Date: 27 May 2014 00:24 Title: Tempest
How cool to see someone else writing about Andromeda! I have just started a new series about the first mission to the Andromeda Galaxy, looks like Raven beat me there! :)
I enjoyed the interplay of the different characters here. You did a good job creating distinct people through small brush strokes - Matt being bored, Marc's irreverence towards his commanding officer, Jennifer recognising the cry as being animalistic: all of these elements go to make rounded characters without extraneous information. Even though I had never read anything else about the Raven, you provided me with what I needed to be able to understand who these people are and basically what is going on.
I like the Raven as a ship - Sovereign-class is one of the most beautiful created in recent years. Unfortunately, we never got a real sense of Raven as being Sovereign-class: it felt like quite a small ship despite the size of this class normally, and we never really got to see it do what it could do.
An interesting idea to have the Klingons already be here, gives the crew a frame of reference before the newcomers arrive and I liked the wink back to Janeway. Is the Mogh reference intentional or just a character with the same name?
There were some editing errors sprinkled throughout: A "2" in the place of a speech bracket, two question marks that kind of came out of nowhere in one sentence, a handful of other things. These dragged me out of the story somewhat, which is a shame. It might be worth reediting the submission to clear those up.
Overall, I enjoyed the story and am intrigued to know what the Andromedan Threat is. So, well done!
Author's Response: May I say thank you purely for reading this alone. But I think you'll do better for Andromeda than this twelve year-old fluff. I wrote this when I was 16 and now...28 I look back on this as one would an errant child.
Filling in about the characters is something I did most stories, an old trick I was told in case someone had never read one before :)
I always struggled with the Sovereign-class aspect. Early on anyway.
I've tweaked those errors you spotted, seemed I left in one of LBD's beta bits :)