Mark - 13/10/2014 - Equo Trilogy Part 1: Aldo, Chapter Four and Five (L)

[Mark]

Thank you for reading, all constructive criticism is appreciated.

[Mark]

Did I not send the email? Chapters four and five?

[Lord Juugatsu]

General disclaimer: The following are my opinions, you as the author are obligated to interpret, receive, and react as you see fit with the information provided.

Chapter 4

As someone mentioned on feedback of the last chapters, that boxed brief history is kind of jarring. a more subtle separator would personally be preferred, but this is more of a stylistic thing. The content itself is kind of nice for giving a bit of extra information that may not comfortably fit in the standard narrative of events.

I don’t recall if it was mentioned he had a scar before this. If this was a book in front of me, I’d probably go back and double check his intro area for any of these traits. It made me stumble a bit as it wasn’t quite what I had in mind. Not sure if this is just something I previously overlooked, however.

The history of and geography place kind of works as it is, but the fact he’s leaving it, makes me wonder why it’s being addressed, particularly in reference to the naming and location reference of towns. I feel like it should have some relevance, but at the same time he’s apparently leaving and I get the sense Voro isn't exactly close.

Chapter 5

I actually breezed through the chapter without too much standing out. As a whole, the Spartan-borderline-abuse training and her general attitude came off a little bit as ‘stock material’ to me with her attitude towards it and the training method, but I still enjoyed reading through it. I could see others feeling it too cliché, but this is one of those things where I feel is fine in a small enough quantity to kind of say 'hey this is his training, he'll be doing it for awhile' and then you don't need to worry about it too much because we can assume he'll be forced to keep it up as he has been.

I did specifically like Aldo’s persistence. Yes, Aldo has seemed arrogant and haughty so far, but I felt like he was that way because of he had pride in his skills and effort, something somewhat highlighted by the way he bared through the self-training and drinking of Wyvern blood, and I got that sense earlier on, which is I didn't particularly dislike him at first. His personality at this point has me feeling a bit sympathetic towards him because he’s pretty self-aware of how he acts mostly because he knows he’s worked for it to earn it beyond just being born into wealth. His lack of complaints and drive in the training really makes him appealing to me. In the beginning it felt like he was being painted as your standard rich brat with hints that he wasn’t, now he’s really showing as someone who honestly puts in the sweat and blood to achieve his goals, and not just money.

Playing a bit of devil’s advocate, I didn’t have any issue with this chapter’s combat training, but my general perception is that choreographing combat motions is risky territory as people are likely to glaze or skim over what may seem clunky. It worked for me, but I enjoy combat specifically. One thing in general I liked about it was how you kept it at Aldo’s level. What he could follow was present, what Mya was doing beyond his ability to follow was absent, so it really kept it behind Aldo’s perspective.

In general

When I saw this in my inbox, I was looking forward to getting to it (which is why I tackled it during my breaks through the day, so I’m definitely enjoying it. At the risk of coming across as pretentious, it seems like you’re getting a bit more comfortable with the characters and progression as it seems to be reading smoother, but maybe that has something to do with a bit of the roughness that came with working through introduction? I'm not sure how comfortable you are with intros in a general sense. I feel like we’re starting to get in the adventure/story proper now, and I’m curious as to where the plot will progress since we’re at a sort of checkpoint. I’m currently guessing that the Mya’s friend’s absence will be related to a first arc or the plot of sorts.

[Mandamon he/him]

Not many comments on this one--similar ones to Juugatsu. It held my attention, and I was happy to see Aldo getting his sour personality beaten out of him.  The rich kid track really didn't work with Mya.  I'm not as forgiving to his nature as Juugastu is; I still think he's a spoiled brat, but he is persistent in getting what he wants.

I also thought the fight choreography was good, but I was starting to get tired of the training montage by the end of the two chapters.  It would take a long time to bulk up to wearing plate armor, so I'm guessing that training will go on a while, but hopefully without so much attention focused on it.

 

 

pg1: good visual starting out.  However I didn't remember he had a scar.  Have you mentioned it before?  

Also, do the Equo require their apprentices to be bald?  Why is he shaving his head?

 

pg 9: So Sanas is something like Parma?  I'm guessing these are two of the seven techniques the Equos know?  It's not really clear.  (You do make it clearer later, by having Aldo use Parma again, but I was confused for a page or so in the middle.)

[Mark]

Thanks Mandamon for the critique.

 

This was the training chapter, one could say. You won't have to worry about seeing those training sequences all over the place. 

 

The scar had not been mentioned before, no. It should have been though. I'll go back and fix it. Apprentices do not have to be bald, that is a choice Aldo made himself. Less hair = less work. It's pure practicality. 

 

I'll have a look over it to see where I can clear that up.

 

I'm glad you enjoyed it. 

[Robinski he/him]

Apologies if I'm repeating things that others have mentioned, then again I guess it helps to guage how promient a potential issue is.

 

I like the description of the shaving and his reaction to being imperfect. I reckon you don’t need misshapen and unshapely, though. I didn't get that it was an elective thing, you might underline that somewhere.

 

Did we know that he had a scar? I don’t remember it from Chapter 1, and I don’t think it came up in Chapters 2 and 3. (I see from your comments that we don't). I think it could do with a couple or three more references up to this point, although nothing overt. I don’t remember people reacting to it who have been close to him up to this point (Julia, Ranus, Mya, etc.).

 

“There are no 'disciplines'. There is only discipline” – I like that – that’s a good line, thought provoking.

 

I had a sense of foreboding when they began their journey, as journeying can be pretty damnation boring, as Aldo himself observed. It was rather description-heavy to begin with, but I liked that you broke it up with his combat training. I didn’t feel that there was anything dazzling in the training, all fairly standard, but I found the description of the combat entertaining enough.

 

I think the thing I enjoyed the most was that Aldo was put in his place by Mya, and I began to feel that perhaps he might learn some respect as part of his training and not to be such an arrogant s.o.b.

 

In summary, I'm still enjoying the story well enough, but I'm not really getting a ‘wow’ factor. There are certainly the elements of a decent fantasy, I reckon, and I'm on board with Aldo being arrogant to begin with. Some of the character interactions have felt a bit off for me, as I’ve commented on, but I'm still interested to see where things go.