20140609 - Reading Excuses - Mandamon - Garden of the Gods, Ch1

[Mandamon]

Hi all,

This is a new project I've been working on (as my other two weren't really going anywhere).  I'm interested to see what people think of the plot, setting, characters, and magic system.  And anything else you see, of course.  I'm not too far in, so I'll probably go slow with submissions.

Let me know what you think!

[andyk]

I'm really interested in these people and their situation. The harshness of a slave's life and how they cope with it. The magic system based around fruit. It's an intriguing set-up with a lot at stake, and you've evoked it well. I particularly like the way that their metaphors and mythology match their work - the bird eating the fruits of the moon, calling someone 'the hardest bit of wood'.

 

A few things that didn't work for me:

 

Capitalised 'Apples' vs ordinary 'apples' - surely if these things are different then people would have different names or labels for them? You can't hear the capitalisation in the way people talk, and the difference would matter in conversation.

 

There's some repetition in the night-time scene of scene setting and background already covered in the previous scene - that Bel's known for her great pruning skills, the presence of the rotten stumps of trees with the name signs around them.

 

Why does Kisare give in to Bel's bet and her desire to open the box when there's so much risk? I think you could do with being a bit clearer in why she makes this big shift in attitude.

 

But as I said at the start, overall I really like this. Interesting setting, interesting characters, conflict from the start, all nicely presented.

[Asmodemon]

For of all, I like how the story starts with the perspective of slaves – I don’t read a lot of stories where that is the case. One great thing about this is that your main character(s) are at rock bottom, everything they do to improve their lives is a struggle. That’s a great conflict source.

 

One thing though is that Kisare and Bel didn’t really feel like slaves, they had too much free will and initiative for people who grew up as slaves (I’m just assuming here they were born slaves, I don’t think you mentioned that in the text).

 

Cruel master: Kisare describes Aricaba-Ata as a cruel master, but for a slaver he doesn’t seem so bad. Yes, he does backhand Kisare for dawdling, but as a slave she should’ve known better than do that in front of her master. The same with Bel losing her finger – she should’ve known better.

 

For a cruel master he leaves his slaves a lot of freedom if Kisare and Bel can so easily be tempted to hide something from their master and go out into the night later to retrieve it. They even have plans to run and save for some perfunctory hesitation they easily decide to make a run for it.

 

If he is so cruel, maybe we should see more of it, otherwise Kisare and Bel are lucky (as far as you can speak of luck when you’re a slave) with such a lenient master.

 

Capital letters: These didn’t work well for me either. In text I can see the difference between Apples and apples, but in speech…not so much. I have to assume that the two are pronounced differently, otherwise, how can one tell when someone wants an apple or an Apple? Do Apples look differently too? Are they like green apples or more reddish apples? Are they bigger?

If they are significantly different, maybe they should have  a different name. If not, maybe they should have a different name too. It could be something as simple as calling Apples by a brand name or adding something too it, like divine apples or something like that. The same goes with fruit and Fruit.

 

Blond: I have some issues with hair colour deciding societal rank.

1. It reminds me first of all of Brandon’s Stormlight Archive, only with hair instead of eyes and dark and light reversed. This isn’t that much of a problem, but it did cross my mind and automatically creates a comparison even if you don’t want one.
2. Nobles have less blond hair, and colour is somehow magical. To me that would mean that the someone’s rank is lower if they have more blonde hair.  Aricaba-Ata has two reddish streaks, but otherwise is completely blond. To me that doesn’t scream noble, but more middle-class. And maybe not even that – not a slave, but not a noble either. A chief steward or a head guard?
3. Blond hair is caused by recessive genes and in our world it’s estimated that only two percent of the world’s population is blond. If the same holds for the story’s setting (and without being told the contrary I’m assuming the same rules apply) that would mean that 98% of the world is not blond and therefore noble…that doesn’t sound very maintainable. Part of why the Stormlight Archive works for me is that people with blue eyes are fewer in number than people with dark eyes, so stretching that to a noble/ruling/upper middle-class is not so strange. Doing the opposite requires more explanation.  

 

Aside from these things it was a good start. Looking forward to see where you’re taking this.

[Robinski]

I enjoyed this chapter. I think it’s a very promising opening, not full of flash-bang stuff, but quietly promising interesting events to follow, potentially of great scope. We learn a fair bit about the character of the sisters, I suspect none of the other characters are of any great import in the long term, I sense that we are going out into the wider world, and it does feel like there is a wider world out there. We don’t need to know much about it at this stage, but there are enough hints that we can anticipate its discovery.

 

I had a few grammar issues here and there, but I won’t bore you with them. I felt that Belili was rather annoying in places, her view on the world often very childish, overly so sometimes. I'm hoping at this point that we’re not in for a road trip where we spend a lot of time in Bel’s company.

 

On in all though, despite some quibbles as noted, I enjoyed this. Kisare shows good promise as a protagonist, she seems level-headed, and believably human in her reactions, no heroics or melodramatics, a practical person in a difficult place who sees an opportunity and appears to have the courage to take a chance at something (a lot) better.

 

Looking forward to reading more.

 

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Andy has nailed some comments that I was waffling around, particularly the capital letters thing, although I do thing that you could hear the difference between ‘Apple’ and ‘apple’ in conversation, but it wouldn’t be subtle, be a bit like a bad double-entendre, or trying to make your deaf maiden aunt understand what you were trying to say. ‘Apple. No, not apple, A-pple!

 

I wasn’t so bothered about Kisare changing her mind, although there would be no harm in dropping one line in showing her own surprise that she was going to do it, or something like that.

 

I note what Asmodemon says about the ‘blond’ point, but I think I read that slaves had their hair bleached regularly. I took it that a slave could have dark hair, or non-blond anyway, but they wouldn’t know? This said, I'm not sure how quickly hair grows back in at the roots in terms of natural colour starting to show. Perhaps that aspect just needs tidied/firmed up a bit.

 

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(Original comments)

 

Page 1 – Why the capital in apple? And a capital ‘F’ in fruit, perhaps these words have greater significance than their standard meanings. (Sure enough, they do, but it seems odd at first, the reader not knowing the distinction between ‘Apple’ and ‘apple’. (There’s a joke in there about comparing oranges with Oranges, I think, or is that just British humour?))

 

After Page 1, I am intrigued. I have a sense of four characters and enough that is mysterious to want to read on and discover what is happening. I also have a sense of surroundings, and an evocative night time scene. So far, so good!

 

Page 3 – ‘...shading into shadow.’ felt awkward to me.

 

Page 6 – Not all the keen on the Fruits of the Sky and Bird of Night, I can see what you’re getting at, but I felt that it was stretching the mythology a bit far, lacking in elegance.

 

My thoughts at this point are tending towards ‘surely they guard these magical trees if their Fruit is so powerful and valuable, surely two slaves won’t be able to sneak up and start digging away at the roots.

 

Page 7 – Here you say the buried thing was wooden, but on Page 1 you say it’s metallic.

 

Page 8 – You go to address the concern about guards, but I'm not entirely convinced, why would Aricaba-Ata and his guards be so trustful of his slaves? That doesn’t seem to be the attitude they give out.

 

There are four uses of the word ‘guard’ or derivatives in Paragraph 3.

 

Bel is becoming a bit annoying, she takes the flighty thing a bit far, as is she is not all there between the ears – which is perhaps the case.

 

Page 9 – Sorry, but I'm having a moment here. I’ve just finished reading Akoebel’s ‘Shrouds’, so the mention of the vengeance god is a little bit like déjà vu!

 

I was thinking about 5 minutes’ digging before the described another few minutes, so say 10 in all at the digging. There’s another 10 at least of them arguing. It seems a long time even between light patrols, and the tree that they digging around sounds like a prominent one if no other Fruit tree can produce while another is fruiting. It seems a little too convenient to the needs of the story that they are not trouble by the guards.

 

Page 11 – I think there’s a danger that the ‘blondes’ thing could get comical at times. ‘Runaway blonds’ took me out of the story a bit, imagining a scene from ‘Some Like It Hot.’

 

Page 12 – I'm a bit sceptical about these people not knowing the soil conditions are as important, if not more so, than pruning, it seems inconsistent when we already know that they plants noble (and other) corpses as fertilizer.

 

Page 13 – The seeds in the box has a feel of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ about it, but more complex and involved, tied to a magic system that is intriguing and seems to have a logical set-up, so I'm happy to go along with it so far.

 

Page 14 – The turnaround at the end of the chapter is nice, surprising yet inevitable, that Kisare is the one deciding that they should leave because of the contents of the box. I like the fact that the box is not full of some obviously and immediately powerful thing, rather it is the promise, the hint of a possibility of power and wealth.

[jParker]

This is a really interesting concept, combining a cool fantasy story interwoven with Semitic creation myths, which is intensely fascinating. While I was a bit hesitant that our protagonists were slaves--after all, what do they have to lose--Kisare did a really good job of illustrating that in a really slick way. Reasonably likable characters, a good amount of mystery, and a cool setting have me locked in story-wise.

 

However, the magic I'm less keen on. This may be a personal thing, but I like big, showy magic, at least during a first appearance. I imagine the nobility would have similar feelings, wanting the only magic the blonds see to be storybook stuff, things to inspire rumors of godlike power. Scorching a name onto your stillborn sons's grave, while touching, doesn't really jive with that. I'm also interested to learn how the symbiosis between nobility and Fruit works. I can't quite work it out, which means I'll tune in at least a while longer.

 

As far as comparisons to Sanderson go, that's kind of inevitable. He's one of the top three modern fantasy authors. Everybody's influenced by him. I do think that hair-color is a bit troublesome when used for a long-term caste system, but way less controversial than skin color, with the added benefit of having freed slaves discover their true heritage. [side-note: I actually thought of Warbreaker first, but I can see the similarity to Stormlight.]

 

That being said, the economy of caste is a kernel between my teeth. Exactly how "prosperous" is having eighteen slaves? How does one acquire them, since sex is evidently discouraged? Is there a market for Fruit? What's the black market for Fruit like (because anything taboo will have a trade in it--it's human nature)?  Is Acibata more of a feudal lord or a Southern plantation owner? These are things I wonder, though I'm sure you've thought of them too.

 

Anyway, I'm really glad I actually read this instead of discarding it and await the next installment.

[Mandamon]

Thanks all.  As usual, you get to the bottom of what I need to work on!

 

1) Capital vs. non:

Yep.  I completely agree.  I need to find some other way to denote this, but I'm not sure how while still letting the readers immediately know what kind of fruit it is.  Saying "magical apple" every time seems kind of dumb (Mapple?  Morange?  I'm sure there are other dumb names...).  I'll work on it.

 

2) Slavery, etc:

I'm really enjoying the class-type struggles in this book, and it will end up being a big theme.  However, the same parts you all brought up, I also thought were weak.  I originally didn't even have Aricaba-Ata hitting Kisare.  Also the guards on the trees don't seem to be doing their job.  Looks like another rewrite on this first chapter later on...

jParker --I was in a Charleston museum when thinking some of this stuff up, so "Southern plantation" is more accurate.  A big plantation back then was about 50 slaves, so that's what I based this on.  I might need to make that clearer.

 

3) Hair color:

Asmodemon--Robinski caught the part where I said the slaves' hair was bleached weekly to make them all completely blond, no matter what their real hair color is.  There's more mythology forthcoming about normal vs. magical hair color, but I may need to clarify earlier.

 

4) Bel's flightiness:

I'm interested to see what you all think of the second chapter.  I'm alternating viewpoints and leaning a lot on tight POV.  I won't say more, but I'd like to see what the reaction is when reading in Bel's head.

 

Thanks again!

[jagabond]

If apples and fruit are magic enough, you can keep them as common nouns. A reader will be able to pick up on why the fruits are special, I think, just by character reactions and good worldbuilding.

 

I liked the setting and, as others have said, the stakes are introduced right away. A good amount of detail on the nobles and worldbuilding without drowning the reader, too. Prose was smooth and well-paced.

 

What I really liked was how Kisare gets the final swing of momentum and encourages Bel, who is the reason they're out there despite Kisa's reluctance. Shows a good dynamic.

 

However, while it's true that the conflict is right there, slaves are hard to do well, I think. There are a lot of fears I bring to the table with two young(ish?) women protagonists at the mercy of potentially cruel nobles. But there's a great opportunity to show what they have to fear in different, exciting, still terrifying ways. Power dynamics and social structure are ideal for worldbuilding. You made the world feel different and creepy, so I'm eager to see you capitalize and dig deep with it.

 

I generally agree that they didn't feel like slaves, so I'd like to see a sharper, clearer grip on the stakes. I want to want these two women to escape. I also want to be goddamn terrified of what happens if they screw up. I'm not quite there yet. Their entire lives are defined by imprisonment and control. I want to feel more of that.

 

Looking forward to the next chapters!

[Lightsworn Panda]

Next time, try not to put the date in the title, especially if it's a long one. I thought you were a spam bot for a second, and almost reported you.