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Yeoman's Duty by Frederick Rustam

Posted: December 18, 2013, 06:42:40 PM
by Lester Curtis
This story is very involved and meticulously detailed, but I'll probably have forgotten it by tomorrow. It failed to engage me to any significant degree with any of the characters in it.

A lot of telling; not so much showing.

I noticed only two mechanical glitches in it: one was a homophone swap of 'discrete' for 'discreet.' The other was this:
As the two officers watched, a maintenance man they both knew unlocked the door of the opposite storeroom and entered, carrying a meal tray from the staff kitchen. He left the door ajar. They couldn't see him after he moved out of their sightline, but they heard a table being pushed across the floor and the tray being dropped onto it.

"Here's your chow, kid. Eat up."

enter>Conversation

The Chief and the Captain glared at Yeoman's jailer, who was crestfallen and fearful. He knew what Zanadu's policy was toward errant employees. No one who stole from a guest was ever given a second chance.
Maybe there's nothing missing from the manuscript, but it feels a bit like there is, and that "enter>Conversation" line fairly screams, "Broken!"

Also, it took me too long to figure out where the story was going and that it was, in fact, a mystery story.

It was not a thriller.