Mandamon

Yay! Looking forward to it. I figured ;-)

Awesome! I'll have to pick your brain for performance critiques afterward...

Oh, the horror! Speaking of which, I've been focusing on getting words down for Seeds book 3, and did a quick calculation yesterday. Turns out I've been writing about 1200 words a day since 10/07, so almost my own little NaNo if I keep it up for another couple weeks!

Hmmm...Yes, this needs to be clarified a lot, maybe in the few DM POVS we have. I had no idea this was his objective. Getting the president involved makes the election coverage make sense as well, and this connection needs to be very clear to show what the stakes are.

Overall, this was more exciting than the last few chapters. My main concern is that now I don't understand DM's motivations. Did we ever learn why he's pulling E-C apart from the inside? He's going in a very roundabout method as well, when he's already chief of security. That's were all the suspicion is going to land once he's done, and I don't see how authorities aren't going to figure everything out. Also, I'm very confused on what DM hoped to accomplish at the end of the chapter with E. For all his supposed competency, he's only managed to kill one of three people. Now he's releasing the animals that kill all the other problem animals, and hoping they go after the human they're coded not to? Seems like a very risky plan which didn't have much chance of working (and didn't...) Also still wondering with Q&M are going to do about all this. Their investigation seems very far away from whatever else is going on, and they've got no stake in the largest danger, which is the creatures loose in YK. They could literally walk away and no one would fault them, or even know they were there. Anyway, still looking forward to how this all wraps up. I'm assuming not many chapters left? Notes while reading: pg 2: "Although things were out of hand, she had been back at the helm" --so this is after Q's call from last chapter? We're caught up to real time now? pg 3: "“Not that kind of test,” said the woman." --can she tell what E thinks just from her face? Also, what kind of test was E thinking of, because I have no idea. pg 4: "I doubt it, and so does the president." --the prime minister? pg 4: "she didn’t know how she knew, but she just knew." --okay, but it seems very plotful. pg 7: "It was Con. C." --Who is this again? pg 10: "Armageddon protocol" --this is the one that just kills the creatures, right? Can they not grow more? I'm wondering why this and not everything else would end E's career. pg 11: "Coded not to attack humans, she reminded herself, coded to seek and destroy unwanted terra-fauna" --oh, well then why didn't they let these creatures out first of all? This seems less like Armageddon and more like first response, unless they're not sure of the creature's code. pg 12: “Emergency protocol one-Mike-two,” --this, however, I'm concerned about. pg 12: "It was him!" --This response is so quick I had to go back and check that I wasn't missing some other clue. I think if E came to this conclusion this quickly, she must have suspected something, but that hasn't come out in the story. pg 13: "they were still in the lift" --wait what? I thought she saw them loaded in. Maybe need some clearer blocking in here. pg 13: "the wimpy little child-hands" --these do not seem made for killing anything... pg 14: "circumvented the laws of robotics fifteen months ago" --okaaaay. This seems awfully convenient. I thought DM was working against E-C, but for TOM? Or am I getting my motivations mixed up. I'm really not that sure why he's doing all this in the first place. pg 14: "Two were showing an interest in Morton, the other pair were closing on her." --I somehow got the idea that there were only two of them...I don't think it was clear how many there were. pg 14: "internal emergency." --I mean, she could also call an outside emergency number, as there are obviously some big shenanigans going on in the company. pg 14: "The goods lift is going to be busy today," --not sure what this means...bringing up other creatures? Why? pg 15: "“It’s the che-ga" --The what now? Did we learn about these before? And won't the saurians just focus on them instead of E? pg 16: "which would have killed her by now if they were going to" --yeah, I mean in this situation, I'd probably be testing my luck against them and getting to safety as quick as I could, rather than letting them herd me. I know it would be much harder in person, but just getting frustrated at E just standing there the whole time. pg 17: Glad there's finally some action here, but I'm very unsure of DM's plan. I'm not sure how he was going to make sure any of the creatures killed E when some were programmed to hunt the others. Maybe she would get caught in the fight, but it still seems pretty sloppy.

Random nerd knowledge FTW!

They might be escape pods?

For some reason these pictures make me think of General Grievous.

I was actually going to suggest that. I think having all the important points in 11,12, and 13 will make a nice, exciting chapter and get Q&M well on their way to their objective.

Oddly enough, I think I'm starting to miss an E chapter! There have been a lot of things in the recent Q&M chapters, but not a lot that really progressed the plot. For this one, I think the only really relevant part in this chapter is the conversation with E. How they get to the bar isn't important, as is the moral implications for how they're going to secure travel for after they leave. Q seems remarkably unconcerned with actually solving the case he's on, and more concerned with a road trip through Canada. One other thing: on the phone call, Q and E get chummy real quick, even though they've never met each other and E is under a lot of stress. You can probably chalk this up to their character types, but I would have expected a little more standoff professionalism from a E, who's just been cold-called by a random investigator. Notes while reading: pg 2: "yet K must not have put their faces on the newsfeed yet." --Why not? That seems plotful... pg 3: "Q tried not to fall in love with how open and honest and pretty she was." --This seems potentially squicky and male gaze-y pg 3: "That’s what people did, he supposed." --I'm more interested in them getting to the point, rather than lengthy introspection at this stage. pg 5: "Breaking news from NWT..." --I really don't care about this election plot line and almost started skimming before I realized there was news on the MTs pg 5: "Reports are coming in of a second kill site." hmmm...but the reader knows all of this already. We've been there first hand. so to devote a page or more to Q&M finding out about this, rather than just saying they found out about it, drags the tension down a lot. pg 6: "Or could she be the crim in this picture?" --criminal? It took me a minute to get this. pg 7: "“I can’t help you if you don’t speak to me, Mister" --did him thinking the part above this really take that long? pg 9: "when working for Gen which was the same as working for E-C" --is it? pg 10: From pages 8-10, this chapter got a lot more interesting. You could probably start from the news story/phone call and not lose anything. However, Q and E do get familiar pretty quickly, which could be because of their characters, but it stood out to me. pg 11: "That was when she’d suggested a road train." --there's a lot of buildup to this concept. I feel like they could maybe have found a more common route that readers would be familiar with, rather than inventing a new concept. pg 13-14: And then a lot more introspection here. I wonder if this sort of thing should go earlier in the story, to make room for more tension in this section? At this point, I'm not invested in M's family, and barely remember them from the first book. pg 15: The whole "mission from God" conversation is strange and doesn't seem to have bearing on the rest of the chapter. Why is it here?

I like this premise a lot better!

Seems like @Robinski came to a lot of the same conclusions as I did, especially on the train's faulty brake and accelerator, and what was going on in the last scene. I enjoyed Z's POV, barring some of the notes I have below. She seems to be on a hero's journey. The other POVs I'm confused about. We haven't been given enough information to tell where R and M are, and I have no idea what that last scene adds. There's a lot of new stuff coming into play as we go into Act 2, and I feel like some of it hasn't been properly set up in Act 1 to pay off here without confusion. Keep going! This is definitely the hardest part to muddle through. Also called "the great swampy middle" by Jim Butcher. I think the split in POV can work here, but there needs to be some more shoring up of reasons and worldbuilding. Nothing that can't be fixed in the next edit. I'm still greatly enjoying the story, and want to find out what happens. Notes while reading pg 2: "almost knocking the air out of her lungs--again!" --this train must be going really fast, and braking really hard. I've traveled across Europe on trains. Granted, I knew how to brace myself, but I don't know if I would have been thrown around this much. pg 2: "It moves unnaturally fast because--well, anyway" --ok, spoke too soon, but now I want to know why it moves unnaturally fast... --and really, the acceleration is the problem, not the speed. Who ever is driving it has a lead foot... pg 3: "She had known that was how the God King lived for generations, passing his essence on from one host to the next," --hmmm...I feel like if this is common knowledge, the reader should know it by now, too. pg 4: "What won’t hurt?" --what is this is response to? pg 5: "and she had to think hard to remember how they had come off" --cool pg 6: “But, I… I’m not a spectral.” --Do we know what a spectral is? Or is this WRS on my part? pg 7: what actually happened in the memory? We get a vague mention of shadows, but I feel like there should be something more concrete for a memory/flashback pg 8: "some spectrals were able to convert the light of their soul lanterns into mage fire." --so are all of those in the corp spectrals? I'm confused on classification. pg 11: The questioning was interesting, and raised a lot of cool points, but I feel almost like we're in a different story. There's a lot of new stuff going on, but Z acts like it's stuff everyone knows. pg 12: "The four of them now moved northward along the road" --wait, M and R didn't get on the train at all? Or the train made a stop later and they got off? pg 12: "had failed miserably the one and only time they tried to do something non-platonic." --that's...a very strange and sterile thought from a teenage boy. pg 13: are the bluecoats the same as the mage corp? pg 13: "Take these two to the God King and let them deliver their message and package" --very confused on who is where. Z and her mother are on the train, which I thought was going to the front and the God King. Except M and R got off the train (or never got on?) and are going the other direction, but this should be the direction they originally intended, if they were going to meet the God King... Are they still near the original place where they went down in the tunnel? It says they were moving along a road. Where is it? pg 14: "sat against the tunnel wall while the two bluecoats ate near the rails." --okay, so they are in the tunnel. Then why did it say they were traveling along a road? pg 15: "situation between Z and her own mother" --do you mean between Z's mom and M's mom? unclear. pg 16: okay, now I'm completely confused. I have no idea who these people are. pg 17: we haven't seen either the hostage or the handler before, have we? If we have, then keeping their identities hidden is frustrating. I'm not sure why they're there, what they're doing, or why this is a POV at all.

Congrats! Hope the transition goes smoothly.

Cool! Looking forward to assembly pictures...

This chapter seemed disjointed and almost disconnected from the plot. It's a lot of Q standing around thinking about things the reader has already learned, changing his personality while talking with TOM, then encountering some strange transformer version of a single mom. Then, finally getting, not to the place they need to be going, but somewhere...close? I hope? I have no idea why TOM chose this moment to talk to Q, when he's evidently had the ability for some time, and I guess has just been sitting back and watching Q&M play Benny Hill will the local police? (Yakity-sax is going through my head, thinking back to the hospital, car, and plane chase...). And why does Q turn into a 9-year old boy when talking to TOM? As he says, he's done the work to get out from under him. I would think he would have had to learn to stand his ground while doing that. Sorry to be negative on this one. This, added to the last chapter, is just making me itchy to have Q&M actually get to the plot of the story and figure things out. Battling genetically engineered monsters is a lot more interesting than a road trip through Canada in winter. Notes while reading: pg 2: "They were passed by numerous vehicles, " --passive... pg 3: "one of the beasts had escaped. " --Probably WRS. Does Q know what kind of creatures they're creating? pg 2-3: There's a lot of thinky bits and explanation here. Not much plot movement. pg 4: "owner of the Five-Star" --who is this and why does it matter? I'm confused as to where they are and what they're doing. (Edit: Ah, I see from the summary above that it was the vehicle from last time that got wrecked. So probably WRS) pg 5: "But what was this all about?" --I feel like this paragraph is bringing the pace down a lot. Q is asking questions about things the reader already knows, and it makes him look far behind the rest of the plot. Contemplating refusing the "heroes quest" at this point in the story is a bit too late. pg 6: "I mean what are we actually doing? How far is it to YK, even with transport?" --pretty much agree with M here. They need to get on it. pg 7: The convo with the old man is...weird. Like I'm not sure why it's happening now and not some time before this. pg 7: "Would you like to speak to her?" --I thought J was in some sort of institution? Am I remembering that wrong? pg 8: “Leaving was too difficult. I put in the hard yards, as they say. I earned this.” --Q's demeanor here is really strange. He's actively working against TOM, but here is subservient to him. pg 9: "you’ve got no right" --I mean, pretty much agree with M again. TOM is obviously sowing some discord and Q has abandoned his usual sharp intellect. pg 9: "A low table separated the rotated seat from a rear bench divided into three separate seats ..." --What the heck is going on? Why is this vehicle stopping and opening up like a 1950's housewife version of Optimus Prime? pg 10: "to the point that three more chairs near the back could flip up and lock into place." --I am both very confused and want one of these vehicles. pg 10: “I hope you nice folks can mend your fences. We’re a happy car, aren’t we?” --is this the mother? Why is she in italics? pg 11: "But you’ll need to work on that. It takes time, and you need to be very polite with it. It might feel like you’re giving in sometimes, but you need to pick your battles." --this chapter has gone off onto a very weird tangent. pg 12: “You got it, Mister Q.” --Did...did Q just conscript a child to tell him how he's getting better at playing board games? pg 13: "Where the heck had that come from?" --yeeees...also wondering what happened to Q this chapter. pg 13: "struggling with a sudden dryness in his throat." --I mean, great, kindness of strangers and everything, but I'm not sure why any of this happened and why Q is suddenly all emotional.

This was a bit rough, but I got the intent. I could picture most things, but @Robinski has a good point about the lack of specificity through the whole chapter. I also thought the final meeting with the two and M was a bit too easy. The giant net is...okay, but not great. Nets are also really vague in how they work and what they trap. Two points where I wanted more buildup were A's final meeting with B, and M's actual appearance. She's just sort of there, and we don't even know she's in a mannequin (that's floating somehow) until a few pages later. I'd prefer if we had even a general idea of what her powers were as a ghost/mannequin. Then you can show exactly how bad off the three are against her. The bones are there, though. Looking forward to reading the last few submissions. Notes while reading: pg 1: “I was like you once, but soon you will be as I am now!” --ok, but it's kind of cliche... pg 1: “To burst out of death’s cocoon like a butterfly will take great power" --okay, M sounds like a bad fortune cookie. pg 1: "They laid on the floor, once again ordinary toys." --that was easy. Why was E so afraid then? pg 2: "I expected it to just fly up and smack me in the face, but it never did. What was M playing at?" --yeah, weird. pg 2: "but didn’t seem to affect them if they were in an object." --as in it can't make them disposses something? pg 3: "That side of the cabinet was filled with human bones." --ick. so the poison ivy on the chains is keeping ghosts away from captured humans (and giving them terrible rashes?)? pg 3: "Green and purple surrounded the bones" --is A not affected by the poison ivy? pg 3: “I know.” He drifted back into his doll." --I think the buildup between A and B needs to be a lot greater before this point. This didn't invoke the emotion I think it should have. pg 4: "our family would still be upstairs " --were they upstairs before? Or is this something that was changed? pg 4: "thing that would hold a hand towel" --a hand towel rack? pg 5: “Is that C?” --Is this D's mother? Did we know her name? Probably WRS. pg 5: "A giant net fell from the ceiling and knocked the sword out of my hands. I reached for it as we flailed the net off of us, and it flew across the room and stuck itself halfway into the wall. " --confusing paragraph here. 1) I would think the net would be more likely to knock them down rather than just knock the sword out of their hands. 2) Which thing flew across the room--the net or the sword? pg 5: "saw M floating above me." --she's a ghost now, right? Not a mannequin? pg 7: “I never meant to kill your friends,” --that's....hard to believe. pg 7: "A stood ten feet tall" --Didn't know he could do this. pg 7: "She was hovering a few feet off the ground, still in her mannequin," --ah, so she is in a mannequin. Need to make this clear earlier. pg 7: last line: ok, I didn't know M could do that either.

I always love trying to reverse engineer what the designers were thinking when they put a set together. When I was a kid, I'd get the castle sets and be disappointed they didn't have proper fortifications on the back side (so they were open for play) I fixed that as soon as I finished building!

I think this chapter was shaky, for a couple reasons. First, I was about to note that I was starting to skim at the beginning. Q&M are once again going somewhere, but not getting there yet. Then, things started to pick up, and the deer made me think they were going to get into a tangle with the MTs, which would be awesome. But it was just a bear, that attacks for no reason I can see (Q&M didn't approach or threaten). While the section is tense, it reads as a sort of "gotcha" bait and switch from the real scary monsters. Again, I'm not sure what this chapter does to further the story. At this point we have all the pieces in play and need to start seeing interaction between Q&M and the party up in YK. Having another chapter of traveling feels like stretching things out for no reason. Sorry to be such a downer. I thought it was very well written and there were some very cool moments, just not as useful in this location in the story. Notes while reading: pg 4: "Androids were suckers for politeness," --that's a cool workaround. I like the message/explanation as well. pg 5: "you have much to learn about boxer shorts." --lol pg 6: "wildlife, you moron" --ooooo...I have a bad feeling about this. --Also, why would Q get out of the car at this point? They just stopped for deer crossing the road. pg 7: "A massive, dark brown shadow..." --I was not really expecting a threat from a bear, or rather I am expecting something else as well... pg 9: “Close call, eh!” --Hmm...So I sort of have a problem with this whole section, as tense as it was. I was fully expecting a MT to come out of the woods, but more than that, why did the bear attack? They were a ways off, from what I can tell, and the bear was, I assume, hunting deer with her cubs. Why would she divert from that to threaten humans? I'll admit I'm not a bear expert, but I would think the bear would know something of the road and know humans use it. pg 9: "There’s much worse running around in the woods up there, I hear." --Yeah, still disgruntled by this. I was expecting Q&M to get a glimpse of the monsters. pg 10: "Priceless Princess?!" --that's awesome. pg 11: "The queer clotheshorse" --great appellation. pg 13: I'm not sure what the introspection from DM does for the chapter. Again, we pretty much know all of this already. We get a little bit of his history, but nothing we couldn't interpolate. T.O.M. is sort of becoming an empty threat because he keeps being threatening, but nothing so far has happened to Q&M by his making. Their troubles with the police were all pretty much by their own hand.

Yuck. Sorry.

Take your time. We'll still be here, ready to read your subs and receive your comments. Twice as many classes sounds pretty rough. That's going to take so assimilation. In fact, maybe that's the solution, just Borg all those students and teach them through the hive mind! Seriously though, no pressure here Agreed. Don't risk your mental health for us, @shatteredsmooth. It's fine not to be caught up, and any comments you do add are always helpful!

Overall, I thought this was a bit scattered. Once they're in the house, the tension keeps up. However before that, I was uncertain as to how they found the house and what purpose the ghost served at the barn. I'm also not really on board with tagging an extremely poisonous plant as a way to get rid of ghosts. The fact that the ghost dog avoids it wouldn't really mean anything. If I recall correctly, poison ivy doesn't work as well on dogs and cats, so maybe its owner just avoided that patch and the ghost is used to it. In addition, you really should never burn poison ivy. Getting it in your lungs can be deadly and having that as a plot point in a mid-grade book seems...unwise. I have some notes about A's backstory below. I thought it mostly made sense, but parts of it need to be planted earlier for it to have the full impact. Notes while reading: pg 1: "almost everywhere but the trail" "bear to lumber over the edge" "we weren’t on the trail" --So they're on the trail, but not on the trail? And a bear is going to lumber over the edge of what? pg 2: "I kept seeing a spectral fluffy tail" --Is this G's tail? I'm not sure. pg 2: "It may have been abandoned now, but I had been here before. " --I'm not sure what this sentence is saying. pg 3: "Books were dusty and probably collecting mold too on a brown shelf" --there are books in an old barn in the middle of nowhere? pg 3: "A was here for a time too, sitting on my shelves. " --ok, that's...sort of convenient. pg 4: "The house had last sold in the eighties" --what house? Is this connected to the barn? I'm not sure I'm following. pg 5: "I knew that M was a ghost of someone who wasn’t entirely human. I knew that by taking life from other people, she could come back to life or turn into something new." --is she inhuman? I know she's got some sort of weird power now, but this makes me think you mean she wasn't human when she was alive. Also, do we actually know that she's trying to come back to life? pg 5: "M’s son" --this is new. I didn't know she had a son or that he was involved in all this. pg 6: "It’s probably why she helped me, and later, why she hated me so much. Why she caused the fire that killed us and so many other people." --A and B being together makes sense, but needs to be a lot earlier, when A talks about what happened with M. However, that doesn't explain why M hated him, or why she caused a fire. pg 7: "Poison ivy repelled ghosts!" --okkkaaay. I mean, it repels people too, to be honest. pg 7: "The letters were tiny and the words big. " --this sounds like the letters of the words are tiny, but somehow make words that are in large print. Maybe "the words long" pg 8: "Dousing a ghost in poison ivy smoke banishes them from this world just like burning their bones would. Unfortunately, breathing it can make you a ghost.” --I....hmmm. It's an interesting plot point, but I'm not sure talking about burning and smoking and incredibly dangerous plant is really good for a mid-grade book? I'm fairly sure poison ivy has never been considered magical for anything, so I guess a plus on inventive worldbuilding? pg 9: "filled the plastic bags with poison ivy" --with...gloves? I have many problems with voluntarily going into a field of poison ivy. I've tangled with it enough in my life that I never want to go near it. pg 9: Maybe it's WRS, but do we know how they found this house? I can't remember. pg 11: "but a wave of it blurred my vision" --a wave of what? pg 11: "A really was pulling his weight this time." --indeed. Didn't he have some limit last time on how much he could do? "He fell back into his doll," --ah. I guess he is tired. pg 12: "grabbed the leash and pulled him back just before bearded jaws clamped onto the mouse." --I mean, okay, but does it really matter here? pg 12: "It rocked back and forth as its legs slowly came apart." --like, fell apart? Is it still walking? pg 13: "The wide, ornate carpeted staircase ran down into the foyer and did not go all the way down to the basement." --I'm not sure what this has to do with the paragraphs around it. pg 13: "I got disoriented in the fall and don’t remember which side of the house is in which direction.” --can't they just look up? They should be able to see through the giant hole where they fell through. pg 14: "She wants to turn us into mannequins" --How? Not with paint cans. pg 15: Good ending to lead us into the next chapter!

I thought this chapter was a bit scattered. It's still a lot of people moving to places they need to be, but the plot isn't really developed much. I feel like Q&M have to be artificially constrained to make sure they don't get to YK too fast. The weird voice in the truck is interesting, but as Q says, there's such a thing as too much mystery, and I have no idea who this is. I'm still not sure E's POV is completely necessary here. We see the company is putting out weird genetically engineered trackers now, but I'm not really sure why the regular means don't work. E's whole situation just seems strange, with her voluntarily chilling out for three days, but then bursting back in to find out what had happened. We're catching up between the two timelines, but it seems like there's a lot of padding to do so. Notes while reading: pg 3: "E’s truck as she slowed to edge through the gap." --so is all this just her driving to work? pg 3: "office to find it empty, again" --has she been in his office since he made her go home? pg 4: "bluster her way into the building" "bloody aftermath of what clearly was a MT attack." -A bit confused on timeline. This is after the deer attack from a couple chapters ago? But it was three days after DM made her leave the office. I feel like the company would have done something about her status at this point, either made her officially "on leave" or cleared her for work again. pg 4: "You have twenty-four hours to report meaningful progress" --didn't he say he was immediately going to go national if someone got killed? Or because it's an animal, he's giving her time? pg 5: "he needed a board-approved letter to keep her away for more than a day, or part thereof." --Aha. So then why does she think she'll have a problem getting into the building? pg 5: "It might help guard against panic in the uninformed." --finding a picture will guard against panic? I would think it would make people more panicked. Also, I think there needs to be more dialogue tags here. I'm getting lost. pg 6: ". “Do it. Charge up every coat rack and hat stand in this place and get them out there." --this also seems like a contradiction. Turn the search teams around, but get more people out searching? pg 7: "but there was a marked sparsity of androids in the building" --what does this imply? pg 10: I'm uncertain why using the VDs will get better information that drones and standard search techniques. Are they bred to find MTs? pg 10: "they were on their way to rescue and possibly save the life of a (possibly) fair lady" --probably WRS, but who do they think they're saving? The wife? T? E? pg 10: "staff bay" --ah, I think this must be just language differences. I had to read a few times to translate to "employee parking spot." pg 11: "did not have time to dwell on who had done that and how. " --wait, I thought eighty did that by himself? pg 13: "then angled his seat back and fell asleep" --hmm...a few nice character moments, but once again, Q&M are traveling somewhere and not really doing anything to progress the plot. pg 14: "I’m waiting here in YK and ready to help you all I can. Do hurry. It’s so boring here." --ok, I'm completely confused as to who this is. pg 15: "flexing his biceps and triceps" --lol. I think I know what you mean, but it sounds like he's doing poses in the truck. pg 16: "a charge list as long as his well-developed biceps, and he retained the option to pump that smartass full of ‘lead’ if the need arose." --ok, maybe he was posing. Also, why is "lead" in quotes?

Ha! cool. I've been seeing ads for it, but now I'll have to go look at it.

The beginning of the chapter reads much smoother. Just had a few comments, below. The rest of the chapter is very interesting. As I suspected, they get a ride in the train, so I assume things will move to the "front." I felt like there was a lot of skipping over meetings and confrontations that would be good to know about, as the way you did things rushed things along quite a bit. We don't even know if the others are alive, after whatever questioning they went through. I suspect they are, but you're using worldbuilding I don't know about (inquisitors) to move things along and it doesn't feel earned. That said, I do like that we get to a new revelation, even though I'm confused about it. Now I'm wondering what the God King is and how much the general population knows about the title? parasite? person? Interested to read more. Notes while reading: pg 4: I'd still like a better description of the width and height of the tunnel. They're spending a lot of time walking to the alcove--were they sleeping on the tracks? Is there a platform? It feels like the tunnel is pretty large. pg 6/7: the descent into panic reads a lot better. It still describes everything but is a lot shorter and punchier. pg 7: "the frode" --what is this? pg 8: "blorst, blorst, first" --I think I get this? She's losing words? It's still sort of confusing and hard to follow. The slashes actually work better for me. I don't know of an easy way to do this though... pg 10: "plain white candle" --this is better and doesn't cast as much importance on why it is a candle. I'm still curious since this seems to define a personality, but I'm willing to find out after the crisis is past. pg 11: "shoulder into it" --into what? pg 11: "Magnetized?” --Is this common enough that a kid (even R) would think of it as a solution? If there was a (I assume) big heavy metal door, I'd just first assume it was stuck or rusted. pg 11: "Blue, she thought, like the flame of my soul lantern." --hmmm...this is starting to attach significance I don't know about again. I seem to recall blue is connected to the God King or something? But what color are the others' lanterns naturally? We were told earlier that M's turned red when she was angry, but I don't know what color it changed from. pg 11: "give me a ticket for loitering" --this seems...unlikely. Is giving out tickets even a thing? pg 11: "fell fell to the ground" "she felt unconscious " --typo, and is "felt" supposed to be "fell?" pg 12: "It’s been two years since that... ordeal with the princess" --glad we're starting to see a connection. But is this the deal that happened earlier in the book, setting it two years ago, or is this the original thing where the princess went comatose (?) WRS starting to kick in. Basically just wondering if the plotlines are congruent. pg 13: "so old he should have been on his deathbed." --interesting. I'm very confused by everything that's going on, but willing to wait it out a bit longer to find out. pg 13: Mother/General G is kind of confusing. Did we learn she was also a general? can't remember. pg 14: "as strange as it sounded to be comparing a skin color to food." --ehhh...I'm not sure hanging a lantern on this makes up for it. I don't know if I'm qualified to judge though. pg 14: "Z understood to be a lie immediately" --I like how she understands this. pg 15: "I know about the demon egg and the message it played for you." --this is...an interesting technique. It gets rid of a lot of confusion, but almost seems like cheating. I would have liked to see some of how they got the information, to justify it. pg 15: "she knew the woman could be no other than--" --wait, she did? How does she know this? I almost think all this is moving too fast. It gets rid of a lot of tedious "who are you" discussion, but again, almost feels like cheating. pg 16: “I… don’t know what you mean,” --I'm with Z, though I hope an explanation is coming. pg 16: "because it isn’t unique. Only one type of person has a soul lantern like that.” --If only one person has a lantern like this, then isn't it unique by definition? pg 17: "are a potential host for the God King.” --ok, that's sort of what I was suspecting? Except I still don't know enough about the world. is the God King some sort of parasite? Do normal people know this? From everything previous, I was assuming it was a post you trained for. Of course, all this can be answered later. It's just that this is the first time "host" has been thrown into things, which brings up a much different set of connotations.

This was a good sequel chapter to the action in the last one. We get a chance to decompress and find out more about what's going on. I'd have liked some more questions in the last chapter about A so they can be properly answered here. I also felt there wasn't enough time spent on conclusions. A problem would be stated, and then not really followed up on: there's poison ivy, What do we do next, A got outed, A is partially responsible for the deaths... All are stated questions, but don't really go anywhere. Maybe some of these are answered in the second half? I agree. I'd like to see what you have planned for the rest of the story. I can point out what inconsistencies I see without forgetting what's happened up until now. I do appreciate that you've given M at least some kindness, so she's not just plain evil. Again, I think it will help if we learn why she helped A, when she was poisoning the girls. Notes while reading: pg 1: There's a lot of the dog rolling on a dead thing. It was fine as a joke at the end of the last chapter, but I don't know why we need to cover it again. pg 2: "made my stomach growl" --After seeing the dead bodies? Come to think of it, there's not a lot of resolution to that thought from last chapter. A kid just sort of shrugs off being in a fight with supernatural forces and dead bodies. pg 4: "Half of what ghosts are is memory." --It would be good for D to make this observation in the last chapter as a possible reason why A didn't do anything. Then it can be confirmed here. pg 5: "Poison ivy grew all around the edges of the clearing, and there was no way to avoid going through it." --Soooo...what did they do? Just tromp through it? Step carefully? I assume they at least tried not to get any on them. pg 6: “The day someone outed me to the floor supervisor.” --interesting that this has a bigger presence to a ghost that death (Not a criticism, but interesting from an outside perspective to know that this has so much impact). pg 6: "“Most of my friends at the mill knew I was gay. They accepted me as a boy even though I was born with a female body." --But one is a gay issue and one is a trans/enby issue, yes? Not that they couldn't have accepted both, but one sentence doesn't necessarily lead to the next. pg 7: "I didn’t ask her about the poison. What she’d just done for me was rare in my day.” --that's an interesting moral question for a kid's book, or really any book. M is literally killing kids... pg 8: "when A died I learned the truth" --how? pg 8: "“It wasn’t your fault.” --I mean, it sort of was... pg 9: "while I looked through my phone." --I thought with the fuss at the beginning of the chapter, no one had any phones. Was E lazy enough that they didn't take their own phone out to check the time? pg 9: "How long did we have before M left Mom’s car somewhere and the mannequins?" --This sentence doesn't seem complete.