Hi! So, I read your book as promised and I wanted to do a pretty thorough job critiquing it, so I wrote a lot to hopefully help you out!
So, my overall feelings about the story is that it was really well written and thoroughly entertaining. The things you really excel at are:
--Originality
--Pace
--Efficient descriptions
--Great exposition
--Great mechanical prose
The things I think that could use expanding/improving upon are:
--Characterization
--Character interactions
I’ll go into a couple of these categories starting with
Originality:
There are a lot of little touches I like about this story. I like that there are a lot of intersex folks from the land Mara hails from; I think that’s a pretty original touch and very refreshing. It makes me very curious about her culture and how it functions since it (seems) intersex folks are probably a lot more common in general in this world than they are in the real world. I also like how Rita was born and I am very curious as to find out whether she was some kind of experiment or whether two women can conceive together in this world. Either way, I just like the way she was born; it was neat.
Pace:
Not much to say here except that you do a really good job moving the story along in an entertaining way, but you don’t move it along so fast that I feel disoriented. I think you can maybe slow the pace down a bit in a few places, but I’ll go over that later.
Efficient descriptions:
This almost sounds like a bad thing the way I have it written, but it really isn’t. I, myself, am a fan of descriptions that give you just enough detail to have an image in your head of the characters and situations, but don’t go too far. So, I think you’re doing really fantastic with your descriptions as I could picture everything really well and didn’t feel like you described things too much or too little.
Great exposition:
A lot of my problems with fantasy stories is that they go too far with expositional stuff—often taking whole pages early on to describe species or magical systems. There’s none of that here, and I love it! You give the reader lots of breadcrumbs to follow about each of the species and religions you introduce which is great! You also give us the information by showing it to us rather than having a character stop and explain it which is really great. For example, we’re thrust into this really weird and frightening situation first thing, but you give us some slow bread crumbs about what’s going on that prompts us to keep reading.
Great mechanical prose:
Self-explanatory, but I feel the need to point this out whenever I see it because people really do under-value good grammar, spelling, adjectives, etc. You did great with these things!
Now onto the things I think could use expanding/improving upon:
Characterization:
The story is still early on, so you can take this critique with a grain of salt. I think in a story like this where you open up with something really brutal, it’s really important to feel compassion for our main character, but at this point, I feel like I don’t have a good sense of who she is. I don’t think you need to unload a tragic backstory on us about her right now or anything, but I do think it’s a good idea to establish her personality a little bit more thoroughly so the audience really roots for her to escape and get to safety.
For instance, I want to know whether she is a little more introverted or extraverted, I want to know what her interests are, what she’s passionate about—what her reasons are for wanting to escape; things like that. Same thing with Rita, I like her so far, but I could use a tiny bit more characterization for her. I think this is where you could slow the pace down a little and take a few extra sentences or so to develop the characters.
I do also find it a little bit odd that Mara seems pretty calm about her situation in the beginning. I would be dreading the future if I were captured by crazy zealots like she was and I’d probably terrified the whole time, but maybe Mara is just a resilient kind of lady? I would find her a little bit more relatable if she were more scared about her situation at first or if it were explained why she wasn’t all that scared.
Character interactions:
I’m not sure whether this is a result of just being unfamiliar with the sexual characteristics of this world, but I did find some of the character interactions to be odd. It was odd, but amusing, for example for Rita to have found Mara unconscious and to have proceeded performing a sex act on her, and the casual conversation afterwards was a little weird, but I don’t think you need to change it. You did make it clear that Mara didn’t mind her doing it. I do also think your pace here is maybe moving a little bit too fast for my personal taste (although this is another thing you should take with a grain of salt) because I personally love a slow burn romance.
Overall:
I really loved reading your story! It’s very interesting and well-written and I want to see where it goes! I’m not usually a big fan of NSFW stuff, but you made me a believer. I think, like Penni said on your story, you should totally and unapologetically own the fact that its NSFW and erotic! In fact, as a little suggestion, I think you should make it known early on in the story that this is a world that’s really open about sex! I think you can play with that in an interesting way! I said earlier that I like a slow burn romance, BUT! I also like stories that play with romance in an interesting way! So, I think in a world where everyone is really open about sex and treat it like an un-special occurrence, you could definitely make it so that the citizens of such a world crave something much deeper than sex, but they don’t know how to make emotional connections very well. It could even cause a lot of bumps for Mara and Rita down the line!
Whew... I hope this was helpful and not too horribly long and annoying. XD