[The Bloated Shaganat]

This is interesting, if a little dark for my tastes.

I don't do grammar, Chris and Leisha surpass anything I have ever seen on the subject, and may get involved. My thoughts are just observations.

Do you write a lot, or is this your first novel/novelle? I only ask as I see several things that you could do immediately to drastically improve this and wondered whether people have mentioned the following;

i) You use a lot of superfluous words to say simple things. A common mistake we can all fall into, but particular to new writers e.g.

Below in the hold all that had happened on the topside had not gone unnoticed by the prisoners or passengers in their cages. That was all that there was in the ship’s hold—shelves and the cages that lined them.

I can see what you are trying to say, but your sentence structure could be simpler, with fewer words. The quicker you get to your characters the better.

ii) Clarity of thought. Again, I know what you are trying to say, but it could be crisper. You could try writing a flow diagram to show the action and events. It is surprsing how the simplest detail can get overlooked. And, you have to trust your readership to understand, rather than tell them every little detail.

If I was going to offer one suggestion - precis, precis, precis!

Hope it helps,

TBO