Mandamon

I like the flashback a lot more this time. It seems more concrete and the references to the other demigods give it some worlbuilding weight. In chapter 4, the magic explanation is a lot better. This shows better the trouble Atena is having, though she still seems very powerful. A little bit of an infodump on page 7, but it does give us some more needed information. Page 8 drifts a little, and I feel like it's losing the plot some. I'm not sure why we need to know about Koko. I like his character, but he doesn't seem to add much yet. The plot continues to drift until the end of the chapter, and as Atena plans to go right back to Altamar, I have to wonder why she came out here in the first place. She hasn't particularly learned anything from Siwatu, just shown that she doesn't have control of one part of her power. The writing is still good, and getting better all the time. I can read through the prose with little problem, which goes a long way to forgiving the lack of forward movement here. I think @kaisa and I are in agreement that this is enjoyable read, just needs some spicing up. Either Atena should stay longer with Siwatu or save this until later. I really like her conversation with the dragon, though.

Welcome to Reading Excuses! Kudos on submitting for the first time. I know it can be hard. That said, I'm with the others on the comments put forward so far. The biggest issues I see are: -Lack of hook -POV switches -Way too infodumpy on the first page (and through the rest of the submission) -I don't have an insight into the characters, so I don't connect with them -Comma usage! If you haven't read Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, I would recommend reading that before you write anything else. It helped me immensely. I have to admit I skimmed the last five pages or so. There wasn't anything holding me to the story. But this has potential, so keep at it.

I agree with kaisa that is is better than the first time around. I'll also agree it lacks some tension. Because we don't know who Burrus is, what he's done to the man, and why the man needs to do this so urgently, it's hard to care about the characters. The description and atmosphere is good, and I think that saves it. The Fury Priest sounds a lot like Yoda--enough so it takes me out a little. You could probably tone it back a bit. I remember being much more entranced with the first few chapters of this rather than this one. The world is interesting, and I really like the paper and ink magic.

@Hobbit Glad you got to meet an agent. Did you get any cards for when you are ready to query? A lot of new authors I know went as well. Wish I could have gone this year, but not with all the other cons I went to... maybe next year.

Overall thoughts: I Still don't know why the wargames, even with the reveal at the end. The fight itself was good, though I got lost with the blocking a couple time @kaisaon stealing undergarments...that's just creepy. Not a big fan of suddenly going to Granpa's POV. I understand why, but its still jarring. I feel like I'm missing something with Grandpa benin so technologically adept. Did we ever know he worked for a tech company, much less was the head of one? Might be WRS, but I remember him working in a warehouse or something and there being a fire. Maybe I linked to something manual because he's a farmer now. I'd like to see other hints so this is more "surprising yet inevitable," rather than just "surprising." This does develop what's happening in the book, but I'm not convinced yet. Pg 2: The boys vs. girls thing is a little overdone. The robots are genderless, right? pg 5: got bored here. Some more infodump about the suit that I didn't really need. pg 5: "drop fifty feet into Saturn" --isn't it above her? pg 7: “You break it, you buy it,” called Ray’s voice." --hmmm...mixed reactions on letting a 12 year old damage 200 year old robots... pg 8: animal sibis: Did you go over this before? Sounds like different animals are coming out of nowhere. pg 9: “Sorry, doll" --Why is he calling her "doll?" pg 10: don't completely follow the blocking on the pyramid section pg 13: Grandpa needs some medical attention if he's making other people sick with his farts... pg 14: is this Grandpa's POV? pg 15: "She’d now tramped a path through perfectly good wheat, but he let it go. His only hope was that she’d know by the end of the summer that it wasn’t overgrown grass --not if he doesn't tell her. Has he told her anything about farming? pg 19: OK--I thought he was piloting the sibis, not Ray. That's...weird.

I read this not long ago, and read the next two books soon after. I really enjoyed the story, but it certainly has all the content warnings you list. It's a lot grittier than I usually read, but was also very heartfelt and light(?) at the same time, not like Game of Thrones, say. I also listened to this on audio book, so I may have had a different perception if I had read it. On your spoiler box question, I don't think that is fridging, based on what @kaisa outlined, because the character was well developed and had a reason for being killed (whether the killer's reasons were good or not). At any rate, I'll add my recommendation to read the books, if only for Lynch's skill in weaving two timelines together in his stories.

As in, a white elephant gift? I got it, but seemed like him passing them on to his children was kind of hinting at a rocky future for them.

Thanks for sharing! This is a really interesting piece of history I think a lot of Americans and Canadians are unaware of. Just goes to show that there are cultural conflicts all over the world and it's better to see the whole picture.

I seem to be in agreement with the others. Overall, this was still enjoyable, but I actually liked the first chapter more than the rest. Sibi's issues with her Grandfather are interesting. Jumping around on clouds is fun, but only for so long. I'm ready for something to happen with Sira and Ray. Wargames seems sort of like filler, unless there's some reason they need to train, and having a whole chapter just to introduce a cloud cutter seems very long. I'm not fully believing that engineers several centuries ago made the cloud devices and robots. Did they have help from someone or something else? As Hobbit says, especially the gel component makes this unlikely. Notes while reading: pg 2: "Numerous picture frames hung in seemingly random fashion along the walls " --of what? Family? Grandpa's wife? Sira? Could be a good chance to show that he really does care. pg 2: "When she found at the bottom of the chest the tiny wooden bunnies and turtles—her favorites—she squealed." --awkward sentence pg 3: ok, you get into the pictures here. Better. pg 3: "She resented her grandfather having them—that these connected her to him." --this is pretty cold. pg 4: "She had wondered if she could trust him. What she realized now was that she wanted to trust him." --telling. pg 6: "But I held my fists tight to my chest. I thought if I made it out with my life and my mind, the next thing I would want were my hands.” --This is a great detail, and gives some more depth to him. Makes me even more upset with Sira that she can't see past her prejudices. pg 7: "button on his index finger --button on his finger? That's a really small button that's going to get pushed accidentally. --cool device, though Ch 18--cool, but generally just more cloud-play. I'm interested to see what develops between Sira and Ray. pg 11: Forsooth: He or they? You use both. pg 12: “Yep. They’re called sibinauts—named after the Greek engineer Ctesibius.” --Oddly specific. Also, I don't see how you get one from the other. pg 14: bit of an infodump. Ch 19: so wargames is kinda cool, but I want a reason for all this. At least a hint of where the suits and the robots come from.

Welcome to Reading Excuses! We should start calling this "the wringer..." So @kaisa and @neongrey have covered this pretty well. I was also sort of blindsided by the rape scene (and this is coming from the male white privileged point of view) but I think you've already gotten a bunch of feedback on that. Overall, I liked the first half of this and the worldbuilding, but the second half dragged and started to lose the point. At first it's a good piece of Sci-fi therapy, exploring ways future tech can be used to help emotional problems. But hen the therapist herself betrays the patient, which to me breaks the promise of how the story starts. Why would she do that? There is some glimmer of hope at the end, but the man and his problems are still very unresolved. I wouldn't trust him with those children. I agree with kaisa that David is very whiny and doesn't have a lot of redeeming qualities. If you're looking at your characters and their likability, one of my favorite tools is the character sliders from Writing Excuses: Proactivity, Competency, and Sympathy. Right now David is failing on all three (maybe he has some proactivity if he booked the therapy himself). If you can move him up on at least one of the sliders, readers can find more to connect with. Notes while reading: pg 1: I lost the thread of the dialogue with no tags. Not sure which one is talking. pg 4 :""Yesterday, I . . . murdered my son." "You did what!" "He's okay! I just took him close to it but it’s all the same, I guess."' --"He's ok" doesn't really follow "murdered" pg 5: "He's just 1's and 0's. He doesn't even have a suit yet."" --so this is all digital? Still mostly confused on the setting pg 7: "It’s the woman who brakes it." --breaks? pg 7: "Because I scare myself. If I don't remember it, then I might do it again." --Cool line. pg 10: “So, there is more freak show to see?” --Yeah-but things are made from him. I don't think he would call it a freak show. pg 14: “Feed it, David,” she says again as she rubs her nose against his neck. --I don't know why the therapist is so overtly sexual. It's very offputting. pg 15: Nope. Not a fan of the rape scene. pg 17: "Mr. Man" --weird pg 17: The woman seems very shallow and one dimensional. I'd like to see some sort of personality, at least, and more than a whiny child-reaction from David.

I think the others have well covered the topic again. First off, I'm very impressed by the improvements this time around. It does still need work, but showing you can change a work based on feedback is about 80% of the battle. THIS. As another who falls into the privileged majority bucket, this is what has helped me most in understanding gender relations. An additional exercise to what Kaisa suggested is to swap all the gender of the characters in this prologue. Including the drouvlan. See how your writing reads and if it comes over as "wrong" to you now. That will help determine where you're falling into gender role expectations. My reading notes (before reading critiques) pg 1: "Alluren could have been seen at miles," --from miles away? pg 1: "If seen at miles now" --These comparisons only take me out of Lyzell's POV. I assume this is how he imagines it would be seen? Does he actually know? pg 2: "crashed through their gates" and "holding back the tide of the black army" --Which is it? Are the Allurians fleeing, or holding the invaders off? pg 2: "“You know that I can’t, dearest..." Still a bit maid and butler. pg 3: "“You know I hate myself for putting you in this danger,” he said to Alandria as he worked"" --They're talking very calmly for an army breaking through a gate literally outside their window. pg 4: "Lyzell knew there would be a smirk on her face" --Why is there a smirk? As is she is just pretending she can protect him? If so, why not? pg 4: too much infodump on this page pg 8: “Nothing,” she said turning back. “Are you sure?”" --not sure what this means. pg 10: "THAT WILL BE NECESSARY.” --won't? confused. The last POV switch is strange. I don't think we need to know this yet. Showing that Alandria is alive doesn't change what happened to her.

The beginning of this chapter is excellent. Thalan/Kathalania is also a great character (though I completely forgot about Savae running into them due to WRS), and this gives a lot more insight to what Savae is doing. I'll agree with Ernei that the clothes and make-up descriptions are too long, but I've harped on that before. I like that you've brought forward a lot of the political intrigue so we will have a better knowledge further along in the story. However, I'm still a bit confused by the what the proper religious process is, and why this is bad. The goddess dies and is reborn. Here she's been killed and will be reborn. I'm sure there's some other motive, but I don't know what it is at this point.

@kaisa I took one of these a while ago, I think the women in science one, and results came back that I'm very implicitly biased against women in science. Very eye opening, and something I think about every time I find myself doing the mental dance of "oh, hey there's a woman engineer I respect. Wait. It's an engineer I respect that happens also to be a woman. But really, gender shouldn't matter when.." and about this time I'm whispering for my brain to shut up and trying to remember what question I was going to ask. Doesn't help that we have at least a 10-1 ratio of men to women where I work. Although I'm happy to report that we're having an information session on women in the workplace this morning. Hoping it will be a positive experience (and not just white males beating their chests).

Huh. Evidently I had a lot to say over the past few years....

Definitely. Remember, everyone's the hero of their own story.

Yep--I totally thought this as well. Was kind of surprised when Dragon identified her as female. I enjoyed this a lot. It was well written, though I wanted to shake Clara violently for most of the story. I'm don't completely get the theme--"we can't all be happy?" Or "be true to yourself?" It was a bit of a strawman argument on Clara's side, just because she didn't seem competent enough to put up a good argument. I actually found Dragon to be much more of a sympathetic character than Clara. Seems like the others picked up on this as well. Both this and the Jasmine Tea at the end have good beginning of an overall theme, but they're not quite gelled yet. I'll also agree with kaisa that Clara has some serious problems with personal space. I was almost expecting Dragon to turn her into a frog or something--must be all those centuries of yoga that keeps him calm. Keep working on it! I think this could be a really good piece. Notes while reading: pg 7: cool so far, but I want to slap the MC and get her to hush for a few minutes. She's very optimistic. pg 8: "Let’s have coffee here. After every yoga class. Then you’ll have someone to talk to." --at this point I would run screaming. Dragon has a lot of discipline. pg 10: "Maybe I should reach out and touch his arm." --he very obviously does not want this. pg 10: “Have you checked your house for mold?” --ok, she can't be this stupid. pg 12: "“You expect everything to be amazing,” he says." --yep. pg 15: I get that Dragon was drinking Jasmine tea, but why would he do this for Clara?

Hey @TKWade just wanted to say welcome to Reading Excuses, and I did read through your submission, but everything I noted has already been captured in (gory) detail by everyone else, so I won't beat multiple dead horses (fridged horses--killed to further your plot?) Anyway, congrats on taking all this criticism like a champ--your writing will only get better from it. If I may offer some suggestions: 1) Don't let this keep from you writing 2) Don't let these critiques make you rewrite the same chapter over and over 3) Finish the story, even though you know it has problems. 4) Read stories that happen in non-western cultures, to non-western people. A lot of them have less bias towards the sort of tropes we have in western writing. They are good examples to develop your style.

I didn't like this sumbission as much as the others. There's some strange physics problems starting to pop up for me. I know it's aimed at kids, but I think most people will at least feel like something is off, even if they don't know what it is. Lots of cloud jumping was starting to get old, and makes me aware of more problems the longer it goes on. Like Hobbit, I was expecting the red guy to be an antagonist. Not a bad thing, just different. Some very strange dialogue, toward the end. Notes: pg 1: ten thousand feet vs. "freeze it before it changed more." --My sense of physics is rebelling again. If the clouds are 10,000 feet away and she shoots the triangulator and freezes the cloud in 0.5 to 1 second, then it's traveling between 6800 and 14000 MPH. There's got to be some reaction from that. Does the triangulator get very hot? pg 2: "The suit! She wasn’t wearing it. Her four fingers and thumb—and their casual grip on the handle" --I expect more reaction from vaulting hundreds of feet into the air on a regular basis. That's not something people easily get used to. pg 2: "She climbed into an alcove and dressed" --so she took the suit with her. From above, it seemed like she left it below. pg 2: "After Grandpa returned to the house" --can she see him from 10,000 feet? pg 4: "she didn’t need that line anyway, since her other hand had quickly unfolded its triangulator and speared the cloud." --even Spiderman only swings between buildings, and he has superhuman reflexes! pg 4: "There was flat ground ahead" --flat cloud ground? End of ch 14 - I got lost on the blocking again while she was following the red figure. Did the clouds drift down to the ground? pg 6: "fuller air than she’d been getting at that altitude" --Hand't even considered this yet. At 10,000 feet, she's not going to be able to jump around for long before getting winded. pg 7-8 blocking here is a little hard to follow. pg 10: the red guy's dialogue is very strange and stilted. pg 13: "Mom said that night before bed" --maybe WRS. I thought her mom was gone off somewhere, which was why she was staying with her Grandfather? pg 14: "“Mother, what you’ve asked is a very good question. You’re going to need to get comfortable for a few minutes.”" --also strange dialogue here. pg 14: "Sira looked disbelieving at the phone" Oh wow, her mom was talking to her on a phone! Did not get that.

Sorry for the very late response...intending to comment on pt 5, so I wanted to get caught up. I think everyone else caught the same things I did. Mainly disbelief at the time falling (thanks @Ernei) and that Cal and her grandfather would only laugh at her ending up miles away, in town. I liked that Sira starts to see the consequences of her actions, but I'm not completely on board with her hating her grandfather at the end. pg 1: "She ran her finger again along the smooth ceiling of cloud. It was firm, but had a little spring to it. It also gripped easily against her glove." --(C) this is not normal cloud behavior... pg 2: "The anchor unhooked and the girl dropped into a quarter-mile swing beneath the second cloud. For the first time in her new experience in the sky, Sira was filled with exhilaration." --(D) I was wondering about the drop. I'm good with heights (stood right at the top of the Grand Canyon), but this is some vertigo-inducing pants- wetting stuff. pg 3: "set her feet, and jumped—just as a better idea struck. She twisted around for the ledge but her upper body ricocheted off it and she somersaulted into the atmosphere." --(C) don't understand this blocking. pg 3: "what sounded like one long letter i" --(D) I have trouble imagining this sound. pg 3: "The problem was that it looked like she was resting on thin air. The cloud looked like it couldn’t hold up a paperclip." --Which it can't, being water vapor. I'm okay if there's magic involved, but we haven't gotten a hint of that yet. pg 4: "She really had frozen a cloud—made it solid." --ok, this would have been helpful earlier.

The motion of the cruise ship is not bad at all. There were a couple people in our group that had to take Dramamine or maybe lay down for an hour, but I didn't hear any reports of actual seasickness. The thing is so big is swallows most waves.

Yeah, it's definitely a problem for those without extra income. Just to let you know, the scholarship does include flights and a daily stipend for food. I think the flight allowance was $500 this year. Not sure what it will be next year. The time off cost/benefit is still a challenge, of course. A lot of people I talked to were making it their one big trip of the year, and planned to try for it every other year or so, depending on income.

Thanks! I agree. That's why there are scholarships, and why the alumni set up our own scholarship to pay it forward and help others get to go as well. Obviously the spots are limited, but the alums are doing a lot to try to send more people next year.

Hey folks, if you are interested in the Writing Excuses retreat and cruise, I just put up a blog post about my experience this year. They'll be making the announcement about the one in 2017 before too long. It's a great chance to develop as a writer and get to know a lot of industry professionals.

We got a class on the cruise about how editors work with writers on books slated for publication, courtesy of Navah Wolfe. Very eye opening at how involved they are in the story!

Awesome! The more I do writerly things, the more I find networking is really the best option in getting into the market. Get to know agents and writers as people--ask what they're interested in.