Alright, let’s get this show on the road.

Three stories, three reviews. 

I’m keeping it short this time, but I’ll freely elaborate on anything.

[hider=The Army Destroyer]

I don’t have a whole lot of complaints about how the story was written. It was simple, but that made it easy enough to tell what was going on. I was able to navigate the story just fine, and it was paced well. 

Something I was far less impressed with was how inadequate the army going after Steve was. Espionage hinges on a storie’s ability to make the reader feel “clever” when the hero outsmarts the bad guys. The big bad left Steve alone in a cloth tent with nothing but a rope holding him in place. Not just any tent, a tent with Bendul. A guy important enough to have “Grand commander” prefixed to his name. Despite how woefully inadequate a tent is at confining people, they are left unattended for an extended period of time. When their missionary cloaks failed them, they just dawned a new disguise to escape. The exact same kind Steve used at the beginning of the story. It was a little hard to suspend my disbelief. Steve was a one trick pony that was handed his victory by inadequate opponents. It would have been more interesting if they put up more of a fight.

I did like that Steve had some difficulty sneaking out as a missionary. Fallible characters are good in any story.
[/hider]
by [@Calle]

[hider=The Amulet of Friall]

The story had all the correct beats, I feel. Counter-stealing sensitive objects with an uncertain ally is always a fun experience. It also had a juicy betrayal and enough evidence to suggest such a thing might happen.

There are several instances of past and present tenses getting mixed up, missing punctuation, run-on sentences, all permeating the work. A few example of what I’m talking about.

[quote]He had send her a note that he wanted to see her as soon as possible. The wall was full with shooting holes every ten steps there was one. [/quote]

[i]He had [b]sent[/b] her a note that he wanted to see her as soon as possible. The wall was [b]filled[/b] with shooting holes. Every ten steps there was one.[/i]

[quote]It hadn't been easy to find the vampire that tried to frame a werewolf colony for the murder on human knight Ger nor did he come without a fight. [/quote]

A run-on sentence. Consider something like this 

[i]It hadn't been easy to find the vampire. The one that tried to frame a werewolf colony for the murder on human knight. He didn’t turn himself in without a fight.[/i]

[quote]“Hazel.” he responded as he picked up some pieces of paper. “We have a report that followers of Reitrome are making a move to steal the amulet of Friall.” Hazel gritted her teeth when she heard her least favourite name in the world: Reitrome. The ever elusive Reitrome. Hazel's eyebrows arched as she heard about the amulet. “You mean that amulet that is supposed to be hidden away by the Elementals so it would never fall into the wrong hands?”[/quote]

It’s not a good idea to include dialog from two different characters in the same paragraph. 

[i]“Hazel.” He responded as he picked up some pieces of paper. “We have a report that followers of Reitrome are making a move to steal the amulet of Friall.” Hazel [b]grit[/b] her teeth when she heard her least favourite name in the world: Reitrome. The ever elusive Reitrome. Hazel's eyebrows arched as she heard about the amulet. 

“You mean that amulet that is supposed to be hidden away by the Elementals so it would never fall into the wrong hands?”[/i]

The story could benefit from more exposition. Hazel had a lot of magical powers, and it would have been interesting to know what made her magic different from Estelle’s. It makes it a little uninteresting when the characters can just “do magic to it” and escape any situation. At least it feels that way when you don't know the extent of their power. 

There’s definitely a good story here. It just needed a bit more work to fully come out.
[/hider]
by [@Salenea]

[hider=The Inevitable]

While some of the scenes were verbose, I do feel this entry had a level of detail that the other two entries were lacking. It was nice to get all the important bits of the story in place before it starts. I was surprised that my favorite bits came in after the actual assassination.

And oddly, that’s also my biggest problem with it. I think you wanted to present this idea about how people like Orlov get screwed in the end. While I think that’s an interesting and noble thing to pursue, The rest of the story needs some love too. This was a fairly routine assassination that got botched at the end. Everything else is just inner thoughts. Spy stories are about action. [/hider]
by [@Fiber]

[hider=My vote]
Difficult to pick one. They all had one thing they did really well, and something else that missed the mark. I think I’ll give it to The Army Destroyer, if only because it fit the theme best. It was a hard call though.
[/hider]