This one is aspirational. Wormhole Mana is good (at least book one; I just started book two). In no particular order…
It’s tight third person. There are internal monologues in first person of the character monologuing. It’s all very obvious. No weird point-of-view changes.
There is incremental “what’s going on?” as the magic system is leaking out of a wormhole and spreads. Mine is “whole world at once” so that’s different.
The Army gets good treatment. I think I may have been a bit harsh. I’ve changed my perspective on how that’s going to work, which is costless because none of it is written, yet. I’m going to soften the hard-ass guy a bit. Still not sure of his rank. Probably a major, but at least a captain. Conversely, if I’m making the greater army more approachable, I’m also going to do the evil base commander who Charismas everyone into supporting his warlord-ness. It may be the commander of the Rapid City National Guard site. I need to push my story into more populated areas.
The system is moderately helpful (there is help text available), but it’s also locally generated from an Earth-built AI (which gets upgraded by the magic). The AI is fulfilling its goal of making the wormhole energy available for human use by changing humans, which is a neat subplot. I don’t want my system to be that personable, but I’m considering making it more helpful – but the vast, vast majority of people in the system grow up with it, so why would it have help text?
Another book with safe zones after one fences in an area. I’m going to need to steal this concept (as already noted), but I still haven’t figured out how. Some farmer repairing an existing fence perhaps? Or putting a gate across a driveway to enclose something already almost enclosed?
Characters have agency. Everybody is doing something. Sometimes this is off-screen (characters show up and things have changed). Sometimes this is on-screen (point-of-view switch to see someone doing something). I definitely need more of this.
The system messes with people’s heads. This is explicit. It’s purposefully suppressing shock and loss. This is implicit in my book, but – with one massive exception (chapter 14) – not really highlighted.
The system has quests, which are super handy for pushing characters in system-desired directions. I’ve thought about this. Currently, my system does not issue quests, but Lords can. I’m not sure about this. My biggest issue: To whom does the system issue such things? More importantly, what are the criteria for picking those people? I don’t want half the world questing and if the system issues quests, why wouldn’t they get one? Instead of inventing criteria, I’ve just not done it.
Everyone becomes 20 years old and in shape. This is the extreme version of my miniphany (about halfway through that post) that a system that can create werewolves can also fix old/sick people. This has interesting side-effects as hormones start flowing through formerly old people. I don’t want to take it to that extreme, but I definitely want to do more than I have.
Point-of-view switches always end up being relevant. This seems as if it should be obvious, but there is a lot of foreshadowing going on. A character that has not yet existed suddenly shows up and we see what he’s doing. Some time (usually off-screen time) later he intersects with our intrepid heroes. It’s nicely done.
Seriously, this is all I can find to critique: It’s not uncommon for there to be an intra-chapter break marker (a sane author who went with centered “***”) at the end of a chapter. Oh noes! That’s like complaining about the lack of pretentious drop caps.
