20141103 - Fruits of the Gods Ch2 pt 1(2054) - Mandamon

[Mandamon he/him]

Part 1 of chapter 2.  This is from the other sister's perspective.  Let me know what you think!

[Lord Juugatsu]

Juugatsu disclaimer: The following feedback is my thoughts and opinions on the piece as I’m reading it. It is your responsibility as the writer to interpret, use, or discard this as you see fit.

I tend to view feedback as existing in three variants, macro, micro, and line-by-line. With format of responding on the forum works well for macro, but not so much for more targeting feedback. I had a couple of spots where I would’ve provided micro feedback because there was some awkward wording or something didn’t read entirely clearly to me, and if this was in Google docs or something, I’d probably have put comments in those areas.

As a whole though, I liked the bit of chapter 2 you submitted and I’m definitely interested in seeing where it goes. I read it twice, once earlier this week for an initial opinion, and then a second time before writing this up a bit more intently. The first time Kisa and Belili felt a little too hard to distinguish character wise, however things were more clear on the second pass through. I can’t really tell if I think that because they’re too similar as characters or if it’s because they’ve been near each other this entire time so far. I did have to go back once or twice to either double check who was speaking or who the ‘her’ referred to, or to walk through the sentence once I figured it out.

The introduction of the stolen Apple slice and Tia as a current enemy definitely ramps up the tension and hooks well for me and I did find myself wondering how long the second half is, because that’s such a cliff-hanger-ish cut-off point and I’m left wanting to know what’s going to happen, which is a good sign as well.

Only micro scale comment I will point out here, just because it booted me from the story hard, was:
Page 2 ‘She the pot down before she spilled it’. I’m guess ‘put’ is absent from there.

Edited November 10, 2014 by Lord Juugatsu

[Mandamon he/him]

Thanks for the comments!  Yes, micro level comments are hard to do here.

 

Separating the characters more at the beginning is something I need to edit.  I think (hope) they are much more distinct later on and I just need to edit those traits in at the beginning.  I think I may have fixed that typo already...

 

There's a lot more that goes on in the second half of this chapter!   It's about the same length as this entry.  I can post it for next week, even if you're the only one currently reviewing here.  Hopefully we'll have some others chime back in in the future.

[Lord Juugatsu]

I'm definitely curious, but for the sake of getting lots of feedback, I feel like it'd be better to wait until December after NaNoWriMo when people are active here again, unless people review things older than a week (Since I'm still new here myself, I don't know how people do).

[Mandamon he/him]

They sometimes do, but you're probably right. It's pretty dead around here.

[Sprouts]

I enjoyed this chapter, maybe more than the first.  Combine the tension and focus of this chapter with the effective world building of the first chapter and you've got a strong opening.  

 

By this point I think I've got a pretty good picture of the sisters, sometimes I stumble a little bit over their characterizations but generally only over sentences where the phrasing is a little confusing.  One such sentence was the one where it talked about how Kisa worked her hardest to protect Belili from male slaves and overseers, and that Belili didn't let her know it wasn't entirely effective.  I had to read it a second time to grasp who was protecting who.

 

Also, the scene with Belili and Kisare in the mistress's room was a little weird.  It almost felt like Belili was in a trance/daze, almost everything that happens to her is 'realized'.  You use that word twice in close succession at one point during the scene.  In general I felt like I wasn't given enough information about the setting to really picture it, which also lent to the dazed feeling.

 

I liked the plot thread where you introduce Tia as having stole something, then wrap that back around and make it a point of tension as Aricaba-Ata cracks down on his slaves.  Effective foreshadowing (is that the appropriate term?) and a good, enjoyable source of tension. The dialogue at the end was very believable and Kisa's more inflammatory nature was fun to see come out in anger at Tia.

 

Considering this chapter and the first chapter as a whole I think I'd like to see the box, which was the primary question raised by the first chapter, addressed at least a little more in this one.  It doesn't feel like Belili has much of a plan surrounding it, though maybe Kisare does. 

[Mark]

Second critique, again without reading any of the others. 

 

"Until the year of the fever, their only job outside was pruning, for Belili, and tending the soil around the magic trees, for Kisa.  Now they were outside nearly all the time." I think less commas would allow this to flow better, i.e. - "their only job outside was pruning for Belili, and tending the soil around the magic trees for Kisa". This is just a personal opinion, of course. 

 

"The non-magical fruit didn't earn as much money per fruit, of course" - One too many uses of 'fruit', I think. Maybe 'the non-magical variety'? 

 

And if the master wasn't convinced, why was he locking them all up and demanding they tell him who the culprit was? Surely that means he does believe there to be a culprit?

 

Those are the only problems I have. This chapter is upping the ante a bit, what with the theft. You nailed the tension aspect, especially considering what happened to the slave that tried to run away. Maybe Belili's lost pinky could have been referenced earlier, but that isn't a major thing. 

 

I'll move on to the second part, so.