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Welcome to Reading Excuses!

 

Not the best introduction, as it's pretty dead around here this month.  Lots of people are doing NaNoWriMo.  I did get the email, so I'll look over it in the next few days and give you some feedback.

 

In the future, make sure you post to the submission thread here so we know a submission is coming.  The general rules are here, if you haven't read those yet.

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Thank you for responding. I was beginning to think no one would ever say a word on this post.

 

I didn't see the rules say anything about posting in that thread, so I didn't know it was a convention. I'll do that in the future!

 

I look forward to reading your submissions, Mandamon!

Edited by Jabberwocky42
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First off, this did keep my attention, even with an unsympathetic POV.  The wording could be tightened up, but that's more of an editing thing. 

 

The first paragraph has some very generic terms:

"his people"

"The man"

I don't get enough information from these terms to engage my interest.

 

A few paragraphs later:

"He hated being civil to these lesser types"

-This sentence is exactly the same as a couple sentences before.

 

I get that Gaspard is not very likable, but we don't know anything about him, so his actions come off as just mean.  I don't know why someone would kill people and burn down a building just for the heck of it, even if they feel themselves superior.  He says the killings are in justification, but then doesn't seem upset enough about his wife's death for that to be true.

 

So, I'm interested to see more, and as this is a prologue, I'm assuming there might be another main character coming along.  I'm not sure I want to see a whole book about Gaspard.  You give some hints of a magic system, but not enough for me to tell what it is, aside from Gaspard and the woman channeling electricity.

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  • 1 month later...

Sorry for much lateness, I blame Write About Dragons; Start Write Now; NaNoWriMo and Christmas.

 

Sold his wife? Wow, that’s a line that certainly grabs the attention.

 

I'm struck by some rather awkward phrasing here and there, like...

 

He knocked in on the door?

 

...and...

 

“The rest of us are gone for the evening.” – Not the rest of them, as the woman clearly isn’t included?

 

Also, what’s with the spark between her fingers? I have no context for that. Is it magic? What is its purpose?

 

There’s repetition of a whole line. I guess others will have mentioned that, and the frequent use of Gaspard’s name is quite distracting.

 

I was a bit confused by the householder addressing Gaspard as ‘sir’. I presume that the plump man is the owner and must be rich to own servants? I suppose he would be submissive in the face of an attack like this. I'm puzzled as to why Gaspard went to elaborate planning to rescue his wife by planting people in the house when there seems to be no security and he could have just walked in and taken her back?

 

No, wait a minute, he’s blaming his agent?! But it’s his fault!!

 

I'm not convinced by the use of the magic. A bolt of electricity is going to ‘move’ almost instantaneously if there is any kind of science behind it. I feel that the woman would be unable to anticipate it and react to resist it.

 

If his wife is on some river boat how long does it take to get to where it’s going, when did it leave, does he not have a chance to catch it up? It would surely be fairly slow-moving. The thing is I don’t have any context for the society or his standing or profession. Is he a thief, an outlaw? Is slavery accepted by the state or the monarchy?

 

I'm left with a lot of questions that don’t allow me to properly assess the situation, but one thing I have a clear vision of is that Gaspard seems stupid to leave his wife in peril while he faffles around planting agents in someone’s house, seemingly leaving her at risk the whole time. I feel as if I may not be assessing the situation properly, but I don’t know enough about the setting and the preceding events to make a balanced judgement. His reaction however seems crazy and really set me against him. Maybe that was your intention and you started with the antagonist, I must read on to find out more.

 

Okay, having now read the comments on the thread, I see that Gaspard is mean to be unsympathetic (thank goodness for that!), but I still think that his behaviour is illogical and shows particularly poor judgement (almost stupidity). Like Mandamon (who I'm back to agreeing with, phew!, my world view was shaken earlier over on Lemming’s Pentagram thread), I'm keen to read more just to find out what the heck is going on, but I think the reader deserves a bit more to go on in a prologue when trying to entice them into the book.

 

On to Chapter 1!

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