Djeser posted:

Gave it a quick read, so here's my general impressions.

If I wasn't reading it to give feedback, I would have gotten lost in the first section, as it's all very highly political stuff about laws and customs I'm not familiar with. The second section, while it wasn't very remarkable, did more to draw me in. I had a hard time figuring out where the characters were, physically. If you're aiming for a pulpy feeling, I think a good sense of location and environment is important. To me, one of the draws of pulp stuff are interesting settings, and while you do some work building that in the second section, I was left feeling like I couldn't really visualize where he was a lot of the time.

The solution doesn't need to be a paragraph of introduction each time, but I'd at least like to get a sense of each place through Zeeb's eyes. (Also, you chose a hell of a name to write out every time.) Let him say in his own voice what he thinks about the place. That way, you get to build character and establish setting at the same time. For instance, he could look at a marble floor and mahogany furniture and think 'pff, bunch of posh posturing' and then the reader both has an idea of what the place looks like, and they know that he's more practical. Or if he's very proper, maybe he looks at the same thing and notes how different it looks all clean and tidy in here compared to the messy bustle outside. The part where he watches some kids play around and break a robot is good, and more of that in the other parts would have helped ground the setting.

You could have placed your characters more clearly, too. For instance, you started off in the middle of dialogue, so I didn't know that he was kneeling with his face to the floor until he was no longer kneeling. Since you hadn't mentioned it, I assumed they were standing up or sitting around a table having that conversation, so it was jarring when he suddenly stood up from kneeling. Personally, I would have mentioned that in the second sentence, because a) it's something that Zeeb would notice immediately and b) it gives context, and might even hint at conflict, if he's in this clearly uncomfortable position.

Motivation and conflict was the last thing I noticed, because I had trouble figuring it out. First, I had to suss out what all the political jargon up top meant, and once I had that figured out, I had to piece through who was who, and what he wanted to do. I'm not entirely sure what his job is even now, other than inspecting...things? And I think the political stuff in the beginning is like 'you signaled you're officially stopping here early, so since it'll be some time before your duties are ready, here's [quest hook]', boiled down. I get the sense that he's got some other motivations, maybe, from the final bit, but it took me too much thinking to figure out what he's trying to do and I'm still not sure I know exactly what he wants. I know that in a serial, there's going to be a slow drip of information, but I think ideally in something episodic, there should clearly be some motion into the next episode. Like, I should be able to predict what he's going to try to do next. Whether he does it, or not, or something comes up, or whatever is all up to you, the author, but I didn't have a clear enough idea of what his goals are to get super invested in what comes next. If I was going to read more, it would be mainly in the hopes that things would start making more sense.

Now that I've written like five paragraphs about what I didn't like, I do want to just add that I think overall it shows promise, and I like pulpy stuff in general, and I wanted to read more of the parts that I liked. This just feels like a bit of a messy start as you're trying to establish everything and get your story's feet underneath it.