InMyHighCastle posted:

“When the cart comes, son, it doesn’t go away empty,” they told me. I didn’t want to leave them behind, my family, my friends, my neighbors, This feels oddly general. Perhaps I'm just being nitpicky, but it's something anyone would say, and it lacks any specificity that would give the reader a clue as to what the narrator values. but adults often don’t care much for the wishes of children, especially during wars. We have to do as we are told. So, as I clambered off the packed train, and began to make my way down to the station’s exit, I knew that, whether I liked it or not, I’d have to get into the man’s cart and be ferried off to whichever family was generous enough to host me until things calmed down back home. This sentence goes on for quite a long time and, as a consequence, loses some of its impact of an anxious youngster. He sounds a little too calm and removed, in other words

As I exited the station, leaving the more sheepish children behind, I saw it: the cart. A long wooden thing, accompanied by two intimidatingly large black horses who, I thought, looked like they could pull, or drag -- if their size was any indication -- the cart for miles without much effort, even if it was full of children. Again, far too long a sentence, using a lot of words without giving the reader any vital information. You could lose a lot of the latter part of the sentence. But they wouldn’t be doing much pulling today. It struck me as being tilted at a really odd angle. And if the pained expression on the face of the tall man standing at the rear of the cart was anything to go by, this angle wasn’t part of some eccentric design. Once more, this is way too much extraneous information. Telling us that a tall man stood grimacing is gives us all the information we need, without the mention of an "eccentric design" which, as Apocalips Now stated, doesn't really sound like a child's voice

“It’s the axel,” said the dark shifting dark figure stooped down near one of the back wheels Is this the tall man? He has moved from being standing to stooped. If not, I would change the "the" earlier int the sentence to "a" in order to differentiate. “Strange though. Fine when we got here”

“Yeah, axel’s gone and broke,” said another, much reedier, voice, presumably coming from whoever the skinny legs poking out from beneath the end of the cart belonged to Overly descriptive. Again, you could get away with "another, much reedier voice from behind the cart". “Not much chance of us getting this thing moving again today, boss” Small note, but you alternate between writing "boss" with a capital and a lower-case "b."

I saw the man wearing the pained expression wince from underneath his wide-brimmed, gloomy dark hat Too many needless adjectives here.. “What you mean to say, gents, is not ‘this axel’s gone and broke’ but ‘some low-life vagrant scum has broken your bloody axel, boss’ .” He reached into his pocket and fished out a pair of spectacles, tinted to keep the sun out of his eyes, which, I noticed, matched the emerald tint of the spectacles I am confused by this sentence. If I'm reading it right--I may not--it says "he took out a pair of spectacles, which were emerald, like the spectacles." Or do you mean the sun is emerald? Is that normal in this world, or curious? . Slowly, the man sauntered round to the side of the cart and began to lightly knock the man hunkered down near the wheel on the shoulder with his walking stick. “And you are going to get this cart moving today or I will personally tether my horses to you and use you as a replacement, understood?”

“ ‘course, Boss, but--’

“But what, Jones?’ said the man, placing his spectacles carefully on the bridge of his long nose.

“Nothin’, Boss’