CRIT: Niche

This is the opening of my WIS. Although it's already out in search
of its first rejection slip, I'd still like to tune it more, if
necessary, before I get further down my list, into markets where
it has a more appreciable chance of getting accepted. Some readers
thought earlier drafts had problems with POV. Can anyone give me
any comments on whether this opening does a competent job of
signaling to the reader that it's in omni? (Other comments would
also be welcome, of course.)

TIA!

Ben

--------------------------

A hiker approached the town on California Route 520. Along the
mountain road, what the bluejays and chipmunks heard first was the
flap-flap-flap of the soles of her shoes, which were just barely
attached. The highway had been easy to find and to follow, at least
on foot, but there had been landslides in a few places, and fallen
trees, and that was why Lily Ouellette wasn't sharing the road with
any humans. It had been a long journey. She should have felt a sense
of accomplishment, but actually she would long since have given up,
if she hadn't already reached the point where it was easier to
survive by going forward than by going back. Her hopes for a
scientific career seemed like a fairy tale now.

Coming down around a curve, she saw her destination in front of
her. The scene was close to what she'd been expecting from the map:
the Tuolumne River, and the tiny mountain village, which had never
been much more than a junction and a gas station. If the hamlet was
still inhabited, it wasn't obvious, although she'd seen goats grazing
nearby that were probably domesticated. Downstream would be the
bigger town of Muir. Back home in Quebec, the Tuolumne wouldn't even
have been considered a riviere, hardly more than a ruisseau.
Reflexively, her biologist's eye observed what climate change had
done to its valley: the eroded slopes, and the dense overhang of
tropical riparian forest along the banks.

Today she had kept walking until late in the morning, and if she
didn't stop now she'd be courting heatstroke. She found a good flat
rock in a shady spot, and sat down to wait until evening. The Bugs
had been getting thicker for the last few days, their thumb-sized
blue-gray carapaces most easily picked out when they alighted on the
reddish dirt. She saw three of them here by her feet, disassembling
the body of a cricket. They were thick by the river, she could hear
as well as see them. There was every sign that she had arrived at
their epicenter.

Evening came, and as Lily continued down the hill, the first person to
see her coming was the goatherd Dan Bloom.

What the hell was the woman doing coming from that direction? It
didn't make sense. Dan was still alive for several reasons. Habit was
one of them, and luck was another. Luck was why he'd survived the
cholera, and Tracy and the kids hadn't. Luck, or whatever you wanted
to call it. Experience was another of the reasons. From experience,
he'd learned to assess the strangers who came through this junction.
Travelers with money in their pockets. Soldiers or deserters.
Refugees (harmless in small numbers --- he'd been one himself, once).
This woman looked like a refugee, but it had been years since he'd
seen anyone come from that direction, so where was she a refugee from?

"Evening," Dan said as she came around the old rusted-out gas tank.
She'd be a hell of a good-looking woman when she was clean and not
half-starved.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: CRIT: Niche
    ... Dan was still alive for several reasons. ... one of them, and luck was another. ... This woman looked like a refugee, but it had been years since he'd ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
  • Re: CRIT: Niche
    ... Back home in Quebec, the Tuolumne wouldn't even ... Dan was still alive for several reasons. ... one of them, and luck was another. ... This woman looked like a refugee, but it had been years since he'd ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
  • Re: CRIT: Niche
    ... That name made me think of Dan Brown... ... The omni wobbles/jerks a bit here. ... one of them, and luck was another. ... This woman looked like a refugee, but it had been years since he'd ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
  • Re: CRIT: Niche
    ... Dan was still alive for several reasons. ... one of them, and luck was another. ... This woman looked like a refugee, but it had been years since he'd ... "Evening," Dan said as she came around the old rusted-out gas tank. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)
  • Re: CRIT: Proposed opening of WIP
    ... All that Nicky's shows about the father/son relationship is that the father ... If you were a careful reader you might also note the that the smells ... that Dan perceives the whole situation as trying to cover ... discomfort and claustrophobia of the opening. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.composition)