Hello there, James. Really think this story you've got here is very cool. Really interested to see where this goes. Apologies for the novel-length comment. I guess I'm a verbose kind of guy. And of course, I'm commenting on five separate pieces of writing here.

It is very easy to misread people's stories after just reading it once, so if I've gotten anything wrong here, my apologies.

First of all, I have a lifelong history with science fiction and know all the classic plots--I have written a few of them myself--so I love how you've freshened up a couple of really classic plot lines: the Tiny Invisible Aliens and the Coming Alien Invasion. The reveal that the nail was actually a rocket ship is extremely clever and a delightful surprise.

(The mycelium-taking-over-people's-brains plot device might be read as too direct a borrow from "The last of us." I wonder if anybody has complained about that.)

I like the way Part 1 drops us into a dramatic situation in the operating room, which really catches my interest. I want to stick around and find out what's going on with the kid. Of course, once I see the miniature rocket ship reveal, I'm totally hooked.

This is so incredibly important. I see so many stories here on Substack that take so long to get me involved that I sometimes give up. I think with this sort of writing you're doing, you really have to shoot the sheriff in the first paragraph.

Just a few things threw me and I got confused.

Satinder seems to come out of the blue. And I'm asking myself, "Who is this person? Why am I here? Where am I?"

Then the tiny crew is introduced, which is, as I said, very cool. I'm not sure quite where they are. Assume it's a giant lake is a body of water or a swamp?

Then I get torn away from the little crew and I'm back to Kevin for a bit, and then back to the little crew. A little whiplash there? At least for me. I was thinking, hey, bring the little guys back!

At this point, you're telling me this story from the point of view of the tiny crew, and the narrator doesn't explicitly say what kind of animals they are encountering because the crew, of course, wouldn't know what they were called. You are in what they call close third-person point of view.

Then, suddenly, at the end, the narrator just names them (firefly, viper, bullfrog). Is the author/narrator just kind of dropping in there deus ex machina? Important to be careful about point of view and being consistent. It can be disorienting when writers "head hop."

As for the character building... this transitioning suddenly from scene to scene, character to character, gives the story a lot of great forward motion ("profluence"), which I love, but risks leaving me, The Reader, with a bunch of people I don't really know very well. This makes it harder for me to care what happens to them. I'm not sure how to deal with that issue.

Overall, after these five installments, I have to say I don't get impression that Kevin cares one way or the other what happens to him. Seems a little passive. Doesn't seem worried or scared. Am I wrong? Maybe this is intentional--a byproduct of his brain being colonized by the fungus. In any case, part of me being able to care about what happens to him is HIM caring about what happens to him.

You're a great writer and a careful craftsman. I always love to see that. People on Substack don't always attend the structural issues carefully enough. For a reader, it's very, very important to know what is going on. Not make us work so hard.

Not that you're making me work THAT hard. Just a few rough patches here and there that would be easily remedied.

Okay, that's what old Dan thinks, for what it's worth.