Hello!

First time submitting so please let me know if there are any issues.

This is the first chapter of my novel. I've been going back at it with a hacksaw in the edit, and want to get some feedback before I continue too much further.Gdrive Link

Looking for general feedback on the overall form, if there are any glaring technical issues etc (I am notoriously bad at splitting tenses, please call them out). If I had specific questions they'd be:

1. How is the pacing of the worldbuilding? There are quite a few terms delivered to the reader, do they make enough sense contextually? For those that aren't clear, is there a sense it's intentional and they'll later be paid off/explained?
2. How is the character voice? Does the MC feel compelling, do you get enough sense of their personality?
3. Does the world seem interesting? There is a robust timeskip prologue that sets up some context of this world, but does it stand alone well enough based on this chapter that you'd want to keep reading? Are you intrigued enough by what's left open-ended to want to get answers?
4. How are the descriptions/pacing? One of the biggest things I've been struggling with in this rewrite is trying to find the balance of scene-setting and action. EG. Are some things overdone, and others left too bare?

Any other general notes/feedback are of course appreciated! Thanks for being awesome.

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Crits:

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[2439]

[740]

[1554] - OP's Post on this sub got deleted but this is the comment on another subreddit