Mandamon

Since there seems to be activity, anyone mind if I make a last minute submission? A little under 3000 words; part 1 of chapter 4.

Grammar/word choice note: There are a lot of "just"s in your first few paragraphs here. Usually you can take them out with no loss to the sentence meaning. The first few paragraphs here also aren't that engaging, as all the action is passive. I know you want to get past this part, but maybe throw in a line of dialogue to spice it up? pg 3: "wonder" --probably you mean "wander" Pg 7: "You’re blood still flows" --Your This was a pretty short entry, and read easily. There some passive sections in a few places that could be reworded to be more interesting, mainly because most of this section is explanation and infodump. Usually that's a bad thing, but I think here it's a welcome break to explain some of the terms you've thrown out. You do still progress the plot while giving us information, and that's the important thing. We learn what Eve is, and that she's different that most other people. Now I assume she will do something about it. Not much else to say. This was pretty solid, even if the writing could be a bit crisper. That sort of thing can be done while editing. Looking forward to more next time!

Thanks again Juugatsu! I do try to keep a tight POV when I write, and as you noticed, I'm switching between the sisters every chapter. Seems to be working... I've had other comments that their personalities are too alike (or non-existent) at the beginning. While they do grow later on, I'm wondering if its enough to turn off readers before they get to that point. Hopefully not... I also had some other comments on the "great Fruits" being kind of sudden or not fitting. I think you have a good explanation for that here in that you're only seen slave life so far, and this is kind of thrown in there. I'll certainly mess around with that part to make it smoother. Not quite sure how yet. Glad you/re enjoying it, though! I'll post part 1 of Ch 4 next week, as that one is pretty long.

The prologue was probably the weakest portion of this for me as well. The rest of the entry was captivating and kept me reading until the end. I'm starting to get a little information about the world, and mysteries about the characters and I want to read more to find out. For pantsing this so far, everything is very well connected and the characters have very good starting states. My concern is that things may spiral out of control very quickly if there's no plan for the rest of the book. I want to see these characters grow further in the same interesting way they've started. This is similar to what LerroyJenkins says above. Nothing really happens here, but it's all very interesting and has my interest. Now make something happen with these people and keep me reading. In the intro, it takes a few paragraphs to get to the meat of what you're telling us, about the old man and the cargo. I was almost ready to start skimming when I got there. Maybe move the "thesis" so to speak closer to the opening scene to make sure you hook the reader. In the next scene, in contrast, you instantly hook me with Tebo wondering about Johnny Apple. You can probably take out some of the "said-isms." For example: "...I have to go down to the dock to pick up a shipment.” He hesitated for a moment then said “… and tell Johnny he can have some dinner with us tonight if he wants.” --we know the father is still talking, so "He hesitated for a moment then said" can become "He hesitated for a moment." I didn't see this happen much after this point, so maybe it was just the one case. I like all of the characters here. As I read on, I get a good image of all them with only a few lines of description. Even though you have several POVs here, you tend to weave them together well enough that I don't have any complaints about too many POVS (yet). I also really like how each character knows each other, but they are carrying on their own life. each feels like the story is only about them, until you get to the next character. Contrary to Lerroy, I don't mind that we're switching from one to another, because I'm pretty sure we'll get back around soon. That said, I don't think the story can handle many (or any) more POVs. You have very captivating description. I can see your scenes very clearly. I also like the short named sections/chapters. It makes me think of an old man telling the story by a fire, for some reason.

Overall, I was engaged. However, I did have a couple questions running through my head while reading (similar to the ones noted by LerroyJenkins above): 1) Why is Jacks down there in the first place? 2) Why does Jack decide to free Kyd and demonstrate the use of power to him? Is he just bored? I assume he has more important things to do since he's down in the slums and you say Kings never go down there. Kyd bumped into him by accident, so I can't think Jacks was looking for Kyd beforehand. I'm hoping these will be addressed in later chapters. I don't need the answers right now, but they did pop into my head. I assume Jacks has some plan behind it. Kyd is happy that Jacks called him "son," but he seems to do this constantly, more as a nickname for Kyd than anything else. I don't know why Kyd would read anything more into it. You could just as easily have a homeless beggar on the street call him "son." Some notes while reading through. Most are grammar/typos. Pg 1: "This feeling may" --not in past tense Pg 1: "By Theandolore's" --sort of a strange curse. By Theandolore's what? pg 4: "Jacks demanded in the most commanding voice Kyd had ever heard. Immediately, everyone in the room started moving. Some moved to protect the company leader, " --the wording in this section felt clumsy for some reason. The next paragraph, about Kieth, seems unnecessary. Also, the reader can tell the guards running away aren't loyal at the moment. Pg 5: "cheep" -cheap Pg 5: business sense is a religious virtue? pf 5: "We are not up for ransom, actually," --"actually" lessens the impact of the sentence, coming from such a powerful man. Pg 5: "steel" --steal Pg 6: "Your welcome" --you're Pg 7: "only plants permitted within the city limits" --This seems very strange. Surely some people have gardens or potted plants. For just a throwaway line, I want more explanation. Interested to see more of this!

Thanks from both of you! @Juugatsu: I've had some others react with confusion to the tags in this section, so it's not just you. I need to go in and clean up the POV. I was getting tired of typing the character's names... Similarly, there were also comments about the logistics of getting the three outside to solve their own problems. More feedback on this from different eyes is great. I'm still turning over in my head what to do to make this scene work better. @stormweasel: First critique! I'm honored. Magic was explained earlier, to some extent, so I think that's where the confusion is coming from. Tl;dr certain capital "Fruits" have magic juice and people with locks of certain color hair get magic powers from them. Slaves have their hair bleached so they can't tell if they have any magical color. Tia freezing was in the physical sense of standing still. Thanks for the suggestion on the dialogue. I'll mull over what to do with this part. I'll be getting to yours tomorrow! If you want to read the earlier chapters, send me a PM with your email and I'll send them. Or just read from here on. Whichever you want.

I wrote the below before looking at your questions. I think I handled "Magic" pretty thoroughly, so here's my impressions on the other ones: --The genre is much clearer here than the first time around. I get the more or less standard medieval setting. --I didn't have any problems with the characters. They interacted normally to me. --Pacing: There's not a lot of info-dumping, which is good. I thought the pacing was very smooth. You may have gone too far the other direction on the info-dumping in terms of magic, as I expound about below... ------------------------------- The flow and writing is good for both of these chapters (there's an errant "chapter 3" stuck in the middle) and it kept me reading. You've obviously got a lot of worldbuilding behind it, but there are a few places it doesn't work quite right, as highlighted below. Chapter 1: I'm interested so far. I think I remember the prologue (looked back at the archives and it was in March!), but this doesn't seem to have a lot of overlap, so I'm not missing anything by not remembering. You have enough description of the Brutes for me to understand what they are (not that I know why or how yet, but I assume that will come). There's some good action to show what they are capable of. The revelation at the end of the boy being either an Apex or a Caecus is harder to follow. "Apex" as a word I'm familiar with, so I can make a guess what that means. Caecus is obviously Latin, but I had to look it up. It seems to mean "blind?" so I'm not sure where this is going. I'm making a lot of this, but it's positioned in the writing as a revelation. I don't have enough info to be in on the secret, so I just wind up feeling dumb until you tell me what it is. Chapter 2: It took me a while to remember Eve from the prologue, but you give enough hints that even after 6+ months I remember. So good job on that. However, this chapter has some of the same problems as the first one. Here there are three more new words, "Sapients," "Mark of Ascendance," and "Fray." None are really given any explanation, except that Sapients seem to be refugees and have less than normal intelligence? So again, I'm sort of left in the dark even though you seem to be revealing something of importance in that Eve is a Fray. I'm intrigued to read more, but I'm also juggling 5-6 strange terms in my head, wondering when I will find out more about them. I'm not saying you have to explain them now, but hopefully there will be clarity soon. Aside from that, the story is interesting, and I'm wondering where it's heading.

Sorry folks, this is a little long, but rather than break up chapter 3 in two parts and give you half of chapter 2 and half of chapter 3, I decided to go for it. If you don't want to read all of it, just give me feedback on what you did. For those who haven't seen the first chapter and a half, Kisare and her sister Belili are slaves on the Aricaba plantation. While burying a dead child under the magical Apple tree, they discover a mysterious box. Then someone steals magical Apple slices from the house, and all the slaves are locked up to determine who is guilty. And we're off! All comments are appreciated. I have a thick skin.

Amazing.

Eh? I've never seen that. Where is that listed?

I can submit a continuation of Fruits of the Gods. Not sure how many people have read the first couple entries, but I could do the second half of ch2 and part of ch 3.

Welcome to Reading Excuses! It's been a slow month with NaNoWriMo, so you may have some more responses in later weeks. Generally I agree with Juugatsu. I thought this this was well written and flowed very smoothly. I didn't have a problem with the description of the carriage. It helped me get into the story, although it was a very fancy carriage... I was surprised at the amount of comforts it had. I didn't notice the distance from the character in the first read, but I see what Juugatsu is saying. Again, I didn't really have a problem with it, as I felt it fit the atmosphere of the writing. In scope, this reminded me a lot a Bram Stoker's Dracula, with the ship coming into dock, the fog and recovering something important from the ship. I'm interested to see what happens with Juliet, especially with the hints about her age, and that she has grown a lot older recently. It seems like, from your pitch above, that Juliet isn't the main character--the detective is. So of course I'm wondering why he isn't in the first chapter. I don't have a lot of critique, mainly because I didn't see a lot wrong with this. I'm interested to see what the next chapters look like. Found a few typos here and there. Everything else looked pretty polished. pg 2: two places: "hide" instead of "hid" pg 5: "steady rain" instead of "steady raid" "brother" instead of "brothers" later on, I didn't mark the page.

First off, this did keep my attention, even with an unsympathetic POV. The wording could be tightened up, but that's more of an editing thing. The first paragraph has some very generic terms: "his people" "The man" I don't get enough information from these terms to engage my interest. A few paragraphs later: "He hated being civil to these lesser types" -This sentence is exactly the same as a couple sentences before. I get that Gaspard is not very likable, but we don't know anything about him, so his actions come off as just mean. I don't know why someone would kill people and burn down a building just for the heck of it, even if they feel themselves superior. He says the killings are in justification, but then doesn't seem upset enough about his wife's death for that to be true. So, I'm interested to see more, and as this is a prologue, I'm assuming there might be another main character coming along. I'm not sure I want to see a whole book about Gaspard. You give some hints of a magic system, but not enough for me to tell what it is, aside from Gaspard and the woman channeling electricity.

Great tips from Mr. Farland. Thanks for sharing!

Welcome to Reading Excuses! Not the best introduction, as it's pretty dead around here this month. Lots of people are doing NaNoWriMo. I did get the email, so I'll look over it in the next few days and give you some feedback. In the future, make sure you post to the submission thread here so we know a submission is coming. The general rules are here, if you haven't read those yet.

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

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.

Overall the writing was good here, and you have an interesting start to a story. I'm still wondering who the POV will be. You have four different voices in the first chapter alone, but I'm assuming Gin is the main character. Gin's speech in his POV at the beginning seems a lot more relaxed than in the rest of the chapter. Notes: pg 2: I wouldn't say the passage about Gin's upbringing is infodumping, per se, but it comes across as very dry. It just says: "here's something about the character." So even though it was short, it made me want to skip over that part. pg 4: "I’m guessing you’re all allies of that human banner I raised.” --It took me a long time to figure out what this meant. I think Gin's referring to the victim being dragged up a flag post? pg 15: The last few paragraphs dealing with the Abolisher are similar to what I mentioned at the beginning of the submission. There was one other instance that was the same way. It's a very short info-dump, or at least reads as a very long aside about something. For me, it takes the focus away from the story. I'm certainly interested in reading more. However, you've already given me a lot of information on devils and possession and so forth, so I've been able to make an assumption as to what Gin is. I'm wondering then whether the rest of the story is Gin doing horrible things, or people trying to stop him, or something else. There's an antagonist in Gin, but I don't see any conflict for him yet. Alex or Selena could be the protagonist, but I don't have enough information about them. Looking forward to next time...

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

Hmmm...I can do another submission for next week, but didn't get a lot of feedback for the last one. Is everyone off doing NaNoWriMo?

Thanks for the feedback! You're on the right track as to where the story is going. You'll see some more development in the second chapter, so I'm interested to see what you think next week and if it hooks you better. The names are Babylonian inspired. A lot of them come directly from recorded names. Glad you liked them.

I submitted this to Reading Excuses in June. This version includes the edits from comments, but has a lot of new content as well. Looking for any comments! Thanks.

If no one's going this week, I'd like to resubmit something I submitted back in June with edits as suggested by the R.E. crew and see what the new response is.

An interesting alternate history short. The story was easy to ready for the first half, but I was still wondering what it was about. Very nice reveal on page 5 about what the conspiracy was. Then I had just figured everything out when the folder plops down on the table. Nice double punch on that one. In all, I liked it. It has good pacing, a nice twist, and it (unfortunately) seems believable. A quick and entertaining read. Not much else to say, but I suppose that's probably a good thing...

Yes, that was a negative toward Mya's weakness. It's just my impressions, but she's described as very strong, she put Ranus in his place, she's been a Equo for twenty years, and the Equo seem to be universally respected and feared. It's your story, so don't take this as me saying you have to change something. It's just my reaction that from all these facts, I would expect a truly strong woman underneath. I'm ready to be convinced why she has the failings you say, but at the moment, I don't have the evidence for it, so it came across as a departure from what I was reading.