3479 by Xchyler Conn

This is one of the first short stories I have ever reviewed. I have reviewed a few novellas, but they have all been longer than this story. This story is the beginning of the what I assume is going to be a longer story told down the line.

The basic premise is that there is a girl, Sammie, and she is about the graduate. And the way that there society works is that after you graduate you go through a series of tests, and if you score really well you are sent to war, and if you score mediocre you can go back home, only know one really knows how these tests are judged. Sammie doesn't know how she wants to approach these on coming tests, so she reads the journal of her great-grandfather, who it turns out was the friend of the current king.

The writing within the story isn't bad, although there are points in the story where the same phrases are repeated closely together that it messes with the flow of the story. Also the parts where Sammie is living her life, and the parts that are the journal are not well defined, or separated. So sometimes this leads to confusion as to what you are reading about.

I am not a huge fan of shorter stories, not because the writing isn't good, because I am the kind of person who wants to get lost in a book, or a series, and it's hard to get lost in a story that is short. That being said there is enough here for me to want to know what happens next, so I would like to see what the author has in the way of the next chapter. Although I will say this story ends rather abruptly and I think it could have been a way to end this story with more conclusion as to satisfy the reader better.