Nov 14 - Yados - Black Magic, Blacker Deeds Chapter 3 [V]

[Yados]

Hi again.

Prologue:

Cities fall, Characters are introduced, and a vile conspiracy is unmasked. Our heroes make their stand as all hope is lost and the screen fades to black.

First Chapter:

Five Years Later

Till is a Black Magician. He is sometimes happy about this but usually not. It means he has to deal with pompous bureaucrats who want the world and think all they have to do to get it is pay. But it is more complicated than that. Everything is complicated now. Things were much simpler when Till was a criminal.

Second Chapter:

Till attempts to escape his new, complicated life at a bar he built a few weeks ago. It turns out that money can't buy you happiness or your past back. What more, when you try, people just tend to shoot your weird looks and stay out of the way. A prodigious brainstorming is interrupted by the arrival of an old friend who brings with him an unwanted companion -- death in red robes.

Third Chapter:

What you are reading now

Oh, and I'll slap the same trigger warning for self-inflicted harm in this chapter. As I said, not explicit or graphic or even taking up the same emotional real estate, but better safe than offending someone in these matters.

[Asmodemon]

The plot thickens with the dead ‘assassin’ as a spy, as well as Surr’s influence though he left the red council, the subsequent attack is just the kind of action I’ve been waiting for.

After the arrival of the Mazer though you go into just about a page of info-dumping about what Surr’s done in the past, his involvement in the council, what a Mazer is, and the geopolitical stance of the red council. This drops the pacing of the chapter all the way to zero – there’s a time and a place for everything, but Till contemplating all this information shouldn’t happen when a giant monster is trying to kill him.

I was caught off guard about Till’s leg. All of a sudden it hurts, so much that he limps and can hardly move from the pain. When did that happen? I can’t remember anything like that and he didn’t have that problem the previous chapters. And later you mention the black takes the form of his long lost leg. Long lost? I can’t remember any references to that either. It all comes across as too sudden and with too much focus. I understand that Till feels pain because his leg is unravelling, but the pain started before the unravelling commenced, without any explanation of why. That makes it seem off.

When Till is sliced by Surr’s dagger he flinches after getting sliced and then also screams. Somehow the order doesn’t feel quite right. To me he should’ve flinched at the sight of the dagger, then got sliced, then he screams.

Amateurs. You’re having the council send a lot of amateurs after Surr, a notorious red wizard. The first ‘assassin’ was an amateur sent to get killed. According to Till the Mazer is an amateur who can’t swing his sword to save his life, though the form of his magic does make him formidable. He’d be a real threat if he was trained. Why are all these amateurs sent after a professional? I’d suggest not referring to the Mazer as an amateur, since it dropped the tension from the scene a bit.

Throughout the chapter you have more instances where you dump information on the reader in the middle of the fight. A few lines here and there aren’t that much of a problem, but in this case it was more like paragraphs of information, interrupting the flow of the action.

What I got from this chapter is that the magic system really is very well done. Also, an action packed chapter is one way to raise the stakes and it can work here, except you had too much info dumping to keep the pace up all the way through to the end. If you can cut some things that will help a lot to make this chapter a good one.

[cjhuitt]

I'm going to mostly agree with Asmodemon on this one (which doesn't surprise me in the least -- I appreciate his critiques as well). Because of that, I'll just say the leg is sudden, the consistent run of amateurs is odd, the info dumps are overdone, and then mention a few things about this chapter that struck me.

First of all, there were a few places (besides the info dumps) where some sentences weren't phrased quite right. They also slowed me down some. A good read-through with a red pen should fix most or all of them.

I'm curious about the sudden intensification of the efforts against Surr. I assume I'm supposed to be, so that's good. I also wonder, at the end of the chapter, what a murder has to do with any of this. I'm hoping it will be related, in one way or another.

About the magic, I'm wondering why the Mazer so suddenly started losing strength. I know why Surr looks tired, since he drained so much of his own blood, but the Mazer also gets tired rather abruptly at a convenient time for the fight to end.

I'm still looking forward to reading more.