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We will vigorously defend our coastline like our long-running war against the Danes for Hans Island (a war we are winning right now).

Think I'm kidding?
http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/hans … flict.html

@Bill K: Spoiler: Lady K is the best character ever. Waaaaay better than Dr Ess or Queen Aussie

I wasn't going for short, I was going for "glue the most interesting stuff together". Don't think of it like me snipping words to death but of pruning filler to bring out the flavour of the meat.

Also, I tried to stay true to the original, otherwise "destiny" would have been gone entirely (when a writer tells me "X is destined to do Y" what they mean is go ahead and skip to the final chapter because (i) X will succeed at Y or (ii) X will fail at Y and you're read this whole story for nothing)

deity vs entity:
Bob met with Joe and the followers of the Bing deity
Bob met with Joe and the followers of the Bing entity
If you can't see a subtle nuance in the second sentence that makes Bing realer, I will back away from this one

"Mentally ill"
is a very strong word. I mean very very strong. Not quite as offensive as some of the other words. recommend "Mentally challenged" or "mental disorder". I'm not saying don't use ill... just saying that if you put tomatoes on your sandwich, you must be prepared to get tomato flavour in every bite.

Overall, I find it approaches the concept of the story and what I presume to be the central theme. Don't let me bully you out of it

Such as shooting helpless opponents?

I hate holodecks

I recommend not italicizing new words... especially if the word is not new to the characters and not stressed in any way. That would make for a very bumpy read

Every time I read a new post in Sneaked vs snuck, I lose a few brain cells

The caps gives it more formality (more mocking) but I suspect either form is reasonable as long as it's consistent.

In particular, the caps implies someone famous carried this epithet before. Consider:
Hurry up, twinkle-toes
Hurry up, Twinkle-toes
(the latter being a Flintstone comparison)

And then, thinking back to my previous series... I have tons and tons of ranks.
Electron ranks go from electrokinetic->Lightning/Kinetic-Lightning->Elika->Namika->Nuclearkinetic (Each of these ranks can take "minor" or "arch" eg Minor-Elika or Arch-Namika).
Proton ranks Deputy->Sheriff->Lieutenant->General->Telika.
Telepaths rank themselves with a number representing how far they can reach + a division (projection / empathy / biopathy / placing / etc)
and there are many many more.

And I'm thinking about Book 6 and less than 10% of my ranks appear. The only ranks you see in book 6 are the ranks that matter to the characters. For example, [S t r a d i n] is technically a Minor Namika, but J calls him Namika. It's not relevant to her which kind he is because as far as she's concerned, he has all the properties of a normal Namika. She never refers to [K w a n] by her telepathic designation of "projection rank i". The term never appears in books 5 or 6. It exists in the story, but it's never so critical that J needs to mention it.

ok... back to yours. I ask of you... how important are the ranks? Which do you really *need*? Of course in a first draft use "lieutenant corporal". But in a second draft, maybe that guy is just a lieutenant or just a corporal. In a 3rd draft, maybe he's just "a leader baddie who wants to beat up the good guys".

Ideally the ranks are so unobtrusive that the story can remain dominant.

Here are some random questions to demonstrate what I mean:
a) In Seabrass's story, Tammon's rank/title is "Cityseer". Can you name the rank of Mawk?
b) Before the term "battle droid" was coined in 1990, how many classes of droid did Star Wars have?
c) Aside from "Prime" name at least 3 ranks of autobot.

(okay (c) is me cheating)

d) Aside from "dinobot" and "triple changer" name 3 classes of autobot.

PS: Classiarii and legionarii didn't throw me. I mentally re-assign them as "military guy carrying gun". Therefore no complaint. A 3rd, 4th, and 5th group merely joins this existing classification. Again, no complaint. UNLESS all five are in the same paragraph.

Due to storyline complexity, I suggest converting that underground abandoned city into an ant mound. You could tie it into your existing ants, and then you could say "cavern wall" and "ducked under a stalactite" etc instead of introducing flat walls at this point.

That city you depicted... you could probably spend about 4 pages describing it and still parts would be unclear. I suspect it's not that important to the overall story, so instead of leaving some readers confused about the stage, why not normalize it to the previous chapters?

I suggest cutting it (rather than try to render it better) because I'm never 100% sure if it's "day" or "night" or if the characters can see the sun. I'm never sure of the flora and fauna (especially with respect to broad-leaf plants). Sometimes a "drop-off" is mentioned and I can't picture how big or wide or deep. This stuff could use more fluffing out next pass. The city? Not so much if it can be normalized.

You dont want to renew right now? Yeh... basic doesn't have a lot of power afaik

Dryden?