This is not a good piece, sorry. It has a lot of problems, mainly with the characterization of the people here. Plainly, all characters here are really… shallow, I suppose is the word? There's very little regarding depth on the characters of, well, each character. We're introduced to this Marcus guy who wants to avenge this other guy, but besides saying how he wants to avenge him, there isn't much to his character. Then we have Alto, who has a brother and he's angry, and some other characters who past a name aren't really important. They don't really have unique voices, and I couldn't really differentiate any needs or wants from a narrative standpoint in… In any way, really. Hell, this Larim guy dies and then we're thrown a flashback but does that mean I suddenly care about them? No, not really. So yeah, I think the major offender is that there's just no depth to any character here.
Then, the story itself is just… All over the place. First we're told that this next mission is essentially of revenge, but it just… I mean, I get why they would do this, but it feels very inept when it comes to just 'going to a place and setting it on fire'. There isn't really a plan. And talking about plan, the way the Bookburners are presented has very little planning behind. I could honestly not tell they were GOC; they don't act or talk like them, unless you take the 'face valued, lolfoundation-esque' approach, but such approach isn't really interesting to read, especially if they are the protagonists here. When it comes to protagonism, I couldn't even tell there was a protagonist; the story just moved forwards kinda, and people moved along.
Finally, the -pede insertion just feels random-ey and unnecessary. You could argue that there was an interesting plot point with the ratapede, but the more -pede words were intorduced, the less interesting this last twist you were making became. The pedes screaming and talking weren't really appealing, and despite attempting to explain the birth of the rounderpede (I think that was the idea? Or at least some explanation into an species of it and the like), I feel like there wasn't a lot of care put into it. I feel like if you wanted to go in such a direction, you needed more than you have them there and then setting fire to everything.
Oh, and talking about that: Scene changes. As I mentioned earlier, the story just moved and people moved along. I don't really know why half the things that happened happened; it felt very rushed, in that regard. The house changing then not really mattering; Alto trying to save his bro and then everyone scattering; the flashback; the fire- Nothing really felt cohesive. Rather, it felt like a bunch of scenes stuck to one another haphazardly. Again, more care needed to be put into making sure the scenes felt connected with one another.
Overall… Yeah, this needed a lot of work. I think the necessary bits to work on are research, as the GOC didn't really felt interesting, same with the WL setting and the characters within, and just… Proper pacing and character writing, because it was a rather bland experience, this tale.
-1