POV - TSAR

"The three of us sat at the table, and it seemed as though about six people were missing."

p. 228

it's interesting how empty a room can feel when only a handful of people leave. it's like at a party with sixty people, if the ten people you've been hanging out with leave, the party might as well be empty. those other forty-nine may or may not notice that anything has changed, but for the person involved, everything changes.

that's the biggest sense I've gotten with this book. as a separate reader, detached from the story, one can't help but be bored, lost, and confused by it. the story never seems to go anywhere unless one places themselves INTO the story. it's for this reason that a third-person or objective POV would never work in this sort of story. it MUST be in first-person. the reader must be inside the head and mindset of one of the characters and place themselves with all of the others as the story is told. if not for this, nothing ever changes and the whole story means nothing. that emotion is never there, and that emotion is vital to the whole story.