Submitting a year-old story that's a few chapters of a larger story for the Thursday Prompt... Very cheaty-face ;P

But I'll bite XD In return, I only read to about halfway through the second chapter :P

First of all, since it's just a clip of a bigger story, there's lots of background information that's missing. I can work with it though: there's obviously some shapeshifting powers, some psychic powers, etc. The premise is somewhat interesting, but hard to jump into mid-way.

Now, as for the core of the writing, it's rather clunky. Not that it is difficult to read, but there's quite a bit of repetition. For instance, when Vincent first "realized in horror", it was fine. But the second time - just moments later - he "realized in horror", I realized in horror that I might be reading the same thing over and over. This pops up again and again, either by completely repeating the same description or by referring to the same thing over and over excessively. Some synonyms would be very helpful, as well as condensing the later references of the same thing. Otherwise, try to avoid "blindly touching" when he has already "bent down to touch". "Groping" would have been a good word for the latter instance. Also starting so many paragraphs with either "He" or "His" is very repetitious, so try to vary how it works.

There's also some pacing issues, beyond that which is gummed up by the above repetition. There's quite a bit of "starting" followed almost immediately by "stopping", with a bunch of "suddenly". It gives it a really jerky feel to the reading. What makes a "surprise" more surprising is when the rest of the story is smooth. When the story is made up of all these "surprises", it just feels like a mental strobe-light, making it extremely difficult to get into the story or feel any sort of attachment towards the characters.

I had all these problems too, at one point. They still pop up every now and then, actually. But, once you're aware of them, it's easier to cull the habits, so I hope I've been a little helpful ^^

Yes, I've been trying to remove repetition yet, even with my extensive vocab, its difficult. As for the rest of it, I did my best. But it does start out with the first chapters so I don't see why you say "Jumps right in the middle of"

Oh, since you said this was your "fifth book", I thought it might be a series. Sorry XD But it does sorta jump into the middle. Like, each chapter is about a different person, in the middle of some strange situation, with abilities that are lightly alluded to. Essentially, it feels like three really short stories with no background for the reader to actually care about the characters.

The background for the story is the humans fought a war for planet Earth and in the end, the war ended, the humans lost, and the people who lead them in battle were either killed or captured