Lord Juugatsu

I read chapter 3. Not a whole lot of commentary. I noticed this time around 'Bel' being used in the narrative and the PoV was still kind of 'distant' feeling (not that any particular parts stood out). However, it was easy enough to follow it as being behind Kisare's PoV. If it was a book in front of me, I'd have gone back to a previous chapter following her PoV to see if it was consistent. I like that kind of touch to the narrative, personally. If it was all together as a book, I'd have probably noticed it a sooner which would probably help with the perspective confusion. I also think it's just that Kisare and Belili have been together 100% of the time so far, so their individuality is a bit lacking, at least in my opinion. I'm starting to get a good grasp on their characters, but this is three chapters in, so I've been with them for a little while now. I would expect, going forward, that more differences will probably pop up as they no longer have as clear of an 'enemy' to unite against. I also look forward to seeing more of the world as they go to flee. Though on that note, I was on the fence with the bit of lore woven in as they crossed to plantation to the grove to get the box. It felt odd or strange. I'm guessing here, but I think it's because: A lot of the culture we've seen so far has been limited slave life on a plantation and their position in society, none of which has been /super foreign/, so much as just the caste system, rather than any major history or lore beyond what we've been told pertaining to the Fruit. Then we suddenly have the great Fruits being eaten by the bird of night as an cultural analogy for crescent moons and the introduction of Enta and Dumzi (presumably dieties, possibly associated to the moons?). It's nothing story breaking, but it just came across very 'bam' for me. I also wanted to make the brief comment that I really like the hook that this chapter ends on. It's not a cliffhanger, we know what's in the box, we know Kisare and Belili are about to do, and yet it leaves me wanting to keep reading to see what's beyond the plantation boundaries and really get my heels into the world that's been hinted at so far.

At the moment, I only have feedback for the second half of chapter 2. I'll get to chapter 3 at some point soon, however. I'm also providing feedback as I read through on the first time and during a lunch break, so hopefully it doesn't come across as too scatterbrained. As someone who has read a bit into the Babylonian mythos to a light extent, I do still enjoy the style of the names. I stumbled a bit where Anu was picking the locks(?) on the manacles. A set of small metal pieces, long and angled sounds like lock picks, at least. The first time I read it, I was thinking something to the effect of a pry-bar or something. I'm still not 100% clear, though. After finishing that part, I'm just not entirely sure what was happening there, though I can't tell if it's Monday-fatigue or the story. I'd probably get a second opinion here from someone else because I feel I'm like one 'click' away from the scene working for me. It seems odd that Anu and the others are pushing the three suspects out to the cold. I can understand the motivation of wanting the three of them to sort it out and being out in the cold will force a conclusion. However, from the slave owner side of things, I feel like if any one slave gets caught outside of the manacles, they'd all be punished because the chains which were supposed to keep them chained together were somehow bypassed and if one slave did it, then all of the slaves /definitely/ saw how it was done. The fight came across very chaotically, which I found to be good, as none of them have experience fighting. I don't want to hark on it, but it felt difficult for me to really tell I was following Belili's point of view until they were outside. I know one line that sort of worked against the Belili PoV (assuming we were following Belili while inside) was the line about Tia glaring at her and her not acknowledging it. I can see how the scene works there, but the wording feels like it's having its intentioned stretched based off the scene I'm getting in my head. That kind of leads to a final, minor point before my lunch break ends: It feels like there's some wordsmithing that can be done throughout this to help out a bit with the clarity. It's far too micro for this feedback format, so I wasn't actively looking for anything, but I felt a vague presence that rearranging, trimming, etc. could be help a bit. I might go back at some point soon and do a read of both parts of chapter 2 in one go since this feedback is based on just the second half (with the first half read ~1 month ago). As a whole, it was intense, I liked the chapter, and I pointed out some thing just so you'd have something constructive to work with.

As a response to Mandamon on the protagonist comment, I've seen stories lead in with character who are more appropriate with setting up the plot rather than with the protagonist before, but I do feel like it's unusual to do so without it being a prologue. In A Devil's Playground (Thanks for providing feedback on chapter 1, by the way), it's kind of the same way. Gin is the central pin that the plot effectively revolves around, but over the next few chapters, when I get them here for review, Alex (guy at the end of chapter 1) is more the real protagonist. I also wanted to echo the interest in Juliet's aging situation, since I failed to mention it. I was definitely curious as to the details regarding that. I was wonder if she was someone who had lived a long time. She's definitely a character who has a good amount of mystery about her without sacrificing personality. It makes me want to know more about her.

Alright. I don't believe I recognize you, and you seem new, based on the amount of posts you have (I'm pretty new myself), so welcome. I'll start with my standard disclaimer: The following thoughts and opinions are based on how I'm perceiving the work. It is up to you as the writer/author to determine how to interpret my feedback, what to use, and what to discard. I've read through the entire thing once, and as I'm providing the feedback, I'm kind of skimming back in case there were any specific points I wanted to make. Starting on a bit more general scale, I felt a little drowned in description and adjectives earlier in the story, particularly with the carriage. A fair amount of detail went into painting the carriage, so I had a pretty solid image defined in my head without having to fill in much of anything for blanks, and at this point, I'm half expecting that carriage to be something super pertinent to the story, despite how not very pertinent it seemed this chapter. The writing style as a whole felt pretty good. The pacing felt pretty slow as a whole, more so in the beginning, but nothing really came across awkwardly on a first read. I mention the pacing felt slow, but I did find myself getting more into the story a little after Juliet and Shippet's dialogue, once I understood what was going on, the ship was introduced and we were told that it was Juliet's destination/goal. I also didn't really get a good feel for Juliet as a character until that same point. The dialogue felt pretty good to me, I liked the brief introduction of magic in the form of weather weavers and the mention of Archmage Drayith's relics. It added history to the world and city, answered the question of what Juliet was antsy about, and acted as a key so that we readers can guess what the following commotion is about, even if it was a bit of (no offense intended) cheaper cliff-hanger (in the sense of 'something happens, but we don't know what' versus 'something happens, we learn what it is, but we don't get to see the effects/reactions of the characters until next chapter'). We can at least guess though, otherwise I'd probably have more of an issue with that cut-off point. Juliet, as the PoV character, felt kind of inconsistent in... how to say it... immersion(?). In some areas, it felt like we were really in her head, then in other areas it felt like we were behind the eyes of a random person watching the scene. I picked up on a few areas where my internal editor was thinking 'Changing this word here would really add a bit more character and get behind Juliet's eyes', and it's not a major issue by any means, but she has active thoughts in the form of "Not entirely true, she said to herself... ", but then there's other areas such as "Juliet waved Krusk over and whispered in his ear." that felt very distant. There were also some areas that felt like 'tells' where a 'show' could present more opportunities for characterization of Juliet or others or opportunities for world-building, but I'm getting /really/ nit-picky at this point. That's mostly because as a whole, the quality felt pretty good, so for anything constructive, it feels like I need to get a bit of a nit-picky level, so really I think it's a good thing that I feel these are the things to point out. My lunch break is over though, so I'll have to call it here. Thanks for the submission.

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).

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.

I made a mistake and forgot to include "Ch1" in the original document filename/e-mail. This is the first chapter of my current story. I hope there's no issue with my sending this out Sunday night before I head for bed. My first opportunity tomorrow would be in the evening. Thanks in advance for your time and feedback.

Lord Juugatu's disclaimer: The following are my opinion, thoughts, and observations on the piece as I read it. It is your obligation as the writer to interpret, use, or discard this information as you see fit. I never saw the previous version, so this is my first experience with Fruits of the Gods. It's certainly intriguing. I wouldn't say I'm hooked just yet, and the genre or central plot is vague for me, but I like the world building present. Fruit is magical, signs of (what I was reading as) magical aptitude is apparent based on darker colored hair, slavery is a common enough thing. Also the names came across for me as unique, far from the typical fantasy names I'm used to seeing, they seemed to me kind of a cross between older, Mesopotamian names with something like Arabic names, perhaps? I'm curious as to where they came from, if they aren't improvised. As a whole, I don't have any major comments on the writing itself, as it seemed to flow pretty smooth, with the exception of a hiccup around the start of the second page, "Kisare turned quickly at her sister's tug her sleeve." Might just have been me, but I had to read it like three times before I was able to understand the flow of it properly. If no one else has any issues, no big deal, but figured I'd point it out. It's a really micro thing, however. At this point, the only thing I can really see forming from this chapter one is that the plot will have something to do with what was buried under the tree. I don't know if escaping from slavery will be a major plot point, or just part of the earlier chapters. I'd definitely read another chapter or so further and see where the story goes if this was a book in front of me, but chapter 1 in and of itself didn't sell me because the world building was nice, but I didn't really feel any progress and the plot is still elusive to me.

I'll have a submission for next week, November 3. It's probably about time I give people a shot to tear into my work.

I'll spare you the disclaimer, since you've seen it enough by now. A lot of action going on. On the whole, still enjoyed it, but the descriptions started to feel segmented from the rest of the text when Aldo was fighting the werewolf. I had no real image in my head of what it could possibly be, then settled on some kind of dog-like beast before the description fully came out when he was pinned. It felt (don't know if this was the case for sure) like you were trying to find a good point to get the description in, but it still felt a little awkward getting the descriptive paragraph in the middle of combat. At first it felt a little strange that Aldo went full on terrified, because he's been stubborn, level headed, and different degrees of annoyed/angry so far, but being his first actual fight, I decided a little after it settled, that I actually liked the strong contrast of his usual demeanor to his fright in actual combat. Mya's PoV was strange. I'm all for and prefer things coming across pretty differently when PoV's change, but Mya's complaints about heavy armor after earlier forcing it on Aldo saying that he'd need it, then the constant complaints about wearing it, it just felt a little /too/ different for me. I found myself unsure of how unreliable the narrator is (as in, dialogue and certain actions were misinterpreted in another PoV and portrayed to the reader as such) or if there's some other reason why Mya seems to dislike armor in her head, but with Aldo claims it's so necessary, rather than letting him work on being a more agile person (since it seems like she'd prefer to be more agile over the armor based on the thoughts we saw). Now I like the part where she's concerned and afraid for Aldo's well-being internally, but doesn't show it externally. That works for me, but like Mandamon pointed out, especially with the arrow thing, with all of her experience and skills, why bother with something she knows isn't likely to work? It doesn't feel like she's really using all of her experience and it kind of feels, for me, like the narrative is making her act awkwardly to get across certain traits, such as werewolves being fast or durable. Part of the thing I like about Mya up through this point is that she's been portrayed as a hard-chull 'I'm going to make you a badass Equo, Aldo'. The concerned and harsh swap back and forth so far hasn't been too bad in my opinion, because I've seen it as she pushes him until he thinks he hit his limit, then pushes him further until she feels he's at his real limit, then gives him a little slack before doing it again so she doesn't effectively 'break' him. When she says she'll start seriously training him, however, it feels weird, because that to me feels like it implies that she's been half-assing her job and has been a bit bitter towards him, despite originally seeming somewhat excited (in a sense) to train him.

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.

Advanced warning, per my usual: The following are thoughts and opinions on about what I read. As the writer, it's your obligation to interpret, address, or disregard as you feel is appropriate. It took a bit for me to get engaged into the story. Not knowing James or Elyse, the spontaneous romance right out of the gate felt odd for me. I'm guessing it's a 'love at first sight', but James is just super gung-ho about Elyse out of nowhere which made me kind of wary of his personality as being this creepy kid. Not really negative or positive, but at first I was picturing the two as younger kids, kind of assuming the interest was something like a 10 year old boy surrounded by people of different ages and a young girl being introduced to him. However the 'bulge' (the use of it in reference to a bust felt strange to me, since I usually see it referenced towards 'male bits', rather than breasts) from her dress made me revisit the age thing, settling on 15~17 or so. Similarly, the era/time period seemed kind of ambiguous, at first I was thinking older aristocracy, but with the mention of the cars, I was then thinking like late 1800's, very early 1900's, with a rich family kind of out in the country still embracing some older ways (referencing the servants). I did like the bit of magic involved, as it's a different type of magic, and it's clearly an important aspect of the story without really seeming like a gimmick created for the sole purpose of a story, so if it doesn't get very explored, it'll still work for me, I believe. The foreshadowing seems heavy to me, and I don't think I saw anyone else make this kind of comment, so maybe I'm alone, but so far nothing has been surprising or much of a twist, and that is keeping me from getting very into the story. The forget-me-not flowers were brought up way in the beginning, a girl shows up in his father's fan-art, which is unheard of on the trip where Elyse went with him, the inclusion of magic, her forgetting when they met, then we hear he parents arguing over an incident and amnesia. I haven't felt particularly felt surprised or accomplished. Maybe that changes in the second half. Last thing that to came to mind, is that I can't recall many specific instances of setting description, but the tone, vocabulary, and mannerisms of the characters lent to a setting naturally, which I liked.

I thoroughly enjoyed these chapters. There was good flow and characterization in the dialogue presented, and I personally liked how many different levels of ticked off people were as the argued. One of the things that definitely worked for me was the call outs to information presented, such as Ranus's northern boy, the allusions to general state of things with the demons and daemites, the earlier reference to Julia's uncle letting him know the roster. It all came out well in my opinion and felt natural. One thing that stood out a bit that I thought felt odd, but I don't consider it a major issue, when Aldo was being confronted about the wyvern blood, he seemed to bounce back and forth between confrontational and scared, and it just read a bit odd for me. I haven't hopped back to review Julia's parts from chapter one, but I liked her portrayal in the frustration and as much of a jerk as Aldo is, I particularly loved his bit on advantages and disadvantages because I felt like he was a lot more raw there than he has been elsewhere. My lunch break is up, so I'll post this for now as the main things I wanted to comment on. I can go through and bit a bit more picky later if you want. Otherwise, I was very engaged for these chapters and I kind of liked seeing the new characters introduced in heated arguments as a way to really get an idea of their values and standings.

I enjoyed the read. It was brief and a short story, most of my thoughts have been covered already, particularly regarding some refinement on the word usage in some spots. I had to double back on a few areas because some parts were just a little odd. The fact it was laxatives was clear. I was previously unaware of laxative overdose being a thing (haven't used it ever and I don't think I know of anyone who has used it), but that's just a fact update where you could change the quantity without really impacting the story, but satisfying the part where it doesn't end up being lethal. Those minor comments aside, it was a fun read for my lunch break.

If it's a slow week, I have no issues with submissions rolling in on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

Advanced warning: Wall of text ahead. Standard Lord Juugatsu disclaimer: The following comments and opinions are based off my thoughts as I read the piece. As the author, you are aware of what you wanted to achieve and where the story will go, so it’s your obligation to decide which feedback is relevant and/or needs to be addressed. Prologue as I’m reading: I wasn’t clear what species the characters were in the beginning. Personified horses or centaurs were my first guess. When horns were mentioned, I wasn’t sure if maybe we were talking about devils, then with snouts, I finally got to the picture of minotaur around 400 words in, this was then confirmed around 650 words. I don’t know how it is for other people, but when I read and have the scene in my head, it feels like I stumble when I need to pause and adjust my mental image. I enjoy the perspective from the hunted point of view of the minotaur really making what may as well be a standard human(?) tradition seem menacing. Without information, I’m guessing humans, but they’re about seven feet tall based on Liorel’s perspective. A ‘tall’ human in my experience is loosely 6 ft (At least, I’m 6’2” and I’m used to at least seeing the top of people’s heads if not over them). That makes me wonder if they might be something other than human. Prologues always seem like a touchy point, as some people don’t care for them because they aren’t always necessary. When I read them, I usually assume the content within the prologue has to be told at the beginning and that it’s a setup for ‘what kind of story will I be reading’. With that in mind, here I’m reading fantasy because of the minotaurs, but I’m not getting a huge sense of where this story is going very definitively, at least yet. It may follow non-humans or specifically minotaurs, maybe this is something that ends up being flashforward and there are events leading up to this, maybe it’s more of an introduction through an event that shapes something in the future for the daughter (and waiting to make it a flashback doesn’t work for you). These are just things I’m seeing as possibilities, but I really can’t tell at this point. The scene felt like it had an appropriately desperate tone, even though I didn’t get really invested into the characters. Continuing onto to chapter 1: (My lunch break ended so I kind of read this while doing some mildly repetitive work before getting back to it now) The transitioning had what I typically think of as a ‘close up shot’. We have Diego’s hand on his sword’s grip with no idea of who he is or what he’s up to. That, for me at least, made it feel like a really slow intro and to convert to a cinematic concept, it was like a camera being set really close on a specific thing and waiting a bit before panning out. I enjoyed the fact you introduced him as a PoV character with a rather abrupt death. As a story consumer, the more likely I am to believe a character /could/ die, the more likely I’m going to be on the edge of my seat when they’re in a situation where it seems like that may be an outcome. Aldo definitely comes off as a member an elite family, though it wasn’t until his encounter with Julia in the inn that he seemed kind of like a prick. And on that note, her presence just seemed weird to me. She says she wanted to talk to him because he was interesting, but what about him that interested her was never mentioned, and I found her as kind of creepy, but otherwise she seems kind of easygoing, maybe friendly. I’m jumping a bit here, and I’ll speak more specifically towards other commentary below, but Aldo using magic felt sudden. I wouldn’t go as far as jParker in saying it was necessarily bad deus ex machina, as the presence of magic was made apparent to some extent with presence of summoners summoning imps (prior to that, it may very well have been a world void of magic), but there wasn’t an indication that Aldo had any association to magic prior to him suddenly using it. It was a bit jarring for me in that regard. Comments on previous commentary: Different readers will make different conclusions faster or slower than others. I’ll start by saying I can see where jParker’s opinions originated from, but I wouldn’t quite agree and pass judgment yet. As the tournament was for any and everyone interested in making an effort to become a monster hunter, it would make sense there would be major skill discrepancies between those with experience and/or training compared to someone with neither. So I wouldn’t Mary/Marty Sue him yet until see more of the world. I made the comment above regarding magic and Aldo, but otherwise I’m fine with the sort of signpost of ‘Hey, here’s a bit of magic’ this early on without too much explanation, since I’m imagining it will get explained (you’ve also said so, but even without that, I’d assume it’s something that would get explained one way or another. As long as it doesn’t end up being a surprise problem solver every time something new is introduced about it I’d personally be fine with it, but I will be wary of it after Aldo’s use here. Towards the later part of chapter one I was seeing more passive voice, but overall I felt there was a good amount of active voice, and had no qualms about it, with the exception of when you summarized the rest of the first day with the use of ‘would say’ in dialogue tags. Can’t say why, but I definitely tripped over that part. On the note of using third-person pronouns versus actual names, I will stand by jParker on that one. Disclaimer here: I don’t want to write your story, but a very aimed comment is coming up, so I may be overstepping my bounds. I was reading this story as a confined third-person point of view with each character, meaning behind the character’s eyes, seeing what they see, sharing their thoughts only when we’re on their viewpoint, <aimed comment>so it felt very weird to me that we didn’t lead in with their name, but rather left them nameless until the story presented a more-or-less natural point to reveal their names through dialogue or thoughts. </aimed comment> And again, I feel I’m pushing etiquette here, but an alternative to pronouns and actual names is to use descriptive identifiers to two-for-one, adding description when it’s obvious you're referring to Aldo can mix up the narrative from a barrage of pronouns while adding details to the character. Julia calls him ‘Rich boy’ at one point as an example, but you could also do so in the narrative, ‘the frowning would-be apprentice’, ‘young heir to the <blank> family’, or whatever, just for examples. I’ll step back now. andyk's comment on the PoV characters' deaths actually went the opposite for me. I didn't get particularly attached to either, but my attention from the prologue was elsewhere. I found the first one as part of a prologue I'm still unsure about and the second death as a sort of 'hey, people are gonna die in this story' assertion. General: Your description and actions felt very segregated so the pacing and flow for me felt very stop-go-stop-go. I generally read and assume time is passing with each word, sentence, and paragraph that passes. So when there’s no motion (beats) in the scene, I assume there’s no motion for a reason (which in some cases might make sense, if two opponents are staring one another down after an exchange, or someone is scouting out an area, as examples). For me, when actions are paused and a description shows up, it’s a bit jarring. The lack of connection so far to the prologue by the end of chapter one strikes me oddly. I finished the prologue unsure of its goal was, and that admittedly is making me look now for the ‘why was it there’. Finally, I’m not entirely sold on the story just yet, but I’m not turned off from it. I’d give it another few chapters to see if I get more invested in the characters, plot, and/or world. I did catch the bit of foreshadowing with Aldo as he had some resonance with the sound or action of Diego’s head getting bashed in. While he’s a bit of a prick, I wouldn’t necessarily say I like or dislike him yet. Julia came off as creepy to me, and not in a scary way, so much as just that awkward, overbearing kid that you’d avoid in school. If you want me to clarify any of my points further, or provide examples of what I was referring to on a certain point, or anything along those lines, let me know.

Standard disclaimer I typically start feedback with: This is just feedback, as the author use your discretion on interpreting what is useful, a problem, a comment, etc. from the opinions I state in the following. So I’m evidently coming in on chapter 5, and one of the things that immediately stood out to me was the cast size. Based off reading the feedback already here there was a decent number of new characters introduced (they’re all new for me). I’m actually going to devil’s advocate andyk’s and mandemon’s comments on the not much happening/character introduction. I haven’t seen the rest of the content to know how much action is typically present, but to me, it was only 2,000 words, so for a ‘buck shots’ a bunch of introductions and what seems to be a slow chapter (based on other opinions), I was fine with it. The characters who stood out for me were Vinya (due to being an odd one), Nina (as a POV character), Aiden and Ty as they had that last 700 words as a scene between just the two of them. So those characters will be committed to memory. The rest I may have retained one or two things tops about and (again, coming into chapter 5 with no prior knowledge), it’s enough to sort of plant a ‘land claim’ so when they come up later, it doesn’t feel out of nowhere. Basically, at the moment, not everyone is really strong in my mind, but for the amount of characters who seem to be new (for the story, not just for me), it’s kind of like going: ‘These characters are here, and you’ll learn about them, but I don’t have the luxury or opportunity at this moment to show you them.’ And I’m fine with that. Beyond that: One thing that stood out to me, and this may be due to my being a late-comer, everyone seemed kind of annoyed and unhappy for reasons I don’t entirely understand. People seem to have gripes about one another which you lampshade with Nina’s comments of ‘What is this, middle school?’ and ‘There must be something in the water’. If there’s history here to justify it, then it’s just I haven’t seen it. Maybe it’s something you plan on using later or it’s a part of the business, but at this point I’m just kind of tentatively accepting it. Lunch break is over, so cutting this a little short. The idea behind the story is interesting, I'll definitely be keeping up with it. Can I message you to get copies of the prior chapters?

Hi, you can call me Lord or Juugatsu. Most people seem to do the former just because it's the first half there. I'm a mechanical engineer currently living in the States, in Florida. I'm relatively fresh out of college (graduated in 2012, have only been working for 2.5 years). I say 'only' because because most of my fellow engineers are around twice my age, so they've been effectively working since I was I was born. I started writing back in middle school, originally just fun short stories for my friends, but over the course of high school and college I wrote a host of short stories and longer pieces. Being honest, the first two lengthy pieces I wrote were fanfictions, and they were/are terrible, but it was great practice and there was visible skill progression from the start of to the end of either book so it kept me motivated to keep writing. In terms of novel-length pieces, the first was around 80,000 words, second was around 200,000. Later in high school and throughout college, I started and scrapped a few different novel ideas usually a few chapters in. I currently have an alpha version of a manuscript for a psychological mystery novel which is around 70,000 words and I've recently started another novel. I read through everyone else's introductions the other day, but I unfortunately don't remember off the top of my head who made the comment on the 1,000,000 words being where you get an idea of what you're doing; including short stories and discontiinued pieces, I've easily passed the 500,000 word point and don't think I'm at the 1,000,000 yet. I've yet to have anything professionally published (amateur publishing in school things, yeah). I'm also in charge of another writing group, but the format is a pretty different from how things are around here. In that one it's kind of a submit at your liesure (we use google docs) and provide feedback at liesure. Not many people in that group have active personal projects to submit however, and as it's a group of friends of friends and what not, skill level and motivations vary. I'm interesting in joining here for a group of fresh eyes, fresh feedback styles, and seeing another group in action/being in a group that's more active, essentially. As for why I write, I enjoy the creation of scenes and ideas being presented in the storytelling format. As for reading, I have to admit, I haven't been reading actual books all too much lately. Most of my reading has been technical documentation and material I've been providing feedback on. Latest 'book' I've read is actually the Shadow's Beneath stories. My genre interests vary widely. So I guess, depending on what I see here, I may attempt submitting some of the psychological mystery, but I don't currently have plans to do so. When I make a bit more progress on my latest, unnamed piece, I may start submitting chapters of that. For now that I'm mostly interested in providing feedback and critique. Look forward to working with everyone.