I really love your story’s plot and pacing. I’m surprised that this is your first novel; it’s so well paced! In terms of writing quality, there’s some life-changing advice I’d like to give you in order to elevate it: never use the same word twice within a sentence. That’s it. For example, a sentence that goes: He felt his lungs imploding as if they would collapse within him. VS He felt his lungs imploding as if his lungs would collapse within him. In my opinion, the first alternative sounds better because it there’s a freshness to it versus the second, more repetitive one, chiming one. This is just my opinion, of course! Again, I truly enjoyed reading this so a hearty 5/5 to you, my friend! ✨
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LIKEAfterthought: I love the dialogue that occurs in How it Becomes Like This 7 so. much. In terms of your chapter titles, you may want to read them on ‘Preview’ so you can see how they look under Webnovel’s formatting hands. Also, your tenses do need a bit of tweeking but that will naturally come as you experience more literature. Keep rising!