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styn

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About styn

  • Birthday 11/03/1984

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  1. Meh, colors or not. Since WoR I've thought of the female Radiant from this scene as an Edgedancer because it makes the most sense. Windrunners and Skybreakers are probably the fastest militant orders, but Edgedancers are certainly going to be the fastest healers. Makes sense to send out a bunch of Windrunners and Edgedancers to counter a 'raid'. Also we know that fabrials were not very advanced in the past so I think it's more likely that it was not a fabrial at all and rather a version of shardblade which helped with the healing process for some reason.
  2. The story works. I think that you introduce the problem early and you don't overcomplicate the story by focusing too much on the science of your world. You also don't add a whole cast of characters when you don't need to. Part of it working for me though depends very heavily on me knowing what the purpose of this piece is. For that reason, I feel like 1 and 2 are really just the same question. You stick to the theme almost too well. I remember looking for critique points that I might give for this review and thinking that her job almost had to be working with cars or traffic in some way. Like, if it was not going to be about self-driving cars from the stand point of someone who had to work with the technology, your whole intro would have read wrong. That made me think that the pacing was good, because just as I'm thinking of a question I find it being answered in the text. The biggest weakness I see is that nothing exciting happens. This reads like a statement of fairly boring facts. I don't see a problem with your ratio of spoken dialogue verses description, prose, or even pacing. I think the problem is resolved in a believable and fair manner. I just don't care about the problem. Traffic jams suck, and while the world doesn't have to be about to end, I need something more engaging then our protagonist might lose her job. Heck, she certainly doesn't seem overly concerned about the loss herself. This isn't really my wheelhouse. The technology seems barely advanced enough to hint at science fiction and I don’t have mjuch of experience with stories written so close to our actual reality. Please take that into consideration. I also don't enjoy reading many things shorter than a novella so that needs to be noted as well. That being said, good job and I hope this was helpful.
  3. Its nice to see a well done first person. The submission was dialogue heavy, but that's hardly a bad thing. The beats were on point and gave context without being overly flowery or distracting. The pacing is moving along at a steady if overly convoluted way. I'm not disinterested by the complexity yet, I'm just hoping that every aspect of these transactions comes with a nice payout at the end. There might have been like one spelling and/or grammar error that I noticed, I only even bring this up because I don't really have anything constructive to add. Overall the piece is highly refined and was a joy to read. I didn't read the first submission so I'm a tad behind the power curve as far as being able to determine the level of magic in the world. I did get the impression that Eril was flooding the building with magic, so if that's what happened it was nicely executed without burdening the readers with needless detail. I'm in a wait and see with the story right now. You're laying a bunch of foundation in an engaging way. I blew through the submission quickly and am anticipating the next direction the plot will twist. So far you've got my interest, but by building my expectations with all the boxes you're having your protagonist check, you stand to disappoint me if this doesn't end up epic. I also think Makani is arrogant and potentially a sociopath, but I wouldn't recommend changing anything.
  4. I loved it! Maybe its because it reminded me of Terry Pratchet's 'Good Omens'. It could even be because I'm an Atheist and I felt like there was plenty of pot shots taken at Christianity in general. Regardless I'm sold, give me more of this. The ending in particular was a great place to end the piece. I'm really looking forward to how the next part of this unfolds. I don't really like to critique prose, because its not something that you can learn by someone telling you they don't like how you write. Which is why I'm glad that I have no such criticism. I enjoyed the way you put words together, overall the submission also had a very polished feel to it. I had a bit of confusion in the first few sentences. For whatever reason I didn't realize she was standing outside the elevator from your description. It might be a good idea to rewrite this section in a way that better reflects that she is standing in front of an elevator and not actually inside one. Then again it might just be that I was skimming. The elevator attendant shouldn't need a fake radio voice, it detracted from what I felt was an innate and witty rambling commentary without adding anything. Let your dialogue do your talking, it was a great back and forth. As someone who has a decent number of lucid dreams, I also felt that Candace had a pretty normal reaction to the wacky events. If you really want to lock down believability then have her experience difficulty remembering the accident until the big reveal from Paul. Sort of a where am I? What am I doing here? kinda vibe. Once again, really great read.
  5. This was an easy read for me. Also its nice that I actually can get in on the beginning of a story even though I randomly joined a week ago. There is a steady amount of action to keep the information dump interesting. The transition from get some money to get to saftey was decently executed. I felt that Eve was engaging and I was sympathetic to her plight. I definatly want to know more about this story. That being said there were a few points that I thought were strange. Why are the judges raiding the black market during an assualt on the city? If an Enforcer is going to break off mid chase then I can't believe that the Judges aren't also going to be needed to defend the colony. If you need a plot device to get Eve to the city gate then just have a rival gang or something be taking advantage of the coming chaos. The second point of confusion for me was how Eve would even be able to leave the city. Maybe this is my military background talking, but if sappers or artillary blow something up, infantry is ready and waiting to take advantage. There are a multitude of ways that you could have Eve exit the city that don't have her going through a blown up gate, straight into an oncoming army. Depending on where the story goes next, this might not even be important. Does Eve really need to be outside the gates when she collapses? There are a few minor spelling and grammer mistakes. You jumped to present tense a few times. I'd recommend doing a reread in a few days, you shouldn't have any trouble catching the inconsistancies if you read through it slowly after enough time has passed to let your eyes see what's actually there and not what you thought was there. Either way nice job, looking forward to seeing more of this.
  6. Well its always awkward to start in the middle of a story, so you'll have to take my comments with this in mind. My first impressions were actually really positive. From just the summary I found myself surprised when the fugitives who had captured Saffen ended up being Gillus and Marnar. This might give you an idea of how slow I can be to put together information that isn't handed to me on a silver platter. The implication in the writing was that this capture was a fairly recent development. Alot of the writing was an overview of recent events, which wouldn't have been necessary if the scenes were actually written out. I enjoyed the dialogue between the three of them and felt like it had a natural flow to it. One of the primary concerns I had was justification for Saffen's continued presence. The keeping of a captive seems very counter intuitive for their situation. By the end of the submission I felt like this was addressed to my satisfaction. The writing itself is a good balance of description and plot devices. Like many people I don't really care how grey the grey rock is, so this was a relief. The individual viewpoints by themselves had a good flow to them. However, it wasn't but a page or two in where the first storyteller shift happened. If you're giving us a piecemeal story like this to try and get as much feedback as possible on the different plots, then alright. If this is actually the style you intend to use as a published work then I would not have made it through the sample download on my Iphone. To me, all this jumping around, shows that you don't have enough interesting things happening in the separate plots. So instead you're giving us tiny peaks into your world and trying to keep things fresh by refusing to let the reader settle in. This isn't engaging to me at all. In fact I don't think a starter book should have so many viewpoints to begin with, but as this seems an established style for you, it will be the last time I mention it for any subsequent reviewing. So as I mentioned, the Saffen Marnar section was well done. The only thing that caught my eye was that I think that someone who would steal someone's money and spend it, wouldn't find that money by happenstance. I'm not really sure why you couldn't just say that Marnar had threatened her for the store of cash, or had patted her down to locate the hidden money. I also thought it was odd that Saffen didn't consider option three in her deductions, that her captors were both criminals AND Brekians. When I read the summary I felt that Gillus was going to be a redundant unneeded character, but he's probably my favorite from this submission. He's got an understandable motivation, is making the best of a bad situation, and is decently likable. He's also driving the plot in the Marnar, Saffen section in my opinion. I'm mostly neutral toward your other characters other then Teiman. This seems mostly low magic fantasy to me, which I'm not into, so keep that in mind. I didn't like the description of physics, and not just because it was a whole lot of tell and not so much show. I think that if the magic is going to be this weak it shouldn't even have a combat application. Just make them telepathic and be done with it. Plenty of uses for long distance communication in a low tech society without needed to make them mages to boot. Ahhh Teiman. The man's stream of consciousness lines up a perfect story for his travel south and the first thing he does is fail to properly tell it to the first person to question him? At best he's a moron, at worse you've created a scene that completely alienated me as a reader and totally destroyed my belief in this guys competence. This of course lowered my faith in the people backing him. Why do they need to engage in such dubious methods anyway if they have numerical and tactical superiority? I really hope you're going somewhere with this aspect and that it will make more sense when I read more. In short, more Saffen and Marnar please. If we can't see the world view eventually from these character's viewpoints then they shouldn't be in the story at all. There isn't enough story here for me to really care about what's happening with the King of the country or any other potential subplot yet. Although granted, every chapter isn't going to be an action packed blowout.
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