Asmodemon

I also think changing it from a few years to a few months would work better. Rather than having accepted that T is gone forever, as the three year difference has done, E would still be in the middle of mourning her wife as well as holding out hope that she isn’t gone, that she’s out there somewhere. It would explain why a successful doctor, who could get her own type of tree to grow on that planet, would be out there serving as a sentry. If it was just about avoiding her family E could have locked herself away in a lab and focus solely on work. This way her motivation for being out there could be that the rational part of her is looking for T’s body, but another part is hoping to see T alive, just over the next dune. That would be a good motivation for E to break cover and get close to the M when she sees the headband.

Yeah, that's probably better done in a longer piece, rather than a short story like this was supposed to be, where the through line is about something else entirely. In this submission the addition of the paragraph stating E.'s gender nonconformity feels a little tacked on and its additional or removal wouldn't actually affect the story in any meaningful way. It does I don't traumatize easily

This reads a lot better than the first iteration. There’s a little more urgency in what’s going on without the extraneous moping, but it’s still a slow start. The fact that the M. are looking for E. helps with hooking me in, but like Mandamon I feel like there’s something missing. Beetles and flyers: The visual is confusing to me. The M. are riding flyers (e.g. machines that fly, just like the one N. used) but they are also riding the beetles. Are the flyers mounted on the beetles? If so, are the flyers creating the movement (if so, why need beetles?) or the beetles (if so, why the need for flyers with engines that create dust clouds?)? We need to talk – I mean stab: This came very much out of the blue in this version. The M. know E.’s name and title and they couldn’t just have guessed this from E.’s appearance alone – the gear would hide most of it. So they were indeed looking specifically for E., which I take to mean that the M. wasn’t just trying to distract E. and gain the upper hand in a struggle. So why stab E. with a sharp implement? I could understand some kind of taser, because though E. appeared to want to listen, if I was in the M.’s shoes I wouldn’t just take it on good faith that E. would stay to listen to the end and/or come along. But this wasn’t a taser. This was a very sharp implement in a place where medical attention could be a big problem. Some of my points from the last version: Planet’s worth: The previous version really had me wonder why this planet was colonized if it was so horrible. While I’m still wondering what the worth of the planet is, now that there’s less introspection by E. about how horrible everything is the question about the planet’s value is no longer a burning concern, now it’s just a question I’d like answered along the way. Female planet: This works better, leaving it as a mystery what the original reasons were for making an all-female planet, but do making clear that there was a reason to do it, even though E. doesn’t know what that reason was. The addition of the technology for reproduction also helps. It’s still a risk to do colonization that way, for should the technology fail and none of the other colony ships make it, the human species would still be doomed, but the mention that there was a rationale for this decision makes me less bothered about the risks of doing colonization that way. E's likeability: E's character is also helped by being less moody and introspective. It sets E. apart from So., the previous main character who came to mind. It makes sense that E. would drift away from the people she loved after losing T., rather than E. being an introverted lonewolf type character like So. was.

It’s been a while since I did this, and that seems to be a recurring trend as well. So, here we go Info dump: There is a lot of information in these first pages. Some of it was a bit redundant, I think you explain what the sun side and the cold side of a tidally-locked planet mean at least two times in the first couple pages. Most of it though is E. remembering what life used to be on Earth with seemingly equal parts longing and hate, and each time E. remembers it slows down the pace of the chapter. Likability of E: Seems fine to me so far. E. is a tough character with a bitter history and that shines through – for the most part it’s understandable, like losing her wife, being stuck on a shithole of a planet. What I don’t like so much is the constant reminiscing of Earth and lamenting her lot in life. Also, and this is not necessarily a bad thing, but E. does remind me of a certain other main character from another book you wrote, and I wonder if you’re not rethreading the same ground here. Inciting incident: I’m not really feeling an inciting incident here. As far as I can tell there are three things going on: E. hates her life on Q., and people who care about E. want E. to stop moping and get on with her life. E. however does not want this, and makes no move to do so, so there isn’t really an inciting incident there. Then there’s the M., but I’m not really feeling the threat here, since E. has already made it clear that they are dying out anyway and it seems this small incursion was stopped rather easily. There’s the question of what happened to T. out in the dunes, and if she encountered the M., but at its heart T. is still (most likely) dead due to terminal cancer (if not the environment), so where the body is and what happened to it is not all that compelling to me. And it’s not really all that compelling to E. either because, as E. says in the beginning, she had three years to look for T. and didn’t. Given the above the first chapter so far is a character hating their lot in life on a horrible planet. Hologram: This confused me. When N. first appeared you describe a sand tornado and then N. wiping the dust from herself. I thought she was actually there and had stepped through a dust storm to get to E., but nowhere in there did I ever think she was a hologram. Earth’s shadow: Not sure what you mean by Earth’s oppression of the colony world, since you just described how Earth is gone and therefore there is nothing to oppress. The planet itself still gets some help and colonists from the outside galaxy, but for the most part the planet is left to fend for itself – not really seeing the oppression. Tidally-locked planet: I like this, it’s interesting to see what you’re going to do with this. All female planet: Seems like an odd thing to do, create a colony full of people who – without artificial or outside help – can’t naturally reproduce. If anything goes wrong with their technology and/or their off-planet sperm supply the colony can do nothing except slowly die out. Seems like a bad investment, considering the cost of colonizing a planet and the fact that the planet that started the whole colonization process was on the verge of being destroyed and now actually is. Planet’s worth: E. wants to get off the planet, so there are other colonized planets out there apparently and an Earth II as well, so it’s not like there’s a need to stay on such a horrible planet when there are better planets out there. So if Q. is so horrible, what’s the worth of the planet that would have: Drawn colonists there in the first place. Keeps them there when there are, potentially, more hospitable worlds out there. M.: I thought these had to be aliens, but they seem to be human? Is that correct? E. converses with one of them but I’m still not sure what they actually are. Rough start: I do want to see where you’re going with this, since you’ve written cool stuff before, but I agree with you that this is a rough start and I’m not really hooked by it yet.

I agree with Mandamon and ICanDream, that there is way to much exposition at the start of the chapter. The latter parts of the chapter were better, as R. is finally doing something and the amount of exposition goes down a little. I get that you tried to make the info-dumps as interesting as you could, but in my opinion you’re better off cutting most of it, focus on the character instead and sprinkle in the information later when we’re more involved with the characters. At the end of the day an info-dump is still an info-dump. Setting: I like the setting and want to see more of it. I don’t like how it’s basically being told to me rather than being shown through the character’s thoughts and actions. Disconnected sections: There doesn’t seem to be a lot of connection between the sections of this chapter, especially in the beginning. There’s exposition on one subject, then exposition on another, then the character briefly does something, then several more sections of exposition, and then when we get back to the character doing something else I’ve already forgotten what he was doing in the first place. Very jarring. Name: Getting to know the main character’s name on page three, after two pages of exposition, is a bit late for me. Scrap hunt: After all the exposition I was really hoping for something interesting to make all of it worthwhile, but to me the scrap hunt was a little anti-climactic and the other characters involved in it, T. and W., read very much like caricatures to me. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but so far this chapter has way to much exposition, a main character that is hardly present because of it, and the antagonists are more comic relief than a threat. I mean, W. is even literally rolling on the ground, laughing. Who does that? Especially in a junkyard with sharp objects all around? Setting the scene: There’s a lot of exposition, and maybe that caused me to skim read parts, but while there is a lot of background information on the setting there isn’t much setting the scenes of where R. actually is. For instance, up until R. suddenly mentioning there’s a ground manager I had no idea there were other people around other than R., T. and W.. I wouldn’t mind a little more time spent on painting the scene.

It's the clothing thing. Granted it's a bit weird to find someone you're looking for in a random forest in the middle of nowhere, but you did establish that this is what A. does. But A. is a professional, she wouldn't be wandering the forest in those weather conditions in those clothes. And I feel that S. should have picked up on it sooner. Ah, I did not have the impression that M. snuck out to do this. In that regard it makes sense that there are no guards around now. From what I read before I got the impression that M. had a temporary headquarters in a tavern, which was known to the guards and other officials, and that she was basically operating closer to the people rather than from afar from the palace. Which is probably what she wants S. to believe. I do think that keeping the number of irrelevant characters low is a good idea. Even in epic adult fantasy this is probably a good idea. Suggestion: Introducing a guard detail early on in the chapter, then having the guards move with M. against the bandits wouldn't have to take a lot of words. Especially since we're in S.'s perspective, who at that time is focussing more on being reunited with M. as well as riding a horse to pay much mind to an escort. We don't even need any names for them and we don't need to see any fighting, since S. goes into the forest early in the encounter. Then rather than M. having chased off the bandits (which felt odd anyway and lessens their impact), she could stumble on S. while fleeing, while the guards form a perimeter to give M. time to flee. Other suggestion: Have M. avoid guards more when they're in the city, so the reader can get a feeling about what's going on. Like I mentioned above, the behaviour of the bandits (attacking, then running away) feels weird and lessens the threat posed against M. and S.. The feeling I got was that it was a band of bandits, meaning M. is heavily outnumbered. Running in that scenario is strange. Now if it's just one or two bandits, amateur, country folk, and they get confronted by M. charging at them, that might surprise them enough that fleeing would make sense. But like I said, in my mind there were more, at least five to ten bandits.

I also liked the pacing of the chapter just fine, and I also believe that S. is really sheltered. What I didn’t quite believe is that only three years have gone by between the interlude where S. was beaten up by Sam, and the present where neither of them recognizes the other. It’s not like this encounter didn’t leave an impression on either of them, Sam’s hate and anger are strong, and you don’t forget such a heavy beating or the one who did it to you. Interlude: After reading the chapter that comes after Sam’s hostility towards S. makes sense, but while reading the anger Sam had towards S. felt like it came out of nowhere and that was a little surprising. It also reads as a little convenient that we get an interlude showing Sam and S.’s past together just before the chapter where he’s introduced as an adult. Age confusion: At first I thought that Sam had to be around five years old, because he’s referred to as ‘the boy’ just after someone who’s referred to as ‘the girl’ was said to be five years old, and the entire group S. is with is described as ‘children’. Now, since the POV comes from S., and S. is fourteen, the fact that S. thinks of them all as children would make them a few years younger than S., at least in my mind, so ranging between 5 and 10 at the most. So when S. is beat up by one of the kids that surprised me, since S. has a few years on them and it’s only one boy doing the attacking. M. is gone alone: That doesn’t seem very smart, since there already was an ambush by bandits and M.’s easily recognizable, going off without at least letting S. know where she went is careless. It does fit with her character, since she’s already gone off to who knows where without guards with no one by her side aside from a not-so-reliable childhood friend – whose mother may or may not be involved in the disappearance of the queen…but the carelessness doesn’t feel really believable. Breasts: Is this weekly reader syndrome or edits I may have missed? Because I distinctly remember that S. didn’t like them at all – now all of a sudden S. doesn’t mind them… Also, the discomforts of the binding are suddenly described as being a lot worse than the previous chapters alluded to. Now the binding causes lightheadedness and being out of breath, but I don’t remember that being the case before. Size of the spirit house: The size of the spirit house wasn’t immediately clear to me. S. walks into it, painfully, and from that I assumed that the house was at least S.’s height. Yet later S. has to kneel down to touch the shingles of the roof, which makes the house a lot smaller than I thought it was. As a center piece to a festival it also feels a little small. No immediate recognition: The interlude says that at that time S. was 14 years old, and I take it that Sam would be a little older than that, since S. has no recollection of Sam ever living with them. Yet in the present S. is 17 years old, so only three years have gone past. With only a difference of three years I’m surprised neither of them recognizes the other. Or are both of them actually a lot younger in the interlude? Curses: I get that Sam is angry, but his curses come across as feeble, like ‘go run yourself through with a sword’. And ‘drown in a factory’ is more confusing than threatening, especially since this is a fantasy setting and we haven’t seen a factory yet. How does one drown in a factory? Is there a lot of water there for some reason? What kind of factory is it? Loss of recognition on page 7: On page 6 S. realizes who Sam is. At least, that’s what I’m getting out of it, since S. realizes that Sam has a longstanding grudge. But then on page 7 S. wonders again who this man is – when that was made clear mere paragraphs ago. You probably mean that S. wonders what his damnation motivation is for his grudge, but on first read it didn’t come across that way to me. Page 8, full recognition at last: I like how it all came together for S., with how similar the two of them look. Part of me does think that S. should have realized this a little sooner in the encounter. Witch threat level: I’m confused about the threat level of witches in this setting. From the previous chapters it felt like witches are a big thing, then when S. wishes that the smoky form is a sending and not a witch, I also felt like witches are a big deal. Yet practically the next sentence about witches is that ‘it’s only a witch’. So, are witches a big deal or not? Because I can no longer tell. Confusing ending: The chapter ending was a bit confusing, because things were happening that have no visual component in S.’s POV. What S. sees is an empty factory, but what S. hears is one that is in action (just like what Sam purportedly heard). Is S. hallucinating the smoky form and the empty room, or is the other way around and is S. hearing things that aren’t there? I’m hoping the next chapter will clarify that.

Can't believe I didn't notice this sooner (should spend some more time looking at the Lounge topic ). I'm also going to Dublin 2019 - first Worldcon ever, so should be interesting.

Good chapter, I really enjoyed the tension between S. and M.. Three boots: “I knelt and removed her other boot”. Small oversight on page 4 I think, because on page 1 you have one of the boots already on the ground, and on page 2 S. helps the other boot off of M.’s injured leg. Info-dumping: The explanations of the festival as well as guild/un-guild laws to S. feels a little info-dumpy, I’d much rather see these things in action rather than have M. explain it to M. We already know the salient points from last chapter, which is that there are no physicians available during the festival, and that the guilds are in decline. The rest doesn’t seem that important at this point. Passing as a commoner: S. observes that M. wasn’t passing as a commoner as well as she thought. From my perspective M. isn’t trying to pass herself off as a commoner at all – everyone seems to know who she is, she spends a lot of money and her behavior is too haughty for a commoner. If M. is trying to pass as a commoner, and that going around in disguise rather than with guards is her big plan, you may need to rework that a bit more, because I’m not seeing it. Stayed in between: “People started talking because I didn’t, finish. Because I stayed in between.” I’m not sure what this means. Didn’t finish what? Stayed in between what? Human: “She looked human” as opposed to what? I wasn’t aware that there were non-humans around? Barrier: I’m trying to wrap my head around how the solvent works and what S. does. S. has a solvent that will bind to the skin and form a film on top of it, but it doesn’t bind in water. I take this to mean it also won’t make a film either, since that’s the end result of binding to the skin of whatever it touches. So when S. makes the wound wet, so the solvent doesn’t bind with the open tissue (and get internal, yet S. also remarks that small quantities shouldn’t be a problem anyway, so why even bother), it still forms a film on top of the thin layer of water on the wound…I thought it couldn’t bind when it was wet?

Don’t have much to add to what ‘s already been said. I liked the chapter, though I was a bit surprised that S. knew absolutely nothing about the decline of the guilds. If the guilds are in decline, that might reveal itself in the amount of orders they got, hiding away in the woods, which might have given S. an inclination. And though S. hated going into the village I was under the impression that S. still went there, from time to time. It’s hard to believe S. never picked up any rumors whatsoever. Aside from that, the biggest thing that still bugs me (and that isn’t going to go away) is that M. and S. are out alone, without any guards, and without a proper disguise as even an innkeeper in a border town knows the royal daughter on sight. Even forgetting about the missing queen and missing guild masters, and whoever’s behind those troubles, they’d get in trouble with any small time thug wanting to make a bit of money out of kidnapping the royal daughter.

Overall I felt this chapter was a little lackluster, after the cliffhanger of the bandit attack last time and S.’s mother showing up. We don’t actually see the bandits, we don’t see what M. goes through, since S. is pretty much sidelined the whole time. Everything basically resolves itself without S.’s input. Mother: The conjuring came across as pretty creepy, which I quite liked. The fact that S. didn’t immediately catch on to the creepiness is also pretty telling about A., makes me wonder what A. is really like. I was a bit surprised though because you describe the place as being remote, in the mountains, with swirling snow going around, but S. takes a long time to realize that A. couldn’t possibly be there wearing casual clothing and being unaffected by the cold. Also, for the person making the conjuring (assuming that there is someone, and that this isn’t some magical happenstance), seems like a pretty stupid oversight. Blackberries: Were there blackberries before? All I got was that there were weak-looking thorny bushes around. The matter-of-factness that S. fell specifically into blackberries surprised me. I’ve taken care of them: How? M. is just one person, there should have been many more bandits around. The biggest problem I had with the bandits though is the same problem I had last chapter too. Where are the guards in this scenario? I find it hard to believe that M. would be allowed to go out on her own without guards, along with S., the daughter of suspect number one. If that’s actually the case the person in charge of the guards should be fired. If there are guards around, you’d need to show it better, because in my mind there’s only M. and S. there. Crying: S. must have changed a lot in the intervening years, because there have been quite a bit of tears and whining so far. Leading on a chase: M. remarks that the bandits were not interested in her, only leading her on a chase. That is not typical highway robber behavior, especially after killing one of the horses. To me it looks like they were buying time for the conjuring to take S., and that’s fine, it could make sense even though simply rushing M. and S. and taking them would be more effective I think. But what doesn’t make sense is how M. doesn’t seem to pick up on that. Amulet: Magic comes from amulets? I know there was a story about the old queen and her having a magic amulet, but I didn’t realize magic was actually limited to amulets (or if it isn’t limited to amulets, why make the assumption that there’s an old amulet there?) That makes me question what witches actually are. Are they users of amulets, or are they the creators of amulets? Interested to finding out. Even a handful: S. remarks that M. should easily be able to handle a handful of bandits, as if it’s nothing. I find it hard to believe that M. could be that formidable, even with training. She is the heir to the throne (which should necessitate lessons in statecraft, diplomacy, etc.), she is a guild blacksmith (which also takes training), and now also an accomplished sword fighter? I can get that she took lessons in weapons, but she should be guarded at all time, so how is it that she’s a master swordsman in her own right? And aside from that, no matter how skilled M. is, a handful of bandits could surround her and even the most experienced swordfighters would have a problem then. Or is the path so narrow that only a single one can come at M. at a time? That also seems unlikely because there was enough space for S. to move into the trees, perpendicular to the road. Nearby master: Huh? I thought the magic came from an amulet (S. sounded pretty sure), and the bandits were just a coincidence (if M. is to be believed). So how come in the last line S. is suddenly sure there IS a master around, and that this master is skilled? And if S. is so sure, why not tell M., the only one who really seems capable of protecting someone in this scenario?

Nicely action packed. I just have a couple things that didn’t work so well for me. Tranquilizer duration: The duration of the tranquilizer that Mor. used seems dramatically convenient, since it knocked them out instantly, but only long enough for Mor. to escape and the police to barge back into the room. Stitched up: Q. thinks ‘yes; they were stitched up’. Maybe it’s weekly reader syndrome, but I have no idea what is meant by this. What is stitched up? Window breaking: The future has weak windows if a thrown gun and/or a young girl can break it on impact. Mor.’s Name: I noticed this at the end of the last chapter, wondering how Q. would know Mor’s name, thinking that maybe it wasn’t so much Q. who knew but that it was either a slip-up or a way to let the reader know it was Mor. But it would seem Q. has a history with Mor. Was that in the previous book? And apparently M. know’s Mor.’s name too. The background that Q. and Mor. know each other should be there sooner I think, because the current flow of events is a little confusing. Police response: #iagreewithmandamonandkais Nitpicks: down a corridor in medical centre: Missing an ‘a’, should be ‘down a corridor in a medical centre’. He managed to get them the end of the alley: Missing a ‘to’, should be ‘He managed to get them to the end of the alley’

A time-travel story, color me intrigued, but also a little concerned since the mechanics of time travel are hard to get right. Anachronistic setting: Maybe it’s just me, but I have a hard time getting a read on the setting. Is it a version of Earth? Is it a secondary world? At the start I can’t really tell. It’s not until later that you introduce terms that settle it as a secondary world setting. The setting also feels a little anachronistic because on the one hand you have horses and carriages, but then you also have the telephone (as something that is widely used), the word Agency, and a rather modern sounding spiel about submitting time reversal requests. It’s leaving me a little confused. Fieldworkers waiting on a street corner: Why is your main character waiting on a street corner for things to happen so she can submit a request for turning back time? Are there fieldworkers on every street corner, in every city, in every country? That seems like a lot. Seems to me that the ability to travel back in time should be sufficiently rare otherwise everyone would do it (or is everyone doing it?). And if there aren’t fieldworkers on every street corner, why is A. (or any other fieldworker for that matter) on this particular one? What’s the point? Aerith and Bob: While I was reading I immediately got stuck on this trope. You have normal, modern, sounding names like A. and C., right besides fantastical sounding names like K. and D. Limit to one: I don’t understand, based on what we’ve been told so far in this chapter, why the Agency will only allow one time reversal per day (or per twelve hour interval since that seems to be the upper limit for any one person). The ability to travel back in time is inherent to the one going back, which doesn’t cost the Agency anything. And the one going back has to feel pain in order to go back, which also doesn’t cost the Agency anything. And is this limit truly once per day for the whole planet, or once per day for a country, a region, or city, or city block? Without knowing more about the mechanics of time travel this seems like a weird arbitrary limitation (for instance, does going back in time damage the time stream in any way, and is that why they are limiting how many times people can go back in time?). Upper limit: The upper limit of twelve hours also comes across as a little arbitrary, since it’s such a neat, round, number. More pain equals further back in time, so the furthest one can travel back is determined by their bodily pain threshold. But if I may venture a guess, at some point A. will probably break this limit to save the day right? If I look at the scene were A. reverses time, her past Self doesn’t feel the pain of the slap her future Self received from T. (of if she does still feel that pain, it doesn’t come across well). So in theory someone could inflict maximum pain on themselves to go back twelve hours, then inflict more pain and go back further. Rinse and repeat. Priority: I’m surprised that A. feels that children dying will always get priority over other cases of time reversal. Apparently that’s how things usually go in this world? It sounds like a fairytale ideal and not cold hard reality. I can easily think up scenarios that would get priority over saving a child, including paid requests over pro-bono child savings. The Agency is a corporation, with employees, that need to be paid. The money needs to come from somewhere, and it won’t be from saving one child a day. K. on the train: A. had to call HQ for permission and so she talked to K. on the phone. Then she goes to the station to board a train, and K. is waiting for her there so they travel together…for five ‘blasted’ hours to get to HQ. Which means that for K. to have been waiting at the station and for A. to get to the station, at least five hours had to have passed since the phone call. That doesn’t sound quite right.

Really liking the interaction between S. and M.. After all the angsting S. does it’s nice to see a character S. interacts with well that is confident and not at all angsty. Mother: While I was reading I kept wondering why S. was so sure this chapter that their mother would be at the guild house, because I don’t remember it being mentioned that she would be there. Perhaps that’s weekly reader syndrome, but leafing back through the previous submissions I couldn’t find anything definitive that pointed towards the guild house. In chapter one S. thinks that she ‘took these walkabouts yearly’, which I took to mean that she goes wandering and no one, not even S., knows where she’s gone. So the surety that S. has that she’d be at the guild house felt a little odd. Change of heart: In tandem with that, maybe it’s because S. now needs their mother’s permission to apprentice to the alchemist, but S. seems to worry about their mother a lot more this chapter. Salt: Why is the chapter title salt? Swirls of red: I was a bit confused about S. catching swirls of red behind M., thinking there to be guards, but the courtyard is apparently still empty. I wasn’t sure if there actually were guards there or if S. was imagining it, or if they somehow turned invisible. Because with the queen missing there is no way that the guards would/should ever leave M. by herself or to let her approach a vagabond in the courtyard of an empty guild house. So there should be guards all around M., but I never really got the impression that there were. New guard’s office: What’s wrong with the old one? And I’d expect the Q. guard to be, you know, protecting M. most of all, so wouldn’t they have their offices in the palace with M.? Or is the Q. guard not just the guard of M., but also the city guard and/or standing army? Right now I’m running on the assumption that they are a small outfit solely there to protect the queen. Master woodcutter: When M. says that the master woodcutter is under suspicion of kidnapping, you mean A. right? S.’s mother? If that’s the case then it would make sense for her to be missing, at least as far as M. is concerned, because if I kidnapped the queen I would not let the heir know where I was. So if that’s the case, why is M. surprised that A. isn’t with S. at the guild hall together? Also, if A. is the suspect in the kidnapping of the queen, and S. is supposedly never far from A., why isn’t M. pressing S. harder on the whereabouts of A. and the queen? Master R.: If master R. won’t shut up about S. then shouldn’t M. already know what S. did to help R.? Because they didn’t do much together other than fighting the trees, and it was the alchemical stuff S. used that impressed R. So if R. is impressed, and talking about the solvents S. used, then it’s only a small leap from there to why S. had to use the solvents, against the tree creatures. Forbidden to see each other: Why would S.’s mother do that? Has this been explained already? Having a personal connection to the future queen seems to me like it would be advantageous for the woodcutters. Since S. is seventeen now, the last time they saw each other S. would have been close to eleven years old. What happened? And is that the same reason why S. had to live in their remote house and wasn’t really allowed to leave? I know in part it’s also because S. has huge social anxiety issues, but it seems to me that continued isolation only worsened that, and that S. was more open in the time spent with M. in their youths. Pub: Why is the heir to the throne having a ‘headquarters’ in a pub, rather than her palace? I’m hoping the next chapter will shed some light on that, because this seems like a huge security violation, especially in light of the queen having gone missing.

I like that we’re back in Q. and M.’s perspectives in chapter five. Still not quite sold on the other perspectives yet, since there are still so many in such a short time. You’ve made some changes since the previous submission of this chapter, and looking back I had three issues with the previous version. Issue 1 - Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness: The last time Q. still thought he had delayed onset muscle soreness, several days after the strenuous activities. It’s good to see you fixed this with him realizing he’s pulled something more severe. Issue 2 - The Old Man: Last time I wondered why the ex-father in-law was called the Old Man, and now Q. addresses this in a nice reply to M.’s earlier reveal about her past. I’m liking Q. and M. more and more. Issue 3 - Involvement after the murder: And the third issue was that I didn’t buy why Q. would actually do so much for a client he hadn’t met, for a case he hadn’t really accepted yet. The reasons he gives now work for me. M. calling R.: Nice addition, it both helps cement Q.’s rationale for taking on the case despite the client crashing and it’s a great bit of dialogue for M. Timing crash and M.’s call to R.: Even though I like the addition of M. taking the initiative and calling R., they come across the fire of the crashed plane a little too quickly after hanging up. Q. thinks a little, then tells M. to message the client. This can’t have taken more than a few seconds after hanging up, so the plane would still have been in the air, getting close to landing. Yet after those few seconds they see the fire of the crashed plane, but didn’t see the plane crash? And the police is already on route to the scene? That’s mighty quick for them, since less than a minute ago the plane had still been on a perfectly fine landing approach, with no sign of going down. Timing-wise this feels off to me. Driver’s license: You’ve said that it’s unusual for Q. to drive himself. Is that because he usually has someone/something else do it for him? Or is because he doesn’t have a driver’s license? The comment about not really needing a license due to all the security features in cars in the future makes me think it’s both these reasons. However, drivers’ licenses apparently still exist, otherwise why would Q. remark on it? So if they exist, they should be mandatory in order to drive a car, otherwise, why have them? And if they are mandatory to drive a car, they should also be mandatory for renting a car. So either Q. doesn’t have one, and should probably not be able to rent a car. Or he does have one, but then why remark on cars being so safe that he wouldn’t need a license? This remark would have made more sense if he’s let M. drive the car instead. Chapter Six: Another jump back in time to Mor’s perspective. Not really a fan of being in this guy’s perspective. I think part of what’s bothering me about all the Y.Knife perspectives is that they take away the mystery of what’s going on with the case Q. and M. have taken on. We know the major players, we know the evil mastermind behind it all (O.M.), we know the chief henchman (Mor), we know the objective. We basically know everything. To me that’s less interesting than figuring out what’s going on along with Q. and M. OLED: I know that Mor wants to see what’s going on, and apparently infra-red sight is not enough to see with (really?) but for someone on a clandestine assignment shining a massive beam of light comes across as remarkably stupid. Nitpicks: Repaired: “The three compadres repaired to the”. I don’t think repaired is the right word here, or it’s slang I don’t know. Donned his jacket on: The word ‘on’ is redundant in this sentence. Never works with children and animals: Never work with children and animals?

Separate chapter: I think this does work as a separate chapter, even though it’s significantly shorter than chapter one. I also liked the cliffhanger ending of chapter one when the house exploded. Part of me does feel like these two chapters are more like one chapter cut in two, but that’s probably more due to the fact that I read the previous iteration and remember this being one chapter rather than two. Bumping cart: In the third paragraph S. is carefully getting some red stuff from the pouch, but the image in my head is that the cart of shaking and bumping due to the ox being spooked into running after the house exploded. In my head it doesn’t match with how S. is able to carefully inching some of the contents of the pouch onto the manacles. Dangerous alchemy: I don’t recall S. having picked up all that dangerous stuff (the red stuff, and the yellow stuff) in the previous chapter, before the thugs dragged S. to the cart. If S. did pick it up and I missed it, let’s just chalk that up to weekly reader syndrome, but if S. didn’t pick up the stuff, S. had to have been wearing the pouches while working on the solvents. To me that feels like a very high risk to take, considering the potency of the stuff. Maybe S. always carries something like that around for self-defense? If so, there must be something that’s useful but not likely to be deadly to S. if one of the pouches ruptures or S. forgets it’s there? I do find the effects interesting and cool to read about, but it did make me wonder why S. would carry such dangerous stuff around naturally. Running away: I don’t quite buy into the reason why S. won’t go back and sift through the ruins for anything useful. The leap into assuming that S. would be compelled to stay with the ruins out of guilt or memories is a weak one to me. The whole place exploded, so it’s not livable anymore. I don’t see S. living in the woods and rebuilding the house, so really there is nothing keeping the character there. What I would buy is that because there were dangerous solvents and explosives in the house S. is not willing to go near it in case not everything went off, so S. wouldn’t want to go back there because of after-explosions. Recognition: This feels like a problem of the modern age, with things like social media, where everyone would recognize a celebrity and, potentially, the offspring, because the images are so readily available. This is not the modern age. Even if S.’s mother is well known for her work, she wouldn’t be instantly recognizable for anyone who hadn’t done business with her directly. Certainly not by the common folk. Maybe this would be a problem in the town of T., where they know S., but not the capital. And the chance of anyone linking the appearance of the sequestered ‘daughter’ to that of a craftswoman living in a backwoods area is really small. S. also makes it seem like the Queensguard would all recognize S. on sight, yet S. didn’t bat an eye when the fake Queensguard had no idea who S. was. So obviously not all Queensguard would know S., which pretty much takes the problem away. Angst: Angsty angst is angst and comes across as too much. A lot has just happened, and if S. felt any fear about that it would be understandable, but at the end of the chapter S. pretty much gives up the dream of becoming an alchemist because it ‘would take years to recover from the taunts and jibes…in the capital city”. Really? One, there is no logical reason to assume S. will be accosted in such a manner in the capital, looking for the character’s mother, since capitals are big, and with that comes anonymity. Two, I really hope this is an exaggeration, because if taunting (and the thought of being taunted and jibed) is enough to emotionally cripple S. into inaction for years then S.’s fear of people is so high that setting foot in any kind of civilized place should be impossible. Let alone becoming an apprentice in a town and leaving the house behind. Can S. even handle criticism? And how was S. thinking of dealing with other apprentices and villagers, because as an alchemist apprentice there would be no way to avoid attention, and therefore criticism and taunting (kids can be so cruel). So, yeah, I am not quite buying the angst at this point. Missing ‘the’: “as I leapt over the side of cart” is missing ‘the’ in front of cart.

E.: I liked the changes you made to E.’s POV compared to the previous iteration. The fact that she has feelings for T., rather than just being in it to manipulate her way to the top further, makes her more sympathetic. Multiple POVs: I’m not so sure about the other additions in this version of the chapter. There are a lot of perspectives here that are only there for a flash and just scream that this is for intrigue’s sake, that something nefarious is going on. It lacks subtlety in my opinion. Additionally, this comes on the heels of chapter one, where we’re already introduced to two POVs, M. and Q.. With how short each of these segments are I think having so many perspectives this early is overkill. Flashback: The time difference between this chapter and the previous one is two days, which is not a lot at all. I’ve said before that flashbacks are a pet-peeve of mine, especially this early in the story. It’s only chapter two and we’re already skipping all over the place timeline-wise. We’re also getting new characters to boot. It feels a bit much and disjointed from what happened in chapter one. I also wonder if the flashback is necessary at all. Couldn’t you have chapter two happen at the same time as chapter one (removing the flashback portion of ‘two days ago’), and have Q. and M. look for a new job two days later (when all the nefarious business has gone down with G. company)? Hell you could even have them look into another offer first, have them refuse it, and then when they look for an alternative R.’s job pops on the radar.

I didn’t get to read the previous submission, so you’re also getting some reaction on the first part as well. To be brief, I liked what I read of the setting so far, but I’m not sold on the characters yet. I’m not really connecting with W. World: I like the world building so far. Feels a little like the setting for the game Horizon Zero Dawn, but maybe that’s just me. Looking forward to reading more about it. Creature: I’m thinking this is going to look something like a Tyrannosaurus for some reason (but please don’t be a machine, like Horizon Zero Dawn), which I think would be kind of cool. Looking forward to seeing what it actually looks like. Footprint: I have to wonder how F. missed the footprint if it’s big enough for W. to lie in and W. is standing right in front of it, rummaging inside the pool of water within. In my mind it’s like F. found W. with her hand in the cookie jar, but the cookie jar is the size of a kitchen. It shakes my suspension of disbelief that F. sees nothing of this. Allowed in the forest: Part of W. duties or tasks seem to be collecting herbs and stuff in the forest, so…she’s allowed in the forest for that right? Otherwise, she can’t fulfil her duties. But then at the same time W. isn’t actually allowed in the forest - or at least not that far in the forest, but really, who would know at that point? So what is it? Is she allowed in the forest or not? Naivety: I’m not sure if you’re going for that, but W. comes across as incredibly naïve and/or stupid. You portray the D. as gigantic monsters, which are seen as dark gods and which are known to attack the town. Yet W. doesn’t tell anyone she that she just spotted a footprint of such a creature. I can kind of get why she doesn’t tell A., because A. seems very antagonistic, but W. had no such excuse when she was riding with F. and not telling F. because F. ‘has something else on her mind’ is a crem dung reason. Of course F. is has something on her mind, she’s in the forest everyone fears so much. And then she doesn’t tell O. either, because she doesn’t want to interrupt a lesson. There’s a dark god monster thing outside of the village, I would think that takes precedence over everything else. Low tension: The above point brings me to the feeling of tension, or rather the lack thereof. I felt tension and excitement when W. found the footprint, but over the rest of the chapter that tension fell away. And that’s because after being introduced as some kind of godlike, evil, rampaging monster W. keeps on not telling anyone about the footprint she found. I stopped caring about the thing since F’s preoccupation with something else is more important than a dark god near the village, and a lesson held by O. is also more important than a dark god outside the village. Everything is more important it seems, because when she finally does tell someone about this, the first reaction of L. is not to rush out and sound the alarm, but talk about a map he found and a quest he wants the two of them to go on to a mystery settlement. Age: In conjunction with W.’s naivety I’m having trouble placing her age, she seems like a teenager struggling with puberty and the feelings that come along with that. But she’s at least six years older than L., and L. ‘came of age’ two years ago. Now I have no idea what actual age ‘coming of age’ translates to in this society, but if I go by 18, she’d be 26 and she just doesn’t seem like she’s 26. And if the age of coming of age is lower, she’d still be older than 20. And I’m just not seeing it. Lost city: A lost settlement at six days away? I realize the forest might be dense, and that could inhibit travel (but not dense enough to block giant monsters walking through it or the animals the villagers ride), but the idea that there’s a settlement in the same valley that no one knows about seems unlikely. Oh, wait, it is known since people from another settlement tried to find it and never came back. Yeah, that sounds like a great place to try and find by the two of them (or three, as they want to bring an unknown character along). In this sequence both W. and L. come across as children who want to go out on an adventure and have no clue at all what lies beyond their village’s walls, which is weird since W. goes out regularly.

I agree with Mandamon, this reads a lot smoother than the previous iteration, though the big questions still remain, which I hope will get answered eventually. Shoes: Question number one, no more shoes. Now, it is never specified whether that means everyone goes around barefoot, or if they wear socks instead, or if there’s something else that they wear on their feet as a sort of shoe replacement. From this chapter, with the glass shards, I’m thinking Y. is going around barefoot. And this doesn’t really make sense to me, since present day Earth is not really fit for walking around barefoot, at all. Fashionable or not, people who work certain jobs need footwear to protect their feet, and presently that should include Y. So why he’s not wearing shoes and why no one is wearing shoes is really confusing. Peace: The whole sudden peace thing after the aliens showed up is weird as well, though I can see that there might be more peace on the planet when confronted with an advanced alien presence suddenly in our solar system. There’d be more peace, but not complete peace, since terrorist organizations would probably still keep going. That’s not the impression I’m getting, since it seems the whole planet is suddenly peaceful. Apparently black-market deals are still going on, and Y. can still basically commit a crime, so basic human nature appears to be intact. I’m thinking the R. are using the A. in some kind of telepathic mind control or something, to dampen violent, but not immoral tendencies. Looking forward to finding out whether that’s actually the case.

Awesome, M. and Q. are back Small time skip: I feel like I’m missing something, since the last time we saw Q. and M. they were leaving the crash site with N., and now they’re being brought in for questioning. Last time the sheriff barely gave them the time of day, now he’s all up in their grill? Still alive: So the client is still alive. Really thought he was dead, as did Q., so I was quite surprised at that. Q. on the other hand doesn’t really react to the news when K. tells him. I get why he wouldn’t outwardly, but inwardly I’d expected at least a little bit of shock – especially, as Q. later mentions, due to the heat involved in the crash. M’s questioning: Truthfully I was mostly confused during the interaction between M. and B. in the interview chamber. The constant switching of being belligerent, nauseatingly innocent, flirting, and her walking around and taking off some of her clothes, tussling her hair…what was she doing? Going for an insanity defense? And despite knowing M. is a teenager, involved in questionable things along with Q., and the fact that the interview room has video surveillance, why is he letting her get to him so easily? He’s the adult and a police officer. He’s the one in a position of power, yet from the interaction it doesn’t seem like it. Also, is it standard procedure now to start a simple witness questioning (since at this point they are not implicated in any crime) with the phrase ‘I was sent here to break you’. Especially towards a minor? In a room where there is surveillance. A lawyer would have a field day with that one. Also, a good cop / bad cop routine usually works better if there’s a good cop in the room. Otherwise you just have a belligerent cremhole and anyone would clamp up when confronted with a belligerent cremhole. M. thinks B. is “unencumbered by a consistent thought process”. From my perspective, they both are. Be nice to M.: When K. says that to Q. I was confused. It felt a little out of place. Why would he give a potential suspect in the case of the crashed plane, and the one who attacked the arts dealer, advice on how to handle M.? He hardly knows either of them. Same with the remark of ‘don’t fight it, you can never win’. To me it came across as weird. Missing person: Uhm, maybe I’m missing something here. R. found T. in the fields, wounded. Rescue workers show up and he goes to meet them, then when they come back T. is gone. Two days later, there is no news about T., R. goes to the police, he goes to the company, but basically hears nothing. T. is completely missing. Then R. tells Q. that his wife is watching T. at his house. What? How did she get there? The order of events that is presented here is confusing. Assassin: The other patient turning out to be an assassin of some sort ramps up the tension, but I have to wonder at the guy’s timing. He had all the time to take care of R. when it was just him, R. and the deputy outside. Instead he makes his move when there are three people in the room with him (R., Q., and M.) and three cops outside the room. If his job was to silence R. before he could talk he should have done it earlier.

The very start of the chapter starts strong, with the title and the epigraph, but then it quickly devolves in a very slow pace with far too much info-dumping for my taste. It’s not until the scene break on page 8 that the main character started to show some emotion and that things were actually starting to happen. Epigraph: I like it. It’s short, succinct, and gives a hint of what the magic system is about, which at this point in the story is really all I need. You repeat some of what’s in the epigraph later on in the chapter itself, but having read the epigraph those later instances feel redundant. Investigating with magic: Full disclosure, I’ve read some of your other works in this universe so I know a bit about the magic system, but it’s been a while so for all intents and purposes consider me a newbie anyway. The first eight pages of this chapter are basically about the main character using an unfamiliar magic system to solve a problem and you as the writer giving us as much information as possible to understand exactly what the main character is doing. And I really don’t care about any of that at this point. It doesn’t help that he easily gets the necessary information as well, due to him being special and having the necessary skills at the moment he needs them. So quickly he knows what was taken, what was on the paper, when the guy was murdered, and what he has to do next. He wasn’t even interrupted in his investigation. There was no hardship or conflict there at all. Degree of separation: Someone has been murdered, but I don’t really care that this person is dead, and that’s mostly because the main character doesn’t seem to care. At most he feels it’s an inconvenience in his plans, but otherwise there’s no emotion involved here at all. Which also makes it hard to care for the main character. It also makes it hard to understand why he doesn’t just leave. Info-dumping: See the above points. Too much information on the magic system, with nothing else happening for eight pages and with a character who’s (emotionally) detached from the proceedings is not a good start. Investigator: The fact that he has the title of investigator is something I would have liked to have known before page 5, because it wasn’t until that point that it started to make sense to me that the main character was sticking around and investigating why the guy was murdered. Society: I get that ‘hearing’ two of the aspects of magic is rare, but what I don’t get is why there’s a secret society for them to begin with. Why do they need to be a secret? Is there a stigma against them? Bending the rules: This also feels like it’s too easy. The main character has all the magics he needs to get the clues he needs AND he has a mentor in a position of power who has no problem whatsoever to break rules to speed the investigation of his protégé along. Races: From this chapter I don't really get what race the main character is, or what he looks like. Nor do I get what some of the other mentioned races look like. I think his mentor is reptilian, but I'm not a 100% on that.

Great chapter, I very much enjoyed reading it, despite the big, prominent, flashback indicator at the very start. I’m not a fan of flashbacks. Flashback: Like I said, not the biggest fan of flashback chapters to be honest and seeing the “X days earlier” prominently at the start instantly put me on guard, and a little predisposed not to like it. I’m more of a believer that if something important happened to the main characters that the reader should know about (and be explicitly shown in a chapter) that takes place before the main sequence, than maybe the story should have actually started there. Then I started reading and saw that the chapter has different characters and a different location, rather than being about Q and M in a time before the main sequence of the story, so it doesn’t register as a flashback scene for me. Huge relief. Since you have the timestamps at the start of each chapter anyway, do you really need the “X days earlier” marker? I think if the time skip was introduced a little more subtly that it wouldn’t have raised my hackles. And are we going to get more of these flashback-type chapters or is this the only one? If it’s the latter maybe this should be a prologue instead? E: I like this character. She’s ruthless and knows what she wants and how to get it. Raptors: Love it, that’s exactly what I would do if I had the technology to bring back extinct species *hums theme song of Jurassic Park* Last pen: Now I’m really curious as to who or what is kept behind that mirror, if it even gives E. pause.

I don’t have much to add to what’s already been said. I enjoyed the banter at the start, didn’t really mind the slow-down in the middle as they’re driving to the airport since the bantering keeps going, and once the plane goes down the action picks up nicely again. Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness: Have to agree with the others here, that if it starts after three days it doesn’t sound like muscle soreness, but something more serious. The Old Man: For a moment I was thrown and wondering when a call from his old man happened. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone refer to their ex-father-in-law as the Old Man. But maybe that’s just me. Involvement after the murder: I do wonder why Q. is still involving himself in the potential client’s murder, since Q. hadn’t actually talked to the client yet, there was no contract signed, probably no money forthcoming now anyway, and there are other potential paying jobs still in his inbox. Why not leave the matter to the police and get out of that town?

Overall I’m not quite hooked by this chapter into reading on to the next one. Honestly, and I don’t want to sound blunt (but I know I probably am), but on the whole it is underwhelming. I’ll go into more details on why I say that, as well as some other thoughts I had while reading through the chapter. DND: Not knowing what I was getting into ahead of time, and especially given the chapter title, I first thought this was shaping up to be a generic, DND-like, fantasy, especially with an elvish character named D., which is derivative and not interesting. Glad to see it was actually a game the characters were playing, and that this was shown as early as it did. Third-First person switch: The switch from first person, to third person (kind of) and then back to first person was a little confusing and jarring to me, since there was no context for it. It became clear on the second page as the POV character was using third person to narrate the game he’s playing, but before that moment, and combined with the apparently generic fantasy setting, I was thrown out of the narrative a little. Characters and Avatars: When you start to transition from in-game avatar names to the character names I was having a hard time linking the two. For instance, first you have the ogre, N., then a few lines down you have H., and you mention he’s not an ogre, but I had to go back a bit to realize H. was N.. Too many characters, just talking: Speaking of characters, there were a lot of names dropped this first chapter, staring with the avatar names and then the player names. Because there are so many characters talking about things that, at this point, don’t really matter to me, I’m not really getting a feel for the main POV character. And for a first person story that’s really not good. By the end of it I don’t know much about A. and I don’t really have a reason to care yet. Awkward transitions: The story starts with an apparent fantasy setting, but after two pages it transitions into the actual characters playing a game. At first it seems tabletop, because of the thinly veiled references to DND. But then it turns out to be a computer game, and the characters are talking to each other online. And just when you think the chapter is about friends playing a game it changes again, halfway through the chapter, into a theoretical treatise on the origin of the species, which reads as an infodump and has no ties to what happened before and doesn't really set up an interesting conflict. Online versus offline: it actually took a while for me to realize that the game was being played online rather than as a tabletop RPG. When A. leaves there’s no mention of him taking off the headset. He’s just going into another room, shouting at his friends, who answer him and he can hear the answer. That’s not what I expect from a headset to be honest. So when H. tells him to put on his headset I was really confused. Where’s Waldo: Throughout the piece I was having trouble determining who was actually there in the room with your POV character, and who was actually online. And to be honest by the end of it I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure. You could do some more blocking to clarify that. I think A. and H. are in the room, and S. and J. are not. And when S. leaves the conversation A. and H. meet J. in the hallway outside their room. Is that correct? Conflict: The conflict you’re trying as a hook by the end of the chapter is a weak one. A. and his friends want to go to S. because they’re worried that he’s being pranked and that he will get his feelings hurt. Hurt feelings aren’t really earthshattering as far as hooks are concerned, and none of the characters are worried that they won’t be able to go either. There is no hardship here for anyone, except potentially S., but he’s not the POV character and his problem is either minor (being pranked) or nonexistent (if he’s not being pranked). What’s A.’s conflict in this? Promise to the reader: You asked about the promise to the reader. Honestly, with the transitions this chapter goes through, I’m not sure what the promise is. First it seems a generic fantasy, then it becomes something about a bunch of gamers (which tells me nothing about the genre either), and then it goes into the origin of the species and the potential mystery about that, which will probably end up going through an Indiana Jones / Tomb Raider / Da Vinci Code cover-up of some sort? Is that anywhere close to where you want to take this? Descriptions: In the fantasy setting you give a basic description of the characters, such as ogre, and dwarf, and a more detailed (though clichéd, but I suppose that was the point) description of the elf character. But then, when we move out of the game you don't describe any of the actual characters so by the end of the chapter there are four named characters but I have no idea what any of them look like.

Yeah, it was the typo