Yados

Reading through, the biggest weakness I find in this story is the way you handle Brinna. Although she is the main point of view, she has almost no agency in this story. Her husband shepherds her away. Hunters catch and beat them for no reason beyond their ability to do so. Brinna neither bargains nor threatens-- merely pleads until the climax. She's pregnant, yes, and that limits her ability to act physically, but we never see Brinna do anything but comply, inside and out, with the demands of others. Give her some fire. Give her some defiance. More than just that is the problem of voice. Brinna almost never speaks. We have no tangible feel for how this character exists in the external world. This is especially troubling when the premise of the story is about witches, a label historically applied to women who threatened traditional ideals of society by their empowerment and independence. Brinna, despite her handicap, seems to have neither voice nor volition. If it were me, I'd excise the character of Mark from the text as a whole and let Brinna be the engineer of her own escape/capture. Maybe Mark is waiting for her in the city. Maybe he died some time ago. But as of now, Mark is taking up so much of the page/thought-space and, more importantly, he's doing so at the expense of Brinna. True, this may cut away at some of the emotional core of the story, but taking him out may force you to build things to distinguish Brinna beyond her attachments to the people around her. Who is this character when you take away her husband and her baby? There's also the problem that you set up a hard rule of magic – that it cannot be used while the wielder is pregnant-- and then break it, three pages later, with zero consequences to the characters. You can't do that and expect the reader to take anything you put forth seriously from there on because there is no assurance that any restrictions will last longer than the plot requires them too. On a more technical level, you seem to have problems with commas and with merging compound sentences. I pointed out most of the instances in my line edit, but you'll want to go over it again. You also take a long time to say very simple things. I pruned a lot of what I felt was unnecessary. Obviously, you have a better feel for your own story, but consider a more terse style. You use a lot of qualifying words that don't add anything and don't even establish a voice for your character. With that space, you could use vivid detail to really put your reader in the shoes of Brinna. I should also point out that none of the characters/places/etc were described. I don't know what Brinna or Mark or any of the Hunters look like. Your dialogue is a little plain. Sometimes you have blocks of speech by one character that could be turned into a conversation easily and make the information being conveyed seem more natural. Simultaneously, you could be establishing voice, something that was sorely lacking here. Try really nailing down the speech patterns for all your characters. It's what can take a throwaway character and turn him/her into a memorable one. I think that this story has a resonating emotional core at its heart and, if you do a little excavation, it will really shine through. I also think that the way you're using magic is interesting and this system (draining and refocusing the life-force of others) could have huge implications for a wider society. Keep at it, but be mindful of the disconnect between how these characters/places exist in your imagination and how you're presenting them to your audience. Take steps to make the characters and world as vivid on the page as they no doubt are in your head and I think a lot of the problems this story has so far will be resolved. Also: on the off-chance that you read this before you check your email, I've sent you line edits. I wish you the best in revising this and moving forward.

I want to make it clear that I was talking about myself and my own failure to send in critiques while submitting no small number of things. That comment reads pretty catty otherwise. I'm going to make the place less dead because it isn't fair that I'm submitting so much without paying back in.

I have something I could submit this Monday, but I may hold off. I'm committing myself to reading/commenting on at least three stories/chapters before I submit something new. This place has gotten far too dead the last two weeks and it's fair to nobody.

Oh true. I forgot spikes could increase power in abilities that existed naturally in its host. That seems odd in light of new information as it seems like storing investiture.

Well, Sazed and Marsh seemed to tolerate one another rather than be allied. Furthermore, if Sazed gave Marsh full Mistborn/Feruchemist abilities, he wouldn't still have/need the spikes. He has his powers through hemalurgy still at the end of the book. But beyond that, Marsh has Atium, presumably an Atium spike as well, but he burns it at the cost of his ability to compound age, the only thing keeping him alive at this point.

Guys, not to say you're all thinking a little small time, but with Ferumancy having been introduced into the bloodlines of Scadrial, you could breed a Mistborn who was also (at the very least) a Ferring Compounder. Also, if they did create a "new lord ruler", full feruchemist and mistborn, wouldn't he be more powerful than Marsh simply by having access to ALL the metals, rather than just the one that the Steel Ministry knew about in the original trilogy? I mean, I assume that Marsh doesn't have a bendalloy spike. Just thoughts.

This has always been my thinking as well.

Hi again. Prologue: Cities fall, Characters are introduced, and a vile conspiracy is unmasked. Our heroes make their stand as all hope is lost and the screen fades to black. First Chapter: Five Years Later Till is a Black Magician. He is sometimes happy about this but usually not. It means he has to deal with pompous bureaucrats who want the world and think all they have to do to get it is pay. But it is more complicated than that. Everything is complicated now. Things were much simpler when Till was a criminal. Second Chapter: Till attempts to escape his new, complicated life at a bar he built a few weeks ago. It turns out that money can't buy you happiness or your past back. What more, when you try, people just tend to shoot your weird looks and stay out of the way. A prodigious brainstorming is interrupted by the arrival of an old friend who brings with him an unwanted companion -- death in red robes. Third Chapter: What you are reading now Oh, and I'll slap the same trigger warning for self-inflicted harm in this chapter. As I said, not explicit or graphic or even taking up the same emotional real estate, but better safe than offending someone in these matters.

So I'll have another chapter of BMBD to post tomorrow if that's alright.

True, I also bet it'll be much less packed than the ToM event. That was mad-packed. This might be more chill? Or is that a total misapproximation?

Yeah I'm considering it. I got the ebook, but I suppose I could get my Nook signed.

Not to nitpick, but isn't it a bit of a crutch for Rothfuss to do NaNoWriMo for a book he's RE-writing? Not that I'm complaining that the first 50k words of the Stone Doors is being written.

Well if that's true, reapply all the stuff I said before. Is there going to be a giant Crisis on Infinite Earths deal to close out the Shardworld books or is it going to happen naturally in some book about Hoid/SS?

Yeah, I realized that a moment after leaving the computer.

Well if Hemalurgy can't steal the tears, it can probably steal Breaths. Which is a huge wrench thrown in that world's ecosystem since almost all power/economy is based on willingness. With a Hemalurgic Spike, you could end a Returned with one prick, stealing the Huge Breath they need to live (and healing youself of any ailment in the process). You could do the same to a lifeless... but not as interesting. You could probably also steal all the breaths you wanted from an Awakener (or anyone else who lives on that world, accrewing Breaths via force rather than commerce). The only system I can think of that wouldn't be undone by Hemalurgy would be that from Sel, where the power is stored by the land and accessed by the humans (through the Aons) rather than held within like Feruchemy, Allomancy, Surgebinding, and Awakening/Returned. Just a thought.

I feel this prologue and the magic system itself might qualify for a trigger warning for cutting. I didn't mean to make those bits graphic (and I don't think they are), but it never hurts to be safe. I think this prologue does some context work that my first prologue didn't and sets up some back story that I won't have to explain much later. Hopefully. It's a prologue, so I won't summarize the other chapters here. Though I'll include a summary of this chapter 3 on.

The first week of November is a terrible time to get sick. Nonetheless, I'm up to 7000 words. So that's fun.

Yeah, apparently he's doing much better and Republic of Thieves will be out some time next year. Which is awesome as Gentlemen Bastards is a series that I can't wait to reinvest in.

Thanks! I'm glad you liked this chapter. I'm definitely moving Ga-Vern's origin to later. That began as a bit to set up "the best thing about wealth" but then prompty got out of hand. I'll probably replace that segment with something a bit more descriptive and involved w/ Till moving from one area of his district to the more impoverished district. It'll also give me a place to mention Ayami, if briefly, so she doesn't pop out of nowhere.

I'll have something by Monday (hopefully) but if four is too many, I can hold it off a week.

Huh, you know that's an interesting point. I never really consider my characters' morality when crafting them. I mean, I think about voice, their likes, their dislikes, their personaliy, their temper, their demeanor, the kinds of actions which would be reasonable or extreme for them, but never quite a full moral code. But then, I don't think "wow, this is gritty and remorseless" when I'm writing something like the failed-prologue. I actually think "what a light, fun romp". So I may well be a bit of a sociopath. The jury is still out. I try to give Till some sympathetic, if flawed, traits in the second chapter. I'll be interested to see how that effects your judgement of his worth as a protagonist. Especially since cutting back some of the cast made him sole pov. A non-homicidal Surr also makes an appearance and their relationship is established, tennuous though it is.

Yeah, I noticed that too. Ranzi has been completely excised. The plethora of reformed/practicing thieves is because the book centers around an ex-thieving crew who, 5 years ago, did some things that wiped their slates clean and allowed them to live in luxury/legitimacy. How they have dealt with those circumstances and what they'll do to hang onto them when an unfilled contract from their criminal days comes into play... plot of the story, etc.

First Chapter: Till is a Black Magician. He is sometimes happy about this but usually not. It means he has to deal with pompous bureaucrats who want the world and think all they have to do to get it is pay. But it is more complicated than that. Everything is complicated now. Things were much simpler when Till was a criminal. Second Chapter: What you are reading.

Oh also: Anyone reading now should completely disregard the prologue. I've reworked a lot of the plot/chronology and while those events do happen, they happen very differently and with different circumstances/characters and within the main progression of the plot. So yeah. Disregard. Plus I was really unhappy with them.

I will most likely submit the second chapter of BMBD tomorrow if there is room.