6/12/23 - Ace of Hearts - Bond of Wildflowers v2 sub 17, 4301 words (VG)

[Ace of Hearts]

Additional content warning for abusive relationships.

 

Hi everyone! Penultimate submission here that wraps up the climax of the story. Thanks as always for giving your thoughts!

[Mandamon he/him]

Nice wrapup! I think you really hit the making up/resolution conversations well in your writing, and this has several of those.

I think the fight with C might have ended a little to suddenly? Not sure.

The ritual also went on a little too long in my opinion. Very much like wedding vows, though.

N had a good revelation/resolution, but I don't quite feel that W did. She was still questioning until the end, which makes me doubt her commitment some. Can there be something else that gives her confidence in this?

Looking forward to the last part!

 

Notes while reading:

pg 1: "Even though I’m bound, I’m freer now."
--nice resolution for N. It's been a long time coming!

pg 3: "and after that I’ll find ways to serve you"
--So C is really the main villain after all that time! I think this works. She's very manipulative.

pg 3: "“And there’s the opening I was looking for."
--This is N talking, right? Unclear.

pg 4: "finding loopholes around staying out of the conflict"
--I think we need a reminder of H's promise to understand the difficulty.

pg 4: "Waving their daggers around wards off the vines,"
--This is vague. Can they do something more active?

pg 5: “Even if not by choice. So I don’t have to kill you. Good thing, since he hates seeing violence. Could yourself lucky.”
--Again, I think we need a repetition of the promise, so we know exactly how H got around it
--Also, "Count yourself lucky"

pg 5: "glaze over in an instant, and she drops to the ground"
--This is very sudden. Even if someone's heart stops, won't it take a couple seconds for them to lose consciousness?

pg 6: "who gets lightheaded and goes weak in the knees when I see blood"
--was this a plot point before? If so, I think it need to be bigger to resonate here.

pg 6: "even though that’s what she deserves"
--causally talking about desecrating a corpse is pretty cold.

pg 7: "today was a bloody day. I’m sure that will hit me later"
--yeah, I think the last few chapters need some more reflection on this.

pg 10: "Trust. After everything, he still trusts me."
--Really nice resolution through here.

pg 10: "“I swore to stay away from the village until I was reasonably sure the situation had resolved."
--ah. Yes, need this up front.

pg 13: “What were the challenges you needed to overcome for you to get to where you are now?”
--This might be getting a little long for the ritual? It's also starting to sound more like marriage vows.

pg 14: “The ritual is finished,” 
--It is sort of a shame we don't get to see N's side of this as well.

pg 14: "The bond N and I formed was strong enough for the ritual to work."
--This is interesting, and maybe slightly off? N is confident of himself after his revelation, but W still needs the ritual to work to assure her. 

[Cathy Lim]

OK- I read through all the chapters I missed which was kinda nice because I got to see the whole shape of it instead of just a chapter snippet. Here's my thoughts from the previous chapters (I didn't look at anyone else's comments so apologies if this is repeat):

Chapter 19- I know I said before that the detour with just W was fine, but here's where the story ground to a halt for me. It's a lovely chapter, but doesn't seem to have any baring on the plot as a whole. (The biggest complaint I get about my writing too!) Ditto for chapter 20. Also- When N shows up and we have no idea what he's been up to and we don't really get that story I was wondering why, if we have N as a POV we can't get some of that story? Maybe interlaced with the info from chapters 19 and 20? Just a thought. Also, all of a sudden W is getting accused of lying to N but she really hasn't been worried about the fact that she didn't tell him about her visit with A. At least not lately. It kind of felt like it came out of nowhere.

Ok- on to this week's chapter:

Chapter 32

P.1- "C drags me into the clearing and only halts when we reach the patch of g." Something I've been thinking of for the past couple chapters- where are the villagers? Is there nobody around to do something? Is the village empty? Why is there no one around?

P.5 "W darts forward and pulls H out of the way" Wouldn't H be in a better position to be faster at getting out of the way? Maybe W could already be in motion before H sees what's coming?

P. 5 "W looks down at C's body, stiff as a statue." Um- does everybody have to die? By the time we get here it has little to no impact because of the body count. Also, I was totally waiting for them using the ritual on agent J to be thing because he's already dead so I expected W or someone to trick them somehow with that. It never became a thing. 

P. 6- "I’ll move her body and G’s out of the way. I’m guessing N doesn’t want me to desecrate C’s body" So much body moving, it seems off to me. 

P 8- "All right, I don’t know if I can hold back anymore." The hugging seems more suitable for right after the death instead of the conversation coming first. 

P8- "It’s all right,” I say. “I was the same, you know" I feel like there should be some sort of discussion about W's behavior and why she allegedly lied to N. I was waiting for some reconciliation about that. Maybe it will be in the denouement?

P 13- "The first time N went against his own passive acceptance of fate was to save me by doing something he didn’t even think he was capable of." Do we really have to kill people to understand love and who we are? I'm not sure this lands right. 

I was fine with the ritual, it was a nice flash back through the story and their relationship. Overall I enjoy the characters and I admit to liking that it's so straightforward buuuut- it would probably ramp up the tension if it was a bit more twisty. You have plenty to work with here to make it have lots of twists and turns for sure! Your characters probably have it a bit too easy. I like the bones of this story- I know you can shape it into something spectacular! 

[Silk she/her]

“…dragged me a longer distance than she was standing” stumbled on this, I understand the intent now but it took me a couple reads to parse this sentence.

“Even though I’m bound” nice moment here

“MA was right about needing to use force…” Maybe WRS and I’m misremembering some of the details, but the ritual was originally presented as needing a strong emotional connection to work, so I don’t understand why they think using force is a viable option here.

“With a cold iron dagger…” Does it matter that the dagger is cold iron? C is fully human, isn’t she?

                Edit: Ah, so the daggers are to ward off the vines?

                Edit again: seeing the daggers destroy the staff is also neat! 

“You two have taken everything from me…” like what? Especially in H’s case.

P5 “could yourself lucky” count?

Where are all these cold iron daggers coming from? I guess it makes sense for C in particular to have one, though.

“I love you too…” Nice as an end to the chapter, but seems almost over-emphasized as this hasn’t really been in question up to this point – as the last chapter seemed to confirm.

Wait, if MA killed N’s grandmother, who were they planning on having lead the ritual before H stepped in?

Oh, does wolf A lose control of his actions? I was wondering why he ran off and didn’t return.

The ritual itself seems pretty passive. In a way this makes sense since C thought she could force N to do It, but I wonder if there is a way to make W and N feel like more active participants. I also wonder if it’s possible to see the effects of the ritual starting to take place, whether that’s a sensation W feels or the air around them starting to sparkle or what have you. Create a little more sense of wonder for the thing we’ve been building up to for the whole book.

Lastly… I wonder if there should be a little bit of doubt during the ritual, maybe not a complete try/fail cycle but something that makes the outcome seem a little less definite. It’s a fairly lengthy section where we already know what’s going to happen – especially since W seems to already have all the answers she needs for the questions. That, or maybe just shorten the ritual section and punch up its success? 

On 6/15/2023 at 3:33 PM, Mandamon said:

pg 14: "The bond N and I formed was strong enough for the ritual to work."
--This is interesting, and maybe slightly off? N is confident of himself after his revelation, but W still needs the ritual to work to assure her. 

Yeah, I wondered about this too. Whether W loves N has never really seemed to be in question from W's POV. Maybe reframing it as more of a "will it work if I didn't treat him right/even though I was using him" would help? That is more the conflict at play, at least for this reader, and might provide the opportunity for a resolution for W that Mandamon was talking about.