4/8/24 - Ace of Hearts - Everlasting Sunset Sub 22, L (3588 words)

[Appol PhD they/he]

Hi everyone,

 

Thanks for the comments last week! I'm glad to hear that the overall conclusion of part 2 felt all right, and I'll try to work on the clarity in revision.

 

We're finishing up interludes and moving into part 3 today, which I'm hoping has a bit of a cleaner plot. But I guess the point of getting critiqued is to figure out and see!

 

Thanks!

 

(Also, looks like the comments for last week's sub got copy pasted into the email. Whoops.)

[Silk she/her]

On 4/8/2024 at 7:03 AM, Ace of Hearts said:

(Also, looks like the comments for last week's sub got copy pasted into the email. Whoops.)

It happens! I think we figured it out

Right to the comments, then:

Probably partially WRS, but it took me a hot second to remember who either of these characters were, especially the POV character. I'm glad to see this is an interlude, though, rather than signaling a shift in focus to completely different batch of characters.

"...because they had been beaten into submission." Enough people in the ministry apparently think the soldiers are treated badly enough that I've started to wonder why nobody seems to have done anything about it before now.

p2 "what lurked beneath--and she meant that quite literally--" this is a fun teaser, but seems like an odd aside for her own thoughts, a little "as you know, Bob" dialogue without the dialogue.

p3 "...she hated the comfort she took in that." Nice character moment here.

"...all those little boys." Another gendered term here. Having trouble getting a handle on when characters use those before they don't. Also, its use here makes it seem like the gender roles as they are in Ix was common knowledge to everyone but A?

"...so broken that they couldn't fit back into society" - hmm, not quite convinced, I don't think we've seen this.
Edit: Ah, I see you've hung a lantern on it. Carry on then.

p4 Interesting. I had assumed T went to see I because of her relationship to A.

The interlude seems like a missed opportunity to give us more information. It's one of the biggest things I've been struggling with throughout the book, and here we have two characters who clearly HAVE more information, but aren't giving it to us.

The sense of forward motion at the end of the interlude is great, but I think the factories need (surprise!) some setup before now for it to be fully effective. Otherwise, great some characters we know are going off to do something, but it's a new something that I don't know how it relates to the rest of the story.

p5 "And pitiful." Hm, not sure what about this display is pitiful.

p7 "even ... or ... are better than 'your majesty.'" Okay that was a great line.

p9 "So B was also originally a solider..." Didn't we already know this? I thought B had at least strongly implied at one point that she and A were clones of the same stock, which I took to mean B was trans.

"I don't do that philosophy sh..." I thought that was an ancient swear word?

p13 "Could it be?" I had assumed this immediately from the physical description in the first few pages, so having A come to it here makes her seem a bit slow on the uptake.

Overall: I enjoyed the interaction between A and G--I actually really enjoyed G's personality--but toward the end the conversation felt like it started to drag, and I'm not really sure what it accomplished, or what G wants to get out of the conversation. If he's just looking to protect A and her people, couldn't he have just done that, since he seems to know everything already?

I'm also not sure whether to be expecting a physical fight or philosophical debate in the next chapter. The story is better set up for the first IMO, but parts of the discussion between G and A pointed more toward a battle of ideals.

[Mandamon he/him]

First off, sorry for being so late. Had lots of stuff going on last week.

As usual, generally agree with @Silk on this. We need more information in the interlude, and while the next chapter was cool, I'm not really sure what we actually learned from it that's helpful in the book.

There's also a lot of talk about gender in here, where the technology that goes along with it seems to me to be useful for a whole lot more. Not that gender isn't an important discussion, but I feel like there are other aspects of this that could be just as important, like disability, or confidence, or age.

Interested to see where it goes next.

Notes while reading:

pg 1: I'm confused on the first paragraph. Thy is hurting by teaching Top, but there's no qualifier. What's bad about it?

pg 1: "she loved every second of it"
--so she does like it?

pg 1: "and that made her sad"
--and now she's sad again about it. I know there's complex emotions here, but I'm not getting the explanation I need for them.

pg 2: except now we're talking about N, not Top. I'm confused where this is going, and since these were minor characters in the last part, I also need some context and clues for who they are and what they did again.

pg 3: Do we know who I is? The name sounds familiar but I'm honestly flailing with how many characters are in the book.

pg 3: "dismantled the factories...all of those little boys"
--ok, that's new.

pg 4: "I’m her mother.”
--ooooooooooh. Ok. I think we need that right at the beginning.

pg 4: "expose and dismantle the factory"
--wait, I thought that had already happened?

pg 4: overall, mostly confused about this interlude.

pg 6: "I’m the Calamity"
--alright, heading straight into this one. I'm interested.

pg 9: "So B was also originally a soldier—a boy."
--I'm not sure I followed the logic here.

pg 11: "how it spread from planet to planet"
--does...A know about other planets?

pg 12: "to change people’s bodies to fit their gender."
-ok, but probably more than that, right? I mean, anything with that use has a million possible powerful medical uses.

pg 13: “Your clone?”
--yeah, figured that one out.

pg 14: Ok, well, we learned a lot, but I'm not certain things are any clearer.