shadowkissed

My apologies for missing the age; it had been a few days since I'd read it and I'd only skimmed it. That was my bad. In regards to the gender, I'm sorry for offending you, and I can see in retrospect how the character could be non-binary. When I read it, however, I took it as a girl, or a woman, trying to hide her gender in order to avoid sex-based crime or otherwise being taken advantage of because of her gender--in that way, a deception. There is a limitation to weighing in on works in progress one chapter at a time, and it is that some aspects of character and some slow-burning plot points or reveals can be confused or misconstrued due to a lack of data points. With a lack of data points, either chapter-by-chapter or generally as a story progresses, we all naturally try to fill in the blanks with our own experiences.

As my comments on chapter 1 suggested, I didn't really find Sorin all that likable, but I liked her much better in this chapter. I think in chapter 1 you were trying to display her capability, but you also showed her experiencing emotion and processing the events, which shows a certain vulnerability and realism that balances her out into someone I found much more likable. I really would have loved a little more of that in chapter 1. I know there wasn't time or cause for a lot of that, but mentions don't have to be long to be successful. I also like that you work more on setting in this chapter. I think you could allude to the jungle more in the first chapter--you have the mention of the mist, but I think you could have also dropped something in about the sounds or smells of the jungle. But that is a cool setting and I'm interested to see what you do with it. One thing I didn't quite understand is in the first chapter, you say "I wasn't anybody's daughter anymore," which led me to believe the mother was likely dead or has disowned her, but in this second chapter, she's looking for her mother, which rules out both of those things, at least to my mind. Maybe that's something you'll explain in the coming chapters, but it's unclear now and it's a little distracting. The bit where she goes to the area where the guild members should all be is really interesting, and you do a good job of setting up the stakes beyond her own problems with it. I'm interested to see how you'll get her involved with that issue. The larger political issues with the queen are also interesting. Overall, I really liked this chapter. It contrasts so sharply from the first chapter that I was a bit jarred, and I think if you make the first chapter a little more like the second in tone and cadence you'll have a more cohesive beginning, and finished product. I get that one is action-packed and the other is more expository, but you can still give them tonal similarities since the POV remains unchanged. Really, though, nicely done.

Replying now as I realized when I was going to comment on chapter 2 that I never got around to saying anything about chapter 1, so I'll be brief. First off, I had a really hard time getting hooked on your character in this. I get that what she's doing is really technical and delicate, but I could use some personality or emotion injected into it. She's tired and frustrated and worried about her mother, yes, but she's still a teenage girl (I assume). Even if she's not going to be prattling on about boys and clothes, she's got to be thinking about something. It also took me a while to figure out her gender, which isn't the biggest deal (and kind of fitting with her pretending to be a boy), but it was a little disorienting when I figured it out--and no matter who else she's trying to fool, the reader should probably know. Secondly, I didn't really feel like there was a strong emotional shift as she figured out the soldiers weren't there for the piece. You have actions and even thoughts supporting her figuring it out, but no emotional or physical cues. If you added a couple of phrases like "something wasn't adding up" or "a prickle of panic danced up my spine" or "the air felt heavier with my growing unease" or something, I think it would go a long way to making Sorin feel more like a real, fleshed-out character we can root for.

You could have such a fantastic, noir-y beginning if you spent just a short paragraph describing the murder scene--the blood, the position of the body, the surroundings. You do this a little later on, but you could really have a fantastic, visceral moment right out of the gate, as well as strengthen your characterization of Pro as a keen-eyed detective and give your reader a quicker sense of your world-building with one opening paragraph. On p3, when he's arguing about the assistant, I think your aside ("Even if I did have time, I wouldn't want to" etc) is unnecessary--you convey that sentiment with his reaction before this--and spelling it out like that also makes him seem like more of a jerk than I think you're going for. Brash, yes, jerk, no. Or, at least, that's the sense I got from the rest of the chapter. On p7, I had to re-read the transition between his barber and getting back out on the street a few times to figure out what had happened. It's a little brief and confusing, at least for me. I don't know if a paragraph break would help or another sentence, or if it's too minor an issue to stress over. You might also consider saving that for chapter 2 and tightening up the first chapter a little--the barber doesn't seem like he will be a particularly vital character, so he doesn't have to be introduced so early. I can see why you included this here--it gives more nuance about the expectations placed upon him by the people he knows and his reputation throughout his city--but you might consider scooting it a little later on. On p7-8, his reaction to the guy seems a little at odds with the hard-boiled detective persona we saw earlier. A softer side of him would provide a more complex character, but it seems a little confusing here and at this speed. You could either make him a little more gruff with the guy--as in, still helpful, but a little less immediately so--or put this nuance a little farther in, when we've gotten a chance to know him better. Also, more general, probably stupid question: are the Dhe like rats? I assumed "Dhe" was an abbreviation for the priests until right up at the end, when I couldn't figure out why a person would be crawling up the guy's leg. So, do the priests worship the rats? Do they just happen to take their names from the same etymological source? There might have been some explanation in the prologue, which I didn't read, but it was confusing for me.

Hey, guys, new here. If anyone has any tips or tricks on how and where to begin, great, and if not, I'll just creep around until I figure it out.