8/28/23 - Ace of Hearts - Everlasting Sunset sub 5, 5011 words

[Ace of Hearts]

Hi everyone,

 

Thanks for the feedback on the last submission! We have a big chapter today, this one focusing on some of the other soldiers besides P. I want the story to focus on the entire group of soldiers but didn't want to drop all the details about them upfront, so I'm curious how this lands.

 

Thanks! 

[Demiurgess she/her]

Hi, Ace of Hearts!

Chapter five definitely gives us a broader perspective on the team. It's nice to see their personal interests and how they intertwine with them being soldiers and wishing/not wishing to become ministers. It definitely helps to give them faces and personalities in comparison to the previous chapters. On one hand, it serves as contrast - the ministry sees them as just a tool, while A and L look into their souls. But I agree with what @Mandamon said about the previous chapter - it's difficult to sympathise and see the battle as dangerous when the team is merely tools. So I believe you might want to tread carefully here.

Also, the dialogues between A and other soldiers sounded like learnt speeches. And it is explained when S says he just repeats what L told him, but it also makes the conversation sound weird before you read that.

When it comes to conversations between A and L, they too sound like an exposition. It is legitimate, on the one hand, since A doesn't know everything. But it also makes me think whether there is another way to show things to the reader. While I was reading this chapter, I was thinking that you limited yourself to the events just at one base and mostly A's POV. But with such a huge building and the steep learning curve, it feels restraining to me. I get to know the characters and their small world, but I feel like that isn't enough for me - I want to understand more of the worldbuilding, to have a deeper understanding of A's motivation via seeing what she reacts to - and it is the world as a whole. It might also help you add info about reincarnations, ministers and the war without making it just L's speeches.

Adding P's POV was great! Not only it brought more of a conspiracy, but it also gave us something to set against A's worldview.

Here are a few page by page comments on top of that:

 

P1.: When M tells A she isn’t supposed to be into soldiers’ specifics, I wonder what is it that the ministers are supposed to do. Maybe, I missed (or forgot) something in the first chapters, but I still don’t have a clear idea. There are bureaucrats and from this chapter I see that's not equal to ministers, but I am still not sure about the details (before I thought it was minister=bureaucrat).

P.2: I am a bit confused what B is doing there. Wasn’t she supposed to be reassigned since there is a new supervisor?

P3-4: The dialogue between L and A, short though as it is, looked like it was filled with sentences that didn’t give me much new, apart from the request itself. Maybe, it could be incorporated into the next section or skipped altogether?

P 7: So is it the C.O that resists clairvoyance, or are their restrictions put by other humans? I got confused. Later on, it looks like somebody blocks it, but originally it seems the C.O is responsible for the barrier.

 

[Mandamon he/him]

Interesting to learn about the other soldiers here! I'd love to get a little more on the society and geography though. We get a little with the map, but I'm still unsure on where they are. Is this all on one little island?

I think the "interest - item" part might be a little too canned for both soldiers. They both had a scientific interest and a token to go along with it. These could both be a little more natural and probably a little shorter as well.

Lastly, B's character seems...off compared to the rest of the characters, especially in speech patterns. I'm not quite sure what her deal is.

Looking forward to the next chapter!

 

Notes while reading:

pg 2: B was the previous commander, right? Where did she come from? Was she with M? I'm still pretty unsure on the geography here. How far away are they from a population center?

pg 2: “Ooh, so the tiger has claws and brains.”
--uhh, yeah, so who exactly is B anyway? She's a lot different than most of the other characters.

pg 3: “It was fun catching up, tiger.”
--B seems like she almost stepped in from another story. Can we have a hint or something why she's so different in mannerism than everyone else?

pg 3: "But there’s something I want you to do for me before I tell you.”
--didn't she just answer the question? Or is A asking for their names in particular? Can't she just look them up?

pg 6: “Matter can’t be created or destroyed,"
--The last pages had a lot of new information, but I had to stop here. Energy can't be created or destroyed, not matter. And Nuclear reactions change matter to energy like many other processes do. They're just another form.

pg 7: "My mom’s great, but a group of thirty people who are experts in different areas will know more than she does.”
--that's surprisingly astute

pg 7: "There were only thirty bureaucrats? Ash supposed it made sense in an island with a population of a few thousand."
--Again, some more information on the geography would be helpful.

pg 11: good to get interests for the characters, like soil consistency, but this section might be a little too long. Can probably cut it back to just the necessary parts to the story.

pg 14: so I guess the soldiers are also all science nerds? Again, the explanation goes on a little long. We probably don't an explanation of how tides work.

pg 15: "Topaz had the jar to go along with his interest. Do you have something like that?”
--this is a little too on the nose. Does everyone have to have an Item and an Interest?

pg 16: Well, we do get a little more geography here, so that's good. So is there whole civilization, ministers and everything, on one little island?

pg 19: Interesting! So P seems to be a deserter. If we know a little more about them in general before this point, that might make the call more tense.

[strange24 she/her]

 

Was writing the feedback to chapter 4 when 5 droped so this a combo for both. 

Chapter 4 was really the one who brought me into the story.

A finally feeling a connection to Palla by proving her genuine care by her actions in the battle and Palla opening up because of a new found respect for her was a nice payoff of the tension between them. It didn’t feel like too much too fast, they still kept a distance between each other and their friendliness had certain professionalism to it. That relationship is progressing and not growing stagnant in an old dynamic makes it fresh to read. 

 

But said battle carried little weight and didn’t bring any atmosphere of danger or urgency. The characters were in life and death scenarios but it didn’t feel like they would get hurt. It was hard to understand the scale of the battle or what was at stake. It was hard to empathise with the characters when I didn’t get why they fought or what they were up against. 

The monster themself had some interesting descriptions. That they weren’t the average behemoth monster something crystalised gave me the image that they were something quite beautiful. It feel they have more character to them. Referring to them did however take away some of their menace, might just be me but when I hear fish I just think of a normal salmon. 

 

Seeing the As decision from the battle have payoffs in chapter 5 and have further complications down the line. The team going from background names to more fleshed out personalities with their own perspectives and relationships to each other. 

The dialog between A and most of the character feels organic except when they reach the exposition. A has a pattern of becoming a question machine that just asks the right questions to get the reader up to speed. A can also feel a bit personality free and just a vehicle for the reader to experience the story. 

Bellas extremely modern talking style felt out of place in this world. Using ‘tiger’ in that way feels off, when the atmosphere is ‘to-days society is almost forgotten’. 

 

Chapter 5 is probably my favourite so far. It expanding the world and character and setting up the more plot points and character arcs, it made me want to read more. Palla and the team having more agency in the story making and having a Palla pov, makes the world feel bigger than just A.

[Silk she/her]

P1 “I have been observing…” “Joy.” LOL.

P2 “Are you a bureaucrat too?” Wait, I guess I’m not that clear on the distinction between ministers and bureaucrats. Also slightly confuses as to why B is still here. I figured she’d been shipped off to her next assignment.

I assume the bureaucracy is being portrayed as dysfunctional on purpose, but it also definitely seems kind of toothless if B is allowed to just go sticking her nose into everyone’s business like this…

P3 “And who was A to refuse such helpful advice?” Heh, I like this. I wonder, though: how much does A buy into the whole “existential danger from being warlike” idea? How much should the reader, for that matter? All of the violence we’ve seen so far seems justified, so I’m really not sure what I should think.

P4 “Do you know the names of the soldiers?” Doesn’t A have personnel files or the like?

Is A supposed to know all this stuff L is telling her about the console and how it works? For that matter, is L herself supposed to know it? Could this knowledge get them in trouble?

P9 “It wasn’t an accusation” seems like a great way to any conversation feel more like an accusation…

p12 “…There really wasn’t an excuse for not… being able to tell them apart” I honestly have a hard time imagining this being an issue since there are only five of them, and thy all seem to have quite distinct roles (and maybe exoskeletons?)

“That did sound familiar. A smaller planet-like mass…” So is the sky not visible then? Or do they just not know what the various celestial bodies are? Can we get something to establish this?

“Gravity pulls them close, right?” That’s a pretty good guess for someone who apparently isn’t familiar with moons or the thought of the earth being round. Or is A well-studied in gravity more generally? The boundaries of who knows (and who doesn’t know) what seem a little inconsistent here in general – though thinking about it a little that may be because L is giving them the information.

P18: Can we get a little more emotion coming from P during his conversations with A? The last paragraph of this second-last scene is very helpful, but given the reveal in the last scene, having a little more preparation may be helpful.

P19 “…and make sure she’s alone tomorrow evening.” This makes me think that despite Z’s indication to the contrary, that he’s planning on killing A. Enough so that I’m surprised P didn’t wonder the same. Same with “out of commission” – are they talking non-lethal damage?

My immediate conclusion was that P was working with the deserters, but that’s mostly a guess at this point. Is there a reason we shouldn’t know a little more about what P is up to, or why?

Overall: I enjoyed all the individual scenes in the main – though I do wonder if they could be trimmed a bit – but felt that I didn’t have a very good sense of big-picture stakes. The “deserter attack” thread for example felt like it was pretty much lost in this chapter, except for very specific moments when it was referenced – but I think a sense of progression, now that we’re this far in, would also be helpful. A has been convinced for a few chapters now that she’s being set up to fail, but we haven’t found out any more about that – by whom? Why?  - and it doesn’t really seem like she’s trying to.

Other than that, I'd echo what the others have said. I nodded along with @Mandamon's comment that the soldiers "interest" tokens felt a little too canned at points, maybe because they're both so similar in a way. And like the others, I think we could do with a little more explanation of the world at large and how it works - geography, culture, etc. It's partially just that the learning curve is high, but also, we clearly have characters with access to lots of information we're not getting! 

Still looking forward to the next bit.