Well, I have to say, you are really in prime form with this chapter. From the line "the sooner the guy absconded with John's wife, the better," ("absconded": that's a typo I almost didn't notice, BTW), I was laughing at several points throughout the story, and the whole chapter was a delightful blend of humor and eeriness. Getting to see into Harris's mind was fascinating as always, and I really enjoyed a lot of the humorous parts, like Harris's commentary on John's interactions with his wife and Don (had to look back at the previous chapter to see what it was that Don said, but this is my fault for letting this much time elapse between reviews) or Will and Penny's conversation about John's run on the treadmill. Incidentally, this chapter of your story is leagues better than the first few pages of a published book, by an author whose other works I have enjoyed, that I started reading (but abandoned because I was not enjoying it at all) which was aiming for a similar "clever" narrator that really didn't work for me. In contrast to that book, Harris's biting, incisive comments are actually clever, and her psychological understanding is very insightful.

Just for my own information, I had a couple fandom-related questions, one from early on and one from later in the chapter. The first is whether Harris's reference to saving John and Will's life is the same incident or a different one from when she saved him from committing suicide during his hallucination. (I don't think she did anything to save Will that time, and she did also say at the end she saved him "again," but just wanted to double-check.)

The other is, when she says, "I'm no killer," do the Robinsons know that she killed her sister's boyfriend? I suppose they would have to not know, or else this statement would be raising a lot of red flags.

One thing that was interesting in this chapter was Harris's repeated use of metaphors. By this point in the story, I'm beginning to feel that the way her metaphors are fluid and unstable (John is the bull; she is the bull. The Robinsons are the cockroaches; she is also a cockroach) is the way that her mind works and has to do with her mental instability. I was still a bit puzzled by the lightning/thunder metaphor, however. Lightning comes first and thunder follows it, but John's voice echoing in the hallway comes chronologically first, prior to his stumbling upon Harris. Maybe she is making this comparison because at that moment he is loud, and she is silent? This is not a major problem, I was just, as I said, a bit puzzled about what she meant by the metaphor.

On the other hand, your extended Alice in Wonderland metaphor was really excellent. (The "connection still pending" and "connection was about to break" bits were also really hilarious.) You have Harris doing a lot of things with it, first comparing everyone's journey to following a rabbit down a hole, then comparing John to Alice being dragged down a hole, and it not only makes sense but is wonderfully apt the whole time.

This line was particularly fantastic:

"Harris noted this in a corner of her mind before switching gears to drag him deeper into her burrow, to the place where it connected with his own abyss."

Harris really does a number on John in this chapter, and in a sense it's a little hard to believe that he is swallowing everything she says all of a sudden, but I suppose that's partly because the chapter is completely from Harris's point of view, in contrast to the chapters from other characters' points of view, like where she was asking Judy for medicine, and I couldn't tell if she was telling the truth or being manipulative.

Just a few little nitpicks:

"she'd have a master card up her sleeve"

This line made me think of Mastercard as in the credit card (though of course I knew that wasn't what you meant, the image just inadvertently popped into my head). Maybe if you changed it to "an ace" it would avoid readers getting a mental image which is not what you intended.

"Nine-fifteen am."

This is a little hard to read because of the way it is formatted. Changing the time to a numeral, 9:15, would make it easier to read and immediately see that it is a time. Also, the fact that you have "am" in lower case without periods makes it easy to confuse it with the verb "am." Last I checked (because I wanted to know the answer myself) it seemed that the official correct way to write A.M. and P.M. is in either upper or lower case, but with dots after each letter (though it is one of those things that so many people are omitting, perhaps that rule will someday be changed to match what people actually write). Anyways, changing it to upper case, or adding dots, or both would make that easier to read.

Also a little thing about this final line is that Harris had filed away in her mind an observation about John feeling insecure in his parenting skills. I expected when she opened her log she would write that, also, but I can understand if you don't want to put it at the end of the chapter to keep the line short, dramatic, and punchy.

Overall, this chapter had a lot of verbal cleverness and psychological insight, and was truly a pleasure to read. Sorry to make you wait so long between reviews, and hopefully I will get to your final chapter of this arc in less time than it took me for this one.

Hello, back for another chapter. :)

John's opening thoughts comparing himself to a chicken that is "cage-free" if not totally free to roam outside (free range) was quite amusing (and humorously apt), starting the chapter off with a lighter tone. Despite John's memories of captivity training just a little bit later, where you're continuing to delve into all the things he went through in the military, overall that tone pervades throughout the chapter, with the chicken interrupting John's time with his wife (you have a bit of a chicken motif in this chapter ;) ), Don's snores, and some other humorous lines, like John thinking that being deployed was less stressful than what he is going through now.

"Then, time had ceized to have any meaning."

Typo here (ceased).

I do have to confess, I find it really hard to believe it when John says that staying inside for 2 days is going to be "as difficult to endure as D's psychopathic games." The fact that you delve into his experience with the captivity training and everything that he went through with that does, itself, make sense. You've been giving readers a lot of things like that about John's military experience throughout the story, so this fits in just fine as another place where John can think back to something he endured in the past. And the connection to how the sense of passage of time has been skewed makes sense, too. But in this chapter, once Don and Maureen leave, John is doing something that he wants to do (running to blow off some steam) and spending some time with both Judy and Will that doesn't seem particularly horrible (despite his earlier talk about Judy getting on his nerves), so . . . I can sort of extrapolate and imagine that being cooped up inside is much harder for John than it would be for me, but it's a far cry from being tortured and electrocuted, so I just can't buy the line about it being as hard to endure as the captivity training.

"a formidable, jerky snore burst into the garage."

This is just a minor word choice thing, but "burst into" is a little bit odd; it doesn't seem natural to say that a noise "burst into" somewhere, since "burst into" tends to imply a physical object/person entering. "Reverberated," maybe?

"multitude of white and silver packages spilled on the deck like a school of sardines"

I liked this. Seemed apropos given the fact that it is packages spilling (and sardines are often packaged in tins).

Following this, you have a lot of back and forth waltzing with John trying to convey his feelings to his wife, and her not resisting, but then slipping away each time after a few moments. I think this does a good job of conveying Maureen's ambivalence: she's a human being, she cares about her husband enough to ask if he is okay when she hears a loud noise like a gunshot, but she's also not going to simply melt into his arms, either. Given what you've expressed about how she acts in the show, I think your story strikes a good balance of acknowledging she isn't going to just completely let down all her defenses at once, but also making her a human, not a heartless ogre, and allowing her to gradually start showing more concern and care for her husband as the story progresses.

The part with Debbie showing up and pecking John's shoelaces was another really humorous moment, including the line "The confused bird flew a few feet away. Unfortunately, so did Maureen." This made me chuckle.

Another thing that came through well in this chapter was John's difficulty expressing himself, in the paragraph right after the bit with the chicken. It comes through clearly that John is trying to express himself through actions because he struggles with words, and here we can feel his pain as he is trying to come up with the right words, only to be interrupted. (I notice he also has bad timing, as it seems like a situation where someone or something is bound to interrupt them, even if Don's snoring didn't.)

Now, the bit with the mechanical room is something where I felt like I had a bit of a hard time initially due to being fandom blind: just the description of the tangle of cables wasn't enough for me to connect the dots immediately and realize that these are the alien cables that Will is asking about. I was able to figure that out as I read on, though, so this is not necessarily something that needs to be a big concern (other than me, maybe your other readers are familiar with the fandom).

At is close, the chapter ends on a point of mild suspense. Not quite as suspenseful as some of your other chapter endings, but they don't have to all be complete cliffhangers. This chapter works just fine to give readers a sense of curiosity about what will happen with the robot, while still maintaining the lighter tone of the chapter overall. Enjoyed this and looking forward to reading more!

Hello, I'm back (finally) with my review for chapter 5. :)

So, overall, this chapter is kind of like a reverse of the last one. In chapter 4, things were getting a little bit better for John, but in this one, he loses that moment of tenderness he had with Maureen, and he keeps getting pushed until finally he is at the point where he is ready to reveal to someone what is happening with him. Plot and pacing-wise, this makes a lot of sense; things are looking up for the Robinsons with their discovery of water, so the things that happen in this chapter allow you to maintain a sense of tension and a strong sense of progression and development.

The opening line is great, very sensory and makes a perfect transition from John falling asleep at the end of the previous chapter.

"This had to be a dream. As she applied sunscreen on his face, he gently grabbed her hand and kissed it."

The last sentence seems a little stilted, it's hard to put my finger on why. Maybe, since he's confused, it would be the sensation, something creamy on his face, that he would notice first, before he can even focus on what the contents of the bottle are. "Gently" is a little bit tell-y, maybe with both parts of the last sentence you could focus more on the minute sensory details?

On the other hand, the next non-dialogue paragraph, "John pulled the sunglasses . . . with a grunt" gets back on tract, being very active and having some good sensory details.

"Any civilian doctor who saw this many close calls would forbid you from dipping a toe into water."

This line comes across as a little bit odd, because just a few chapters ago Judy was saying, specifically, that it would be an exaggeration to say he shouldn't even dip a toe in water. So it seems like she is contradicting her own thought earlier (though I get that she is stating things this way because she is upset). A slight tweak to say "from doing any more than dipping a toe" would fix that, but I don't know how you feel about whether that's too controlled for Judy's level of agitation at the moment.

"I got reassigned. It's no big deal. »

Whoops, a French quote mark sneaked in there.

Team six

Both words should be capitalized.

Maureen's shift back to being cold/mistrusting, here, made a lot of sense:

"Maureen's eyes hardened and her lips formed a thin line. Was she angry, upset or resigned? He couldn't decode her message. He couldn't even decode his own message anyway."

The first sentence does a good job of showing, the questions John is asking make sense, and the connection to him not being able to even decode what kind of message he himself is sending also works well, showing he has a little bit of self-awareness about the vague/mixed signals he is sending.

"As he limped back to the Jupiter, he wondered if there was not something more profound in Maureen's blank stare than hurt, anger, mistrust, and resentment.

Wondering if he'd seen her decision to give up on him in her eyes, John paused at the bottom of the ladder."

This part here also makes a lot of emotional sense. From what you've told me about cannon, the top paragraph seems like a good way of acknowledging Maureen's behavior in the show while trying to hint that there might, in fact, be something more to it. I like that as a writer you're working with the way she is in cannon, but refusing to let her become a one-sided character.

"She wasn't a kid anymore. She was an adult behaving professionally and asking for his respect."

This also helps with the discomfort I noted in chapter 4, feeling like Judy was being blown off by everyone.

"I'm not sure what I feel or not anymore."

Yeah, I can really understand why Judy would be distressed by that (though, maybe you could give a brief sensory description of how she looks/acts distressed; the paragraph just below this dialogue is getting into "telling, not showing" territory). She probably has some basic knowledge of psychology, and would be aware that this is really not a healthy mental state.

"Not that it excuses my conduct but, you ought to know that I'm suffering from bipolar disorder. I've informed Judy and she was kind enough to start a treatment plan so, hopefully, you won't have to deal with another of my violent crisis."

Now here, unlike when Harris was talking with Judy earlier, I was able to tell that Harris is clearly being manipulative. I think this would still be the case even without her predatory actions at the end of the previous chapter.

"Call it a professional quirk, but I don't think I am the only one suffering a relapse. I'm worried about you, John. Sincerely."

This is another one where it's obvious she is laying it on thick.

The bit about Penny's military reading is a little detail that definitely seems lifelike. John's realizing that she was influenced by his career to read those things at an age when she shouldn't have been exposed to them seems like it could be an opportunity for some self-reflection, but his blaming it on Maureen instead is definitely not sympathetic.

The fact that Judy wants John to lie still, first for the scan, and then with medicine that makes him drowsy, is definitely something that sends off alarm signals, given the now-ample hints we've had about Harris. So, it's not surprising when it is Harris he has in a headlock. However, although the chapter is fairly long already, I wonder if the suspense could be stretched to make things more ominous? Maybe by stretching out the description of that creepy last bit of the dream? We've got some weird dreams, but the resolution (finding out that it is Harris in the headlock, which is predictable anyways) comes fairly close after the sense of danger.

The whole sequence of John going off by himself, and the conversation between him and Don is one of those places where I don't really have much to say because I find that everything works well. John's suddenly leaving to be by himself seems psychologically realistic, and the whole conversation with the two of them drinking together seems realistic enough. I'm neither a drinker nor a solider, so you can take my opinion with a grain of salt (laughs), but the camaraderie and John's ability to open up to a fellow solider with whom he was in the same siege (though they didn't know it at the time) seems totally plausible, as people do tend to be able to form bonds quickly when they find out they have similar experiences like that (particularly an experience as traumatic and earth-shattering as that).

"throat and stomach felt like filled by liquid fire."

You have either one too many words here (throat and stomach felt filled) or are missing a few (felt like they were filled). But other than that, it's a good line for the end of the chapter. :)

Like I said at the beginning, the chapter does a good job of pushing forward with a strong sense that the plot is developing, and with your usual terse and active writing style. I'm interested in seeing whether opening up to Don will lead to John starting to open up more with his family, as well, or if it will just stay between two comrades-in-war.

Hello, back again for another review. :)

Well, I wasn't anticipating that the shadow John saw in the lake was going to be the robot (but then, I haven't really been able to anticipate much of anything in your story *laughs*). I was thinking it might either actually be a fish, or some sort of monster or hazard (maybe both, a monstrous, dangerous fish), but leaning towards some sort of danger or hazard, given the ominous atmosphere and the suspenseful way you ended the chapter with John diving for it.

There was some nice visual imagery in the line "the dark head appeared, globular and sleek like a gigantic, black pearl."

The dynamic between Will and John seems to work well; your explanations about him pushing his boundaries and redefining the relationship, and the difference between that and John's relationship with his daughters, all sounds believable. The tie-in with John's flashback to a similar moment with his father also works very nicely.

The dialogue was in this chapter was confusing to follow in a few places. I'll mention the others in order, but the first one was here:

"You're welcome to sleep in the infirmary after I check how many stitches you tore." (Judy)

This line is understandable because there is no other character who would say this other than Judy. However, since this is the first conversation in the chapter in which more than 2 characters are talking back and forth, I feel like a few speech tags or something else to help the reader out (characters' actions as they speak, etc.) would be helpful. Of course, it doesn't always have to be "Judy said," "John said," and so on; it could be a description of where Judy is and what she is doing. Is she standing still? Moving? Making any gestures or facial expressions? Speaking with a different tone of voice than usual? Anything like that.

Also:

"What stitches?"

The words flew out of John's mouth before he could filter. He winced and looked away, feeling Judy's burning gaze on his neck.

This should all be in one paragraph, since it is all the words and actions of one character. Otherwise, the paragraph break signals to the reader that there is a switch in character, whereas here, there isn't. With this particular spot, I could still follow who was saying/doing what, but it can be confusing at times (see below).

Also on the subject of this particular scene, this chapter made me feel really bad for Judy. She's trying to use her authority as a doctor (I suppose in appropriate ways, since Maureen says later that doctor's orders take precedence), but it's hard on her because she is trying to tell her (adopted) father what to do; it doesn't work, and he just brushes off what she is rightfully telling him for his own good. Also, including Will, no one listens to her except Maureen, when she takes John's place to keep him from helping get the robot down. No worse feeling than when you're trying to tell someone something they need to do for their safety, and they don't listen. :/

Later on, during the card game, Judy's talking about casinos, etc.: This is unexpected to the reader, as well as to John, since we haven't ever seen her acting like this, either. Also seems odd because based on her wanting to get John to the infirmary to treat his injury, I would think she would still have some lingering worry that would make it hard for her to get into this kind of festive mood. (This may just be my reading my feelings of "how I would feel in that situation" onto the scene, however.)

I'm trying to recall if there were any hints of Maureen starting to soften in previous chapters, and I can't recall any (if there were some, they didn't stand out to me). If there weren't, it might be nice if the gradual relaxing of her anger starts to get hinted at in earlier chapters. However, Maureen's warming up to John is reasonably gradual in this chapter, and other than it all happening within the same chapter, everything seemed to flow realistically, both in terms of John's seizing some moments to say or do something gallant and Maureen's gestures as she relaxes and warms up to him, which seem very much in line with a mature couple who has been married for several years and are very familiar with each other. Harris's thoughts at the end of the chapter about Maureen's needing security and comfort from her husband also seem realistic.

Just a tiny thing, but on my second read-through of the chapter I noticed that during the card game you have a paragraph starting with "Judy pouted," and then another one starting with "Don pouted" a little further down. Unless this was intentional (e.g. you're trying to go for "they're mirroring each other"), you might want to vary that.

The paragraph starting with "I'll check that they brush their teeth" was another place where the dialogue was a bit hard to follow-there's nothing indicating who is speaking, so the reader has to guess from the content, or wait until two paragraphs later where Judy says "Shut up, Don." As a reader, I would also like to see a bit more indication of what's going on physically in terms of actions/gestures-is Don doing anything while saying all this, who is he saying what to (he starts out talking to John and Maureen and then switches and addresses Judy; it would be helpful to have some indication, like he turns to Judy, or looks over at Judy, something like that). The line itself is very comical, but it would definitely be enhanced by knowing what to picture for Don's actions or demeanor when he is saying all of this. I guess this is the second time this review I've mentioned characters' gestures/actions/etc. while they speak, but overall, this chapter was very dialogue-heavy, and as a reader, I would enjoy seeing the dialogue broken up with some other narrative that helps me picture the scene.

The following section of dialogue threw me off; in fact, I also could not understand what the outcome was of the conversation, but the opening definitely contributed to my confusion:

"So, did you finally find who the mystery feather prankster was?" he asked, pushing the unpleasant memory back at the bottom of the To-Forget box. (John)

"It was Will. Don't you recall how impish he was at that age?" (New paragraph, so this should be Maureen)

"A true leprechaun. But it wasn't him." (John)

"I found the same feathers in his class the next day when I picked him up from kindergarten for his pediatrician's appointment." (Maureen?)

"Did you?" (John? But it sounds Maureen-like, and on a first read-through I thought this was Maureen saying she thought that John hadn't visited Will's kindergarten class that day. If it is John, it should be joined to the following paragraph showing John's actions.)

John opened his mouth, then shut it and switched back to watch the fire. (The more I think about it, the more I think John said the question above, but the fact that he opens his mouth and shuts it again *really* sounds like Maureen asked him "Did you?" in her skeptical way, and that left him flat-footed without an answer.)

I suspect either "It was Will" should be joined to the preceding paragraph, or "Did you?" should be joined to the following paragraph, probably the latter, but this was all rather confusing.

Maureen burst into laughter when he waved two fingers in front of his face.

This was another thing that went over my head (I am not sure what the two fingers gesture is.) Is John saying that he was the one who did it? (There may be some fandom knowledge playing into this, but I was having an awful time following what was going on.)

On the other hand, what did work well about the conversation between the two of them was that it really gives off that sense of people who have a long history together, discussing an event in the past and putting together their different memories and perspectives of the same event, the things one person remembered that the other didn't, or that one of them never knew in the first place.

Anyways, it is nice to see Maureen's harsh demeanor *finally* starting to soften, and overall the mood in the chapter is a lightening of the tension and oppressive mood of earlier chapters in Part 2.

...That is, until we get to Harris's bit at the end. In an earlier chapter, Judy notices and comments on Harris's moving like a predator, and although the reader did see Harris turning on her heels in that chapter, it was more something we got from Judy telling us "Harris moves like a predator" and picked up through Judy's unease. In this chapter, however, the readers can *really* see for themselves the predatory way that Harris moves. Now her scheming is revealed as such, getting rid of any possible doubt that maybe her murderous intent earlier was a heightened state of mental unbalance due to the alien sounds in the ship that were driving everyone crazy. The delay between the tray incident earlier, which in hindsight was a little odd, and revealing that it was deliberate, works well. And like in your other chapters, it also makes a good point of suspense to end the chapter with.

Looking forward to the next chapter!

This review is for chapters 2-3 both.

Chapter 2

So, this gives us a snapshot of how John is trying to reclaim his relationship with his son, starting with a heavy mood but lightening as John is able to start to draw Will out and get some laughter from him, and with the discovery of water.

A couple of grammar things:

"You sure? Because you're twisting your fingers together say you care a great deal what happened to it."
- Should be "your twisting your fingers together says"
("twisting" is treated like a noun and preceded by possessive; subject is the action of twisting, so "twisting . . . says")

"Yeah. Like we can hide anything to her, anyway."
Should be "from her."

Honestly, though, I find I don't have a whole lot to say about this chapter mainly because there's nothing much to pick at. With the interaction between John and Will, you do a good job of capturing the mercurial shifts in mood, from quiet and serious to being able to laugh and have fun. It reads realistically for the sort of delicate age that Will is in, where kids start to not be quite so completely straightforward and easy to understand, and John's attempts to cheer him up and reconnect (and his thoughts and worries about not being able to do so) all seem very realistic (I feel I can relate to what he is feeling despite not being a parent).

It also ends with a cliffhanger, capitalizing on readers' natural curiosity to find out what it is that John saw, and that makes it an effective place to end the chapter to keep readers reading. :)

Ch 3

For the interaction with Harris, this chapter being from Judy's POV works very well here because we, like Judy, don't know when she is being sincere and when she isn't (for example, her apology at the beginning). That means that we are kept guessing. Her explanation about wanting the medicine sounds very reasonable, but to us, like Judy, Harris is still mostly a mystery.

Interaction between Penny and Judy also seems plausible based on what I know about them as characters (I read somewhere that Lost in Space 2018 added a sibling rivalry between these two as part of their modernizing the family structure and dynamics, but you also established the tension and snappiness between the two in Part 1).

Another place where Judy's POV works well in this chapter is as we follow her train of thought, trying to figure out what could have caused John's PTSD.

I had to think for a bit to put together the pieces a bit about the diving suit being a ghost limb (meaning, John's inability to dive following his DCI), but this is understandable if you think about it, so I don't think it's really a problem with your writing.

Also, the ending of this chapter compounds the previous chapter's cliffhanger, building on the reader's natural curiosity of wanting to know what John saw by adding the fact that he is in danger. It dovetails very well with the previous chapter, as this chapter (mainly latter half) builds up to the revelation about a diving incident being the cause of the PTSD, and also the DCI meaning that John shouldn't be diving; the two chapters come together very nicely.

For this chapter, too, I can also repeat the comment that it's hard to know what to say about it because for the most part, everything in the chapter works just fine. The only thing that occurred to me thinking over the chapter one last time is that knowing that John and Will discovered water lessens the potential suspense of Judy's worries. Of course, water won't solve their sunlight problems, but knowing from the previous chapter that water is a big step towards their ability to survive, it's hard for the reader to be quite as worried as Judy is. (I would suggest reversing the chapter order, but glancing ahead I see the next one is also about John/Will, and also if the order were reversed, the compounded cliffhanger we get at the of this chapter wouldn't be so effective.)

So overall, I can't identify anything that is wrong with it or strikes me as needing improvement. A good problem to have, I guess. :)

Looking forward to reading more!

Hello, here for another review. :)

Obviously there has been a time jump from the end of the last part, but this part of the story establishes the new setting and mood right away; the descriptions of the scenery and, as always, your verb choice create a dark, ominous, oppressive atmosphere.

On the subject of the time-skip, things like the robot's departure and some changes in the current conditions that the Robinsons are in are work just fine as a summary, and the combined with the drastic switch in setting, circumstances, and mood, I feel like it makes a lot of sense that this is Part 2 of the same story, and that it's not just all one long story lumped together into 21 chapters. All of these things combine to make it feel like a different phase of the story is starting, which will not necessarily be quite the same in terms of atmosphere or focus.

One thing about the opening scene, though, is that I was unfamiliar with the word "hoodoos"-not just to refer to a rock formation, but the word itself, and had to struggle looking through Wikipedia's disambiguation page before I figured out what it meant. Using the verb "emerged" was a good active verb, but it also made me wonder at first if these were some sort of people (I was wondering if they were an in-universe alien race within the Lost in Space fandom).

The line about Maureen's "energy and optimism" also struck me as a bit odd, since we don't really see this from her in the story so far. In Part 1, we see her angry and ordering people around. I picture her as being strong, dominant (John is always tiptoeing around her, flinching back in fear at what her reaction is going to be), grim, and a little bit harsh and scary. Obviously it would be rather hard to show her being optimistic in Part 1, as it is really not an optimistic atmosphere, but maybe you could use something like expanding on John's thoughts to think back to a time when she was acting energetic and optimistic.

The part about refugees and the Robinson family fleeing from a certain fate only to meet the same thing they were trying to escape strikes me as being sadly true to life, as it strikes me as being a true thing that sometimes people trying to flee from or escape from something meet that same thing in the place they flee to.

"John heaved a heavy sigh, pressed his hand on his knee, and straightened up despite his protesting muscles. What was the gravity on this planet? Right now, it seemed at least as twice as strong as the pull on all of Earth's war zones combined."

I really liked the line about gravity here. Combined with the preceding sentence, it gives a sense of not just John's physical weariness, but also how weary and worn-down he feels psychologically.

The fact that Harris helped explain everything was a hallucination was hard to understand because last we saw she had Judy's injector and was trying to kill him; I feel like I'm missing some pieces. (Maybe this will be explained the next time we get Harris's perspective?)

(Also, from Part 1, the part about how Harris got out of the airlock and what went on between her and Penny feels like another place where I'm missing something and not getting the full picture.)

Going back to Maureen coming across as the one in charge, her questioning in this chapter is pretty relentless. She just does not let up.

"I'm going to prep the chariot. I want to explore a little further south today": Starting with this line, it's unclear who is saying what, though it did become clear a few lines down that Will was the one asking to go along.

Tons of ambivalence with John wanting to try to reconcile with his family but being unable to totally come clean, understanding Judy but not enough to humor her and settling for telling half-lies instead, everyone being uncomfortable around Harris but acting normal anyways, and so on. This all feels very human and very life-like.

Overall, the chapter creates a sullen, brooding, and oppressive mood, and does a good job of setting up this new part of the story. Looking forward to reading more!

Hi. So, I’m fandom blind and haven’t read your previous story in this trilogy. Nonetheless, I’ve found it an engaging and exceptionally well-written, polished story so far. My review is going to focus on this last chapter, but I have read the others so I am aware of the context.

The opening line could be a callback to the opening line of your beginning chapter. Nice circularity.

[Then she stepped into the water and was surprised to feel how nice it was.] Fandom knowledge may help a reader have a better picture of the setting, but I did feel like this part would be a good opportunity for more concrete sensory details. What’s nice about the water, and why surprisingly so? Is it a warm planet, but the water is nice and cool? Does the coolness bring relief from sunburn or sweat? Is it cool outside, but the water is surprisingly warm, perhaps indicating a heat source underneath? Etc.

The flashback about John getting mugged while running is a good example of the source of conflict in their marriage – John wants independence, and that means being reckless, which for him is worth the risk. But if something happens to him, he’s leaving Maureen to be a single mother. He’s not taking it as seriously as he should be, and he puts himself in danger repeatedly and hides it from her. No wonder she was so upset about him diving…

[But why had he hidden his diving accident to her?] Should be “from her.” By the way, I did read your profile where you state you’re a non-native English speaker, and I have to say I am extremely impressed by your command of the English language. It would be impressive even for a native speaker, and I’ve noticed very few mistakes at all.

[Some of his reactions showed he wasn’t able to show the difference between a team and a family anymore.] Poignant. This is a great line.

[…made her wonder again about how she’d gotten Will admitted to the program?] – This should end with a period, not a question mark.

…Don’s been so chatty and now he’s accusing Maureen of being gossipy. This makes me suspicious of him; only jerks project their flaws onto others.

[some of us were in scuba diving] Not sure what this means, do you mean “into” scuba diving?

Nice bit of tension with the radio cutting out.

Since Judy is using the word “Dad” as a title, it should be capitalized.

…Wait, that’s the end? Of the entire fic? It really didn’t feel like it, and if I didn’t see it was marked complete I never would have thought it was. It felt like a sudden drop-off with no conclusion of any sort. I’m aware this is a series, but I usually expect anything posted as a separate story to have *some sort* of resolution even if there is also cliffhangers or loose ends. Maybe if you rewrite the ending a bit to sound more decisive, it would work better as a last chapter. Or maybe it would be better to post your different series parts as one story.

Anyway, overall I have enjoyed the story. It’s well-written, and the characters are interesting, well-developed, and treated fairly, each having their own way of viewing their situation and each other. Great job!