Thank you for the encouragement!
There is still a lot of detail in there, but some problematic areas have been edited down (including some redundant narrative about Hemlock's motives, etc). I changed the tense on the flashbacks to make them more readable. Also, many errors have been corrected, and there is a new scene before the ending sequence.
If anyone is curious, many of these changes were a direct result of feedback from GK's review. GK, you are the zen master of indie review feedback.
