JamesCopeland

I'll jump right in. Things I liked/ thought worked well: • This is the first time I've read any of your work so the character was initially unfamiliar and I don't know any of the story beyond your summary, however within the first few pages you had covered much of the preceding material and helped me to understand the situation the character was in, I got a very good section of his voice and how he saw the city in terms of the desert descriptions really got me going on the resource scarcity, even when he described things like the crumbling walls, you could probably lay t up a little more if you wanted to. • Absolutely loved the whole chapter in general, felt the action during the second half very intensely. Although the first half was a little less punchy, it maintained the drama throughout, conveying his motivations about getting his father back while relaying the increasingly desperate state of both the city and Dais. I really like how you've tied the well-being of the main character into the wellbeing of the city, helps to keep the reader appraised of the city's situation even when you're describing how Dais isn't getting enough moisture/water. • I liked the ending of the chapter as well, it really made e want to know what happened next, with the literal cliffhanger. However, Writing Excuses advises not to be ending each chapter in this fashion, as I haven't read them yet, this more a warning than a correction. It worked really well here. Things I didn't like so much: • I'm a little bit concerned about the name kniphofia, it just seems a little strange that the two different "f" sounds are being combined in one word. • When you get to Kniphofia's entrance you could add some description of her, even though it's pretty much a single line scene for her. Perhaps you could put a single item of description in? For Amelanchier, who the character clearly knows we get the bit about his hat, but this relatively new character, or one whom Dais doesn't recognise, is left as a sort of blank slate beyond strong woman with a sack. • When we got to the action scene, i.e. the chase bit, I thought that you very effectively described the urchin characters, but I wasn't really clear on their motive, were they chasing him because this was the second time he had been found on their turf, or because they also need water and he might take their resources, do they think that he killed one of them because of a mix up earlier in the book? I wanted to know why they chasing him, and even if you covered it earlier in the book, a single line of reported thought could bring it back to the reader, i.e. "Why hadn't they given up chasing him already? I've escaped them three times." or if he knows why they're chasing him, "I can't believe that a single drink from their storage would make them chase me like this, it's been over three weeks." Although both of my examples felt very expository and info-dumpy I'm sure that you could weave it in much better. All in all, an exciting chapter filled with action, I think the reader needs to get a bit more of the motivations of both antagonistic parties, Amelanchier and the urchins, although I guess that both of these have been covered in earlier chapters. James

Hello everyone, I've just joined this forum and the reading excuses list yesterday, but I felt like I should introduce myself before critiquing or submitting anything. Anyway, my name is James and I'm an Engineering student living in Australia. My favourite authors are all pretty new I think, people like peter v. brett, brent weeks, and brandon sanderson (obligatory). As a teenager I missed out on a lot of the formative authors, people like Tolkein and Asimov, but I've recently been determined to read pretty much every nebula and hugo award winning book, along with a stack of books which could crush elephants. My pile of to-read is expanding at an untenable rate (see some of the Engineering student coming through) and has been since I decided to give writing a proper go. My writing is in many ways inspired by listening to the writing excuses podcast, they were the first podcast I ever listened to, and I tend to listen to them right before I start writing for the day. My current project, which is discovery-written as a reaction to all the formatting in an engineer's life, has reached 20,000 words as of 15 minutes ago and is written as a conspiracy theory epic fantasy, although I'm having trouble nailing down exactly who is the real conspirator (yay discovery writing). It's really nice to meet all of you, and I can't wait to start reading your words.