The Kraken's Daughter

@Silk Congrats on getting the chance to present at a conference! If Kelly Robson and A.M. Dellamonica were there, I'm guessing it was a literature/literary conference?

Thank you all for your critiques. I'm honestly blown away by how detailed and thoughtful all the responses were. I've loved sci-fi for a long time--as many of you guessed, Star Trek was my formative influence, but I'm also a big fan of Babylon 5, Firefly, Ray Bradbury, and Tim Pratt's Axiom novels--but I haven't really written any before. Reading through the draft myself, I felt like it needed a substantial amount of work, but couldn't pin down how, so I really appreciate everything you've given me to think about.

I loved it. David Tennant was perfect as Crowley, and they did a great job of keeping it true to the book while making it work for a visual medium. The part at the end with fit in well with the rest of the story. Even though it wasn't part of the book, it felt like it belonged.

Hi there, @hawkedup! I like the setting you've created for your story, and some of the details you put in made me want to know more. I especially like the concept of the soul lantern, and I find it interesting that people's soul lantern seems to be linked to their social class. So is this a caste system where a person's status is determined from birth based on the form their lantern takes? What happens in the (presumably rare) case where someone manages to change their status, say by "marrying up"? And is it possible to attack/destroy someone's soul lantern? Your premise implies some interesting questions, and I find myself wanting to read more to learn the answers. That said, I found it hard to sympathize with your main character, largely because some of her behavior in this chapter came off as quite immature. I can understand teenage protagonists acting like teenagers--for example, Ron and Hermione getting into a fight because Hermione went to the Yule Ball with Krum. But L in this story doesn't really come off as someone who would be hand-picked for a critical intelligence-gathering mission to bring down a tyrant. Here are some more specific thoughts, which I hope you find helpful:

Hi everyone! This is the comment/critique thread for my very first Reading Excuses submission, "Star Light, Star Bright."

I've passed the halfway point in TWOK.

My writing so far has been short stories. (I have an idea for a novel, but I haven't really started outlining yet, let alone actual writing.) Most of what I write falls under the general umbrella of fantasy, but the story I'm focusing on right now is sci-fi.

I'd like to get in on the next round of submissions if possible.

I finally got around to seeing Endgame yesterday, and I absolutely loved it! There were so many great moments, but I think my absolute favorite was Cap wielding Mjolnir. I wish we'd seen more of the Wakandan characters, but I get that the movie was three hours long and stuffed with characters already, so I can't complain about that too much.

Hi, @JWerner! This is going to be my first crit for Reading Excuses, so I hope you find some of what I have to say helpful. Overall, the chapter was successful in making me want to learn more about the world. Why do the people on C. think F. is a "children's story," why is C. called the Cursed Continent, and so on. That said, I had a hard time feeling invested in L. I could at least feel some sympathy for P. having been forced into the marauder gang, but L. struck me as...somewhat cold, I guess? We know she wants to get home, but we don't see her worrying about the people she left behind, the outcome of the military campaign she mentions, or anything that would give us an emotional connection to her. Throughout the chapter, I was curious as to why all of L.'s dialogue is in italics. From the quotes around “speaking,” I assume she’s using some non-standard method of communication, but I don’t feel like I’ve been given any clues to figure out what it is. Telepathy’s one possibility, though it seems like that would require more effort with P. looking away, since some settings have eye-contact being necessary for mind-reading. He flinches when she first speaks to him, but that could be just that he’s scared of her. I’d like to get some more indication of whether her mode of communication is surprising or unexpected to P. (That could tell us something about your world too—is this ability something the general populace knows about, or something believed to be mythical, etc.?) There were a couple of details I really liked in your descriptions of L.’s armor and sword. First, that you mention her plate armor only protecting her down to the navel. This is pretty realistic, since most armor would be designed to let the wearer pivot at the hips. Second, you note that she’s only digging her sword point into the ground because it’s the only way she can keep upright, and she knows this risks blunting the blade. A lot of fantasy stories seem to have characters stick the sword in the ground while resting or to make some dramatic point, even though that would damage the thing they’re counting on to keep them alive in battle. I like that you put these extra bits of realism into your story. I was a little confused by the repeated references to P. as a “boxer” before L. learns his name. I know boxing as a sport has been around for a long time, but it felt oddly modern for some reason. A couple of line-level comments: “L. didn't bat an eye at the deafening flash” “Deafening” probably isn’t the best word to describe a visual stimulus. (Unless you meant for it to be describing the thunder that comes after the flash, but in that case, the sentence should be modified to make that clearer.) ““Can we can we canwe canwe?” the sharp-toothed one pleaded. A well-aimed slap from his leader—rhe man with the club—silenced him.” I thought the sharp-toothed one was the leader? The previous paragraph makes it sound like the guy with the sharp teeth is also the one holding the club.

One of my favorites is an exchange between Picard and Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation: Picard: "I know Hamlet, and what he said with irony, I say with conviction: 'What a piece of work is Man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel; in apprehension, how like a god!'" Q: "Surely you don't see your species like that, do you?" Picard: "I see it one day becoming that."

She definitely has some of the best outfits in the series. I bet there will be a lot of Queen in the North Sansa cosplayers after the finale. Cersei and Dany have some great costumes too. Yeah, I don't think D&D really knew what to do with Bran. And if the Three-Eyed Crow who teaches him really is Bloodraven, as the popular fan-theory suggests, it would be hard for them to do that plotline justice when they've never mentioned anything about Bloodraven before. They tried to make it seem like they'd been setting this up for a long time, with Tyrion's line about how "Everywhere she goes, evil men die, and we cheer her for it," but that rang hollow to me. The pacing issue was part of it, but also, of course people were cheering for her. She was freeing slaves! One could argue that Dany went off the rails in a smaller way when she burned the Tarlys, but Tyrion seems to be arguing that her mission was misguided from the start. I don't think D&D made anywhere near a sufficient case for that, and honestly, trying to convince the audience that Abe Lincoln With Dragons is actually a bad guy might be a tall order even for a storyteller of GRRM's caliber. I'd like to know that too! Actually, one way to do Daenerys's fall to evil more convincingly might be to have the psychic bond with the dragons be a two-way street. They are apex predators, and so maybe she becomes more violent and conquest-driven (one might even say "draconian") over time. It would fit well with the saying in the books that "magic is a sword without a hilt," too. Dragons are fundamentally magical creatures, but using magic isn't always safe. And unlike most Targs, Dany has three dragons, which could make their mental influence harder to resist.

Cosplay can be a lot of fun. Which character do you want to do?

I'm at about page 300 in The Way of Kings. I like Dalinar a lot; I kind of wish he was king instead of Elhokar. I'm pretty sure Kaladin used Stormlight to survive the bridge run he just went on, and that's why his spheres are duller than they were before. It seems to be wind manipulation of some sort, so maybe that's why Syl is following him around?

Jaime and Cersei's deaths pissed me off too! I'd been anticipating Cersei's death since she blew up the Great Sept of Baelor, and I was expecting it to be an epic moment. It was just such a letdown. And I can't believe Jaime chose her over Brienne. (It didn't even seem like he was thinking, "I'm trying to be an honorable man now, so I have to be there for my new baby." I could have understood him feeling guilty about being unable to being a real father to Tommen and Myrcella, wondering if he could have turned Joffrey down a different path, that kind of thing. But nope, we didn't get that either.) They completely botched Euron as well. He's an absolutely terrible person in the books, but him having the dragonbinder horn from Old Valyria and his scheme to make him a really interesting character. The conflict between him and Victarion, the possibility of the horn taming/controlling the dragons, and Euron's intent to raid Oldtown (where Sam currently is, IIRC) all seem like significant elements that the show completely dispensed with. And when he does come into conflict with the main characters, I'm pretty sure GRRM will be able to avoid that silliness with the surprise attack on open water and the easy dragonslaying. I liked Cersei's dress too. Her outfits have become a lot more austere, which fits with the changes her character has gone through. Do they even have lion motifs anymore? As nonsensical as the "as accurate as the plot requires, no more and no less" scorpions were, Drogon did look really cool torching them all. Grey Worm was cool too. That scene of him, Jon, and Davos marching through the hole Drogon blasted in the wall was pretty awesome.

Rhaegal's death didn't have nearly as much impact for me as Viserion's did. And it would have been so easy for them to make it somewhat plausible. We saw at the beginning of the episode that Rhaegal hasn't completely recovered from the Battle of Winterfell. So you could have had the ships fire a bolt or two, and Dany takes Drogon up out of their range. Rhaegal tries to follow, but it's obvious that he's struggling to gain altitude, and he just can't climb fast enough. That would have worked fine, and shouldn't have taken much more effort than what they actually did. Cersei's death felt really anticlimactic to me too. Supposedly, Dany burning KL is one of the plot points GRRM gave the showrunners. But I feel like the books are already setting up a tension between her desire to build a better world and the "Fire and Blood" ethos of the Targs. She thinks about how she just wants to have peace and plant trees, but "dragons plant no trees." She has that dream/vision where she hears someone telling her to "remember your words, remember what you are." And there's probably another book and a half to go before we get to the downfall of KL. I think the books will have a good setup for Mad Queen Dany if that's where GRRM goes, but the show just didn't give any buildup at all. (And it's also possible that the context of her burning the city will be different. Maybe they don't surrender and she chooses to attack, accepting that there will be collateral damage. Maybe she tries to do targeted strikes on military barracks, but Cersei's hid caches of wildfire so the whole city goes up in flames. Maybe there's a plague in the city and she has to make a terrible choice about whether to risk it spreading.) Regardless, I think the books will handle that plot point a lot better than the show did.

Hi everyone, I'm a new member to the forum, and relatively new to the Cosmere in general. (I read Elantris a while ago, and I'm about 150 pages into The Way of Kings. Haven't gotten to Mistborn yet.) I've been writing for a couple of years, and have had a few short stories published. I've also got an idea for something that could be a novella or novel, but that's not even really in the outlining stage yet. I'm looking forward to reading everyone's work and getting feedback on mine.

Thanks for the welcomes, everyone! I really liked Galladon in Elantris. Both Shallan and Kaladin are pretty cool, but I don't have a solid favorite in Stormlight yet. So, the day I met Sanderson, I was wearing a Star Trek t-shirt that showed Picard and Riker looking at a sewing machine, and Riker was saying "Make it what?" Sanderson said he liked the shirt. He sketched Aon Rao alongside his signature in my book--without having to check the glossary at the back, despite this being a book he'd written years ago. The guy in front of me in line asked some question about allomancy. I think it had something to do with a theory based on some of the actual physical/chemical properties of metals. And even though we were near the end of the line--so Sanderson had been answering questions and signing books for close to an hour already--he seemed genuinely interested and enthusiastic that someone had thought about his work in such depth.

Hi all, The first Sanderson book I read was Elantris, and I was lucky enough to be able to have my copy signed when I met Brandon at a con. I'm about 140 pages into The Way of Kings--Kaladin has survived his first outing as a bridgeman, and Shallan is gathering books as part of some plot to get Jasnah to accept her as a ward. I'm really curious about the windspren that's following Kaladin around and seems to have level of consciousness that other spren don't. I've read a fair amount of epic fantasy: LOTR, ASOIAF, Bradley P. Beaulieu's Song of the Shattered Sands series, and the first two books of S.A. Chakraborty's Daevabad trilogy. I have R.A. Salvatore's Child of a Mad God but haven't gotten around to reading it yet. Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is one of my favorite books of all time. (I don't know if it technically counts as epic fantasy, since it's set in actual England, but it has Fair Folk, prophecies, mages, and a legendary mage-king, so I figure it's close enough.) So I'm really looking forward to diving into the Cosmere!