Legend Unleashed (Keeping Secrets 1) Prologue

Alrighty! Be prepared for this critique of epic proportions.

I wrote it in bits addressing specific parts, so I will put dashes between the sections for it to be clear.

This wording was confusing: "The guard tapped Ted on the arm with his baton, leading him forward. He walked over to a
pretty woman scanning the monitors. He was old and his stomach spilled out over a tight belt.
His face looked like it had been drawn by a child; round, no chin, large ears. The only
distinguishing part of him was his piercing eyes"

because it sounds like you mixed up your pronouns, and the person behind the monitor is actually a dude. You can't slip in one sentence about her and then say "he" right after it in the same paragraph. Just jump it to a new paragraph and it will make more sense -- or spend a few sentences describing the lady before moving on the describing the guard, or describe the guard in full *before* describing the woman.

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"He started talking and her lips curled in an
awed smile. "

awed is not a good word in general -- I also think it is not a good fit for the situation or this scene

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"Stars swam across his vision."

(I don't mean for this to sound rude) Have you ever been near fainting? Has anyone ever described it to you? I see this way of describing it overused a lot. The few times I've almost passed out from over-exertion or pain, I've felt very faint, light headed, and light my vision had gotten thinner. Not that stars were dancing across my eyes.

Why does climbing the stairs reduce him to this state? How old is he, exactly, and in what physical condition, that he can't climb stairs without almost fainting?

"If he didn't try and calm down, he’d black out."

I feel there is an aspect to Tod that is missing. I am left wanting more physical description of him. I have no frame of reference for how old he is; when I saw the YA tag I assumed it would open with someone fairly young. Is Tod the age of your target audience's parents? Grandparents? Tod will be easier to relate to if we know just a little bit more about him. If I'm thirteen and reading this and know that Tod is the same age as my dad, I am going to be much more invested in his outcome.

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"His office was like a broom cupboard; small and enclosed"

you do not need to include the "small and enclosed" bit. That was implied when you said the office was like a broom cupboard.

Here is another spot where you started out showing and then just told: "Stones scraped against stones; the crunch of movement amongst the ruins."

You have to be wary of qualifying statements. Throughout this piece you have lovely showing descriptions and sensory details, and then you go ahead and tell us what you mean. Leave a little mystery! <img src="e.deviantart.net/emoticons/s/s…" width="15" height="15" alt="" title=" (Smile)"/> It may not seem like it, but people *do* still have some imagination, and they don't need all their work done for them.

In the beginning there was quite a bit of variation in sentence structure, but through the middle and onto the end it turned into a lot of semicolons and a stream of consciousness feel. Watch out for that -- clean it up and vary the sentence length and structure. Some of the semicolons were also misused.

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"However, the ticking had stopped"

if you wrote it as "but the ticking had stopped"

or just "the ticking had stopped" it would have much greater impact.

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The ending does not feel concluded, as if it is missing just one or two sentences more. Perhaps a sentence implying just how horrible it is that something escaped, to clue the reader in on just how dire circumstances have become.