Mandamon

You're...actually not far off. Does that make it better? Anyway, I'll see what you think of the last few chapters. Lol!! At least I have a brand... Yep, need to clear this up. Not really...It's consistent with some of the other tech the LC has used, but I can call this one out more. Hmmm...I've hinted at this in the last book and here and there, but never overtly. Looks like I need to bring it out more. Thanks @industrialistDragon!

Lego has really progressed with making a good internal structure for their large sets. I got the Star Destroyer about ten years ago and the side plates fall off if you're not careful. Compare that to Hogwarts and the structure is much more stable. In college, I was able to reinforce lego structures enough to make a really good rubber band gun with extra long rubber bands...took a lot of thinking.

Very interested to see what you think of the last few chapters. I promise there is something coming, but also, I'm regarding this as the first half of a larger arc continuing into the third book, which I'm going to start on as soon as I finish this edit of book 2. Yeah, I think I need to fiddle with this. It's left over from extreme pantsing and it still feels a little shoehorned. Glad this is working for you. Noted. I need to clean this up. Sounds like a first draft! Thanks for all the comments @Robinski!

Lol.

Yay! I'm very pleased with how M's sections are being received, as his section was completely pantsed. I'm hoping that by correcting this in the last chapter and before, I an apply those same corrections here. Just wait! I actually have a possible second series or prequel bouncing around my head that would deal with this! Er, yeah, he's a majus. He used to be Councilor for healing before R. Several people had problems with this so I think I need to accentuate this more. Good point. I can elaborate. Yeah, I realized this when I was proofreading. I didn't telegraph this enough. The two other Ari started out fighting, but then saw the opportunity to escape and turned it into a show fight to sow confusion. Thanks so much, @kais and @shatteredsmooth!

Great explanation. I'm actually really glad this is the issue and not the other side. I can change reactions.Retooling the history of a species is a lot harder! That is another excellent point. Thanks @shatteredsmooth! And thanks to everyone for the help on this. This should make the rewrite much better.

That's bizarre! The Hogwarts castle just had sequentially numbered bags and I think three that were general large items. Did the manual actually say to repack it that way into the boxes, or is that your organization?

Oooo....Need update pics.

Well, I'd like to take a spot for Monday, since I only have a few chapters left, but if new people want spots I'll drop back a week.

That's a great point! You're exactly right on how it's perceived in S's facet. I need to go back and adjust the attitudes of people in the new facet to deal with an ongoing relationship with the Ari. That will help me a whole lot when editing. Thanks @industrialistDragon!

Well, I think most of the comments I was going to make have been handled already! Definitely an improvement on the first submission and it gets right to the story. The main problems I had were on the infodumps, how General C. was presented and ethnic details, and lack of details on the setting. I think the first two have been addressed enough and you have gotten enough feedback (thanks @kais!) On the setting side, I'm getting a strange mix of standard European fantasy and colony sci-fi. We have an alternate world setting with soul lanterns, castles, and royalty, but also things like biotics and more contemporary words like "football" and "sub basement." I'm not saying you can't have this, but right now it's very confusing to read and I don't know what setting to keep in mind while reading. I keep picturing a renaissance setting, and then being thrown off by a current word, or a word like "biotics." If you can slip in some sort of brief explanation, or setting placement, or even just a hint that things are supposed to be a weird mix of future and past, then I could accept it and read without getting thrown out. Right now I'm spending too much time trying to figure out the setting to get involved in the story. Notes while reading: pg 2: Wow, yes, much better. This gets right to the point and keeps pretty much everything important from the last version. pg 3: why is "futbol" italicized? pg 4: "L’s primary job as a chambermaid..." --Bit of an infodump here. I'd like to learn about this organically. You could show L going about her duty. pg 5: "Spies couldn’t afford friendships" --interesting. pg 5: "L was one of the Faceless--the secret name for a resistance group with one goal: To destroy the God King." --I think this might have more impact if you don't spell everything out. You don't really need to say the people taking down a king are a resistance, for example. pg 5: "climbed straight to Nurse R’s chamber on SB1." --I haven't quite figured out the setting yet. Some parts of this say fantasy, and some say science fiction. pg 5: "aching muscle" --just the one? ;-) pg 6: "b-line" -> "beeline" pg 7: Not big on the use of parentheses here. It could be reworded with commas or em-dashes. pg 7: "Do you have a boyfriend" --or girlfriend, since you've already included females... pg 7: "site" -> "sight" pg 7: "Her eyes widened at the site of all the flowers growing up the palace wall" --the whole thing with picking the flowers seems off. She's presumably been working there a while, so was there something that made her try to pick a rose today? pg 9: Okay. I was honestly expecting something a little more surprising than kittens... pg 10: "Those footfalls could only belong to one person" --though I'm not sure why he's also coming to look at the kittens... pg 10: Weird break to an infodump at the end of the page... Can we be shown these things instead? Also, I guess this is going the more sci-fi route, with biotics? pg 11: "wasn’t the only general in the archery range" --I thought he was coming into the shed? pg 11: "C stood over fifteen feet tall" --That's...a lot bigger than I was expecting. pg 12: General C. seems remarkably simple for someone who is, I'm guessing, commanding troops. Why is he even in this conversation if his mentality is not on the same level as the other generals? pg 14: "The whole shed lurched as the Leviathan’s arm..." --yeeeah....C seems very unsuited to be anyone's bodyguard. The whole "big dumb guy" trope is a bit played out as well. I was honestly expecting the god king's bodyguard to be a very dangerous man of insightful intellect, and instead got a child in a body that's so far outside the norm I have trouble believing he can operate in an everyday setting. pg 15: Is no one supposed to be in the shed? I assume there are caretakers who use...tools? that are in the shed? Regardless, Y's response seems overblown.

@industrialistDragon, thanks for reading even though this was a slog. Hmmm...this is definitely not what I intended. More that S is the one who knows him best and wants to redirect I from hurting others. I'm hoping the confusion comes from the lack of enough emotional reaction from both parties. I'll take a good look at this section and see if I can make it read better. Question/thoughts for @kais and @shatteredsmooth, as spoons/time allows. I know this is a difficult subject: I can certainly clean up the problematic word choices on how the Ari are referred to, but I'm wondering on how to show a species which is shown to have harmful members (with the understanding that this also been handled badly in our history). I think phrasing this as Sensory Processing Disorder may help ground the harmful tendencies, rather than just labeling them as "insane." Re. ghetto/reservation: I can clean up word choice, but I do want to show that the Ari were put in interment camps. Is the issue here that it happened/how it happened, or is it that I need to change the emotional reaction from the other characters to this event? Basically, it was a Bad Thing that happened and not everyone has an acceptable viewpoint of how things happened. Any suggestions on showing the horror of this without offense?

Welcome to Reading Excuses! Everyone else pretty much get here before me, and have a lot of the same things to say. Personally, I liked the story of the sentient star, and I think this could be expanded to fill the whole short story, rather than just a bit. I was also confused at the two other subplots of getting stranded and the not-traitor shipmate. There's too much going on here for a short story and it just ends up being diffuse. Many of the most important emotional reactions are glossed over or skipped past. I think if you picked one theme and ran with it, you could pull a really good story out of this. Notes while reading: pg 1: The first paragraph is pretty good, but could be edited down and punched up a little more. pg 1: "But no star would naturally pulse in the Fibonacci sequence or the first ten digits of pi." --Which is it? These are very different things. I assume the star did one of them. pg 2: approve of the light-sail. pg 3: “The signal has changed, sir. It’s now repeating our Standard Greeting Signal.” --What signal? We missed the part where the alien species answered a hail... pg 3-4: a lot of maid-and-butler infodumping here. pg 4: "the language of my people" --does J's people not have a name? pg 4: “No. So far they’re just continuing to repeat the SGS.” --This lets down the tension of this section. I want things to progress fast to get me into the story. --especially since you do have them getting a different signal in the next sentence. pg 5: "He reached up and let his fingers brush the electrodes" --where is this? In his bed? In his room? So far we haven't seen any description of the ship, and I don't know where anything is placed. pg 5: "He rubbed his hand through the stubble on his chin as he answered." --wait, is A on the bridge? I thought he was in his room. Definitely needs some more blocking to show us where things are happening. pg 6: “We are representatives" --I really doubt he took 37 hours to come up with this. It's a pretty standard greeting. pg 6/7: The "confusion" here is not that hard to figure out. It's a lot of back and forth to figure out the name for E's group/species. I like the reveal, but it could be more succinct for better impact. pg 7: "Further communication with E had established..." --This sort of drains the tension. There could be a lot more emotion with this discovery. pg 8: "their interstellar laser is damaged.” --hmmm...this sort of comes out of nowhere, and there's not a lot of reaction to it. In addition, would they have noticed this already as the laser would have cut off? Or do they have FTL communication that the message got there before the light cut off? pg 8: "while the FTL ships were out of commission. We finally get them back up and running again" --wait, they have FTL ships? Why are they using light sails? pg 9: “I need everyone working on possible mitigation strategies" --I'm sure an organized fleet would already have emergency procedures in place for if/when a light source gets cut off through uncountable millions of miles of space. pg 10: “I’m worried about Al.” --Had to look up who this was. I think she's only gotten two lines. pg 14: This situation with Al possibly being a traitor sort of came up from nowhere, and now it's taking a lot of page time. I want to get back to the story about the sentient star... pg 15: "obvious dedication to finding some way out had convinced everyone she really did have their best interests at heart" --eh, and that crisis is over as soon as it starts. There needs to be a lot more tension here. pg 18: I like the resolution of the ending, but this story is lost in the other events.

Thanks for reading, @industrialistDragon! Good catches. I was trying for more of a feeling of a culture rather than stealing from just one, but maybe it's not working. Also a very good catch. I'll work on this with this edit. Just for reference, Re's species requires two males and one female for reproduction, so the relationship between males is not exactly homosexual, but more like brother-husbands (I was cribbing a bit from WoT Aiel). I feel like I haven't explained this well enough, so I'll will attempt to this time around. It's in there! Good points. I think I'll need to do a big restructure on the way the chapters are situated when I get through this edit. To the "main" story, I'm expanding out a bit since there are more characters, so there's several stories going on, but I also don't want to drive people away. I'll ponder on it.

Hello all! We're back to M, and then to E this week. We'll be back to S next time, so don't worry. Things are starting to come together. As usual, all comments are welcome. We're getting to the end...only four more submissions after this! Previously: E coaxed S out of his room after a strange chime went off. The maji are interested in S's new house. R got some information from a source, and M wants to restart the Society. R reveals the location of the Coalition's headquarters, but can't get there, and everyone is called to the Assembly, where the Coalition unveils an ancient being. E and R discuss the revelation, S visits the Eff in a private audience, and M continues recruiting. Re manages to meet with the coalition, learns E and I's true species, and confronts E. E trades herself for I and S takes I in. The rest of the cast gathers at the wall, and meet the Eff. They learn some new things, then the chime stops as something comes through the wall. We go back to E, who discovers the Coalition's headquarters, and meets some new, strange friends. Back to S and Co at the wall, who finally find out what the chime was all about. We drop in on M, who showed the new two-house recruits what's he'd been doing. Meanwhile, S and I go through the wall with WW, and find out what's on the other side. E learns about her species from the others, and fends off an assualt. Re observes one of the LC attack the Eff, but discovers a way to create a portal to their base. Meanwhile, S and I explore the new facet with WW, and meet the ruler of that facet.

Thanks @Robinski! Thanks for all the plurals and repetition catches. I must not have been proofing well while reading this. Eh, I need to elaborate on this. Yay! Heh--I'll try to clarify, I have a spreadsheet to keep track of all the new ones for this facet! hmm..This might go either way. Either she regards the members as her pets, or the houses as her playthings... Can clarify. Heh. Can do. I'm glad it had the appropriate effect, though!

Also requesting for next week, if it's not too full.

Ah--really good idea! I'll do some research, but I think this could work. Just need to make sure the methods I've got for the two factions will line up with known therapy, so I don't go off in the weeds.

Thanks to @kais and @shatteredsmooth! Hope I've posted enough! It would be better if it wasn't 90-odd degrees and blazing sun every day... Haha! Noted. I'll pump this up a bit. Good catch. It's another gender of the Nos. (the guardians). I'll see if I can make this clearer. Another Nos. gender. I'll clarify. Yup. Yay! They do...is it possible to use a word more unique to the story's world that doesn't have such direct ties to one of those groups? Thanks for bringing this up. I'll see if I can find something that isn't such a charged word. This kind of pokes at something that has been nagging me about the Ari, but I'm not quite sure exactly how to explain it. Some of them are clearly insane, yes. The more insane they seem to be, the more prone they are to violence. I've been hoping that when you call them insane, you're not actually saying their mentally ill and not associating extreme violence with mental illness. Yeah, this is a fine line I'm toeing and I need to make sure I don't cross it in the way I talk about it. Basically, changing form leads to more powerful emotions that are much harder to control, and the Ari have dealt with it in two significantly different ways. What happened in this facet ties into that. It doesn't get a lot of development in this book, but I'm hoping to bring it up more in the next one. Thanks again!

Thanks @industrialistDragon! no problem and hope things are going better for you. This is probably closer to the middle than the end, and I'll be cutting down the number of meetings as well. I think part of your feeling is that this is plotted as the first half of a two-book arc. I'm planning to write book 3 this year as well, so some of the points that get brought up in this one might not be fully addressed until the next book. Hopefully once I get #3 written, I can see if I need to speed any arcs up and put more in this book.

Excellent!

Doing this from my phone in line at Disney World, so apologies for spelling mistakes and such! Sorry, don't have good page numbers as I'm on my phone... Things I noted during the synopsis. "potentially lucrative Synaptic Mapping could from life as a lab rat." -- something missing in this line "A has lost a prized asset in Lunaville" -- is this referring to the android? Might need to clarify "Between bickering they learn C does not seek escape at all, but vengeance" --This is the first time M and Q are expressly connected to C's case "Q is Mapped into Eight’s body, chasing C up the crater wall in a race to save two thousand lives including theirs while below, M guards Q’s body in HQ." --I feel like this sentence could be drastically simplified or made into several. Also, don't need to say they're saving Q and M's life along with the 2000 If eight is broken, then how do C and Q fight over his body? Overall, the opening chapter read smoothly. Just a couple notes below. As @kais said, the ending is a bit abrupt and I was looking for a little more. the changes you've discussed above help. "that loathsome flash of despair as he buckled his black leather belt." -- sounds like he's deciding at his belt, which is probably not the case. Arriving in the city reads as much tighter than what I remember, and Q is delightfully...quirky. I think Q meeting the man is new? Anyway it works. "Somehow, they always had meat." -- lol Glad to see Q is more bi than last time.

Doing this from my phone in line at Disney World, so apologies for spelling mistakes and such! Ok, this is MUCH better. I'm now interested in L, there's no weird italics except where it makes sense, and it's intriguing, and the fighting is much more realistic. P also worked a lot better and it seems like L's book. Now I want to see the next chapter and find out what happens! Notes while reading: Pg 2. I like L's italicized thoughts a lot better. Gives a much better indication of her character. Just don't overdo them... Pg 3. "I’m on my way to check out this supposed sixth settlement I’ve heard of..." -- yeah, starting to drift into plot exposition here... Pg 4. "In her past year of recovering from the injuries she’d sustained..." -- again, straying into telling. We don't need to know a lot of this yet. Pg 5. "thoroughly disgusting chip" --a chip of what? Or like a potato chip? Still not sure what Gellegmite is. Pg 6. "After a moment’s hesitation..." --Still have a problem with this part. She tries to defuse the fight, which is good, but then starts waving her sword around. Someone in control of the situation would be completely calm and only unsheath at the last second when there is no other option. Pg 8. The italics whatever speaking thing she's doing works a lot better with this reveal. Pg 8 " but this was a whole new facet of terrifying gruesomeness." --I mean, she did it herself... Pg 9. Overall, the fight is much better Pg 9. ". Her knees knocked together and she swayed where she stood; how long had it been since she’d actually been in a real fight? She felt dizzy." --I thought this was because she'd been stabbed...

Welcome to Reading Excuses! Doing this from my phone in line at Disney World, so apologies for spelling mistakes and such! Similar comments to the others. @kais has some good points about the poor people in the rat pile, and @JWerner has very good comments about pacing, which was my largest gripe. Overall, the prose is very good and gripping, but there's not much going on in this section. The whole thing takes place in one room and I'm not sure what's going on. If we had a little more explanation for why L is in her current situation and have a little more action I think this would be really good Notes while reading: Pg1 ok, I can get behind this as a prologue, though if it's this short toy could just make it a beginning epigraph. The second prologue thing is very well written, but now I'm unsure what the book is about. It could probably be a bit shorter and get the point across. Since it's all in italics, I'm anxious to get to the "real" story. Ok, and now we're back with the girl again, but it's not italics? Is L different from the girl? Is unclear who's doing what from the description. "being overly sensitive to light came with the other chronic pains and inconveniences that made up her life. It was the price she paid for using her abilities and the part she hated most about being a spectral." --This is a bit of an infodump and a bit of maid and butler dialog. I don't know If I even need this yet, as I'm not sure what's going on. Ok, the girl seems to be Lee "No matter the obstacle, she could not allow herself to forget the real reason she endured such indignities, numerous as they were" --I feel like you're telling a lot here when you could be showing us this stuff. "She raised her hands to the heavens, palms upward, arching her back" --hmmm. At this point I'm starting to skim. Between two prologues and a lengthy description of getting out of bed, I'm ready for something to happen. "The hair dissolved into mist (like a dead man’s snow globe) before reaching the floor." -- this is a bit on the nose for a callback to the second prologue. I appreciate its showing how the magic works, but I really just want her to get out of the room. I think all this could be boiled down to a few paragraphs "Even now, after so long wearing this face" -- ok, this is interesting. This and why she's in pain address what I'm most interested in. Aside from that, I'm ready to move on. Hm. And we end the chapter with nothing actually happening...I think all this could be greatly condensed and get the same thing across.

No problem--thanks for reading! If you want to read the super compressed summary I have at the top of the post you can do that, not sure how much it will help. But yeah, pretty late in the story at this point.