the boy purposely bangs his head on the seat in front of himself.

> Rain peppered the metal roof like buckshot. America hoisted her bulging backpack, nodded at the driver and leapt through the exit. She trudged up her slick, washed out driveway, wishing for a different life.

Good first sentence. Very active and strong wording. Your prose needs more of this. 'Bulging Backpack'. If she's so remote, why are there so many kids and no other high schoolers? Are the young ones required to live outside city limits? I thought she was on her WAY to school because of the presence of more kids, just that she was the only one from that direction. Her returning home surrounded by children seems odd.

The last sentence kind of highlights a new problem... Why is her life so bad? She's maybe lonely, but has super-powers, seems like her dad (implied) is weird but kind of okay. I'm not really 'feeling' it with this. It just seems like an extended introduction to the character - the kind of thing really strong writers can get through in a paragraph.

I'll stop there, as I think the first page / chapter pretty much says everything that needs to be said, and if it's not exactly satisfying most people will stop there (or earlier).

It's not a bad effort. My critiques tend to be hard because an editor / agent, who is going to look at this wondering if they should spend money on it, will be a thousand times harder. I'd suggest taking some time looking into in medias res and learning how to apply it, because if you DO have a unique and compelling science-fiction story to tell, it's hiding behind this early chapter with only a brief clue as to what I can expect from your story.

The first part of a story is a promise, and this doesn't promise much I can latch onto.

Here's a recommendation: https://www.amazon.com/Traitor-Baru-Cormorant-Seth-Dickinson/dp/0765380730/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505314872&sr=1-1&keywords=seth+dickinson

This book is a good example of an author using punchy prose, quick pacing, and strong characterization to make the 'young girl not entirely pleased with her life' trope into something striking and compelling. I highly recommend reading it, spending a little time depressed over how well its written, and then using that as inspiration to keep writing. You're in for a long, tough road from here. Good luck.

I know one of them is Seth Dickinson. He has a novel also that I'm reading... good so far. https://www.amazon.com/Traitor-Baru-Cormorant-Seth-Dickinson/dp/0765380730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1497673793&sr=8-1&keywords=the+traitor+baru+cormorant