Asmodemon

And now that it's April everyone's coming back out of the woodworks I've also got another chapter to submit, though if more people want to submit this week I'll pass up the slot.

In this chapter we return to Rosalin, waking up after a night spent on the tavern floor to a morning that proves to be far from kind.

And I'd like to submit something this week too.

I liked the character of Duko. Very assured of himself. Knows what he wants and how to get it, he’s in an underdog position and generally despised. Lisu feels more childish in this chapter, less sure than she was in the last. In that chapter she seemed prepared for escape, now, all of that is gone. Just a scared girl on the run who doesn’t know what she’s doing. I’m not sure I like that, but we’ll see where her character goes. When we’re in Duko’s perspective we learn he has a ‘condition’. The way he describes himself as fairly attractive is offset by this mysterious condition that horrifies people. Does it do something physical to him? I thought it did and was annoyed when we were in Lisu’s perspective that you didn’t clarify. I mean I get why he wouldn’t dwell on it, but Lisu’s so uncomfortable it’s only natural she would think about it. Only at the end do we learn he killed his own familiar, but what that did to him remains unknown. What I’ve seen so far doesn’t make complete sense. If he had a dog familiar that might explain why other dog metsi have problems with him, but so far I’ve seen no special kinship between different metsi or normal people that explains why everyone is so horrified about Duko except for what he’s known for. If he left the capital and went somewhere he wasn’t known he wouldn’t have so much trouble in his life. Or am I wrong? And why does food go bad around him? The word schpeal made me pause, like CJHuitt I thought you meant ‘spiel’. Google pointed me to an entry in the urban dictionary, which seems to embody the intent of the sentence, but I haven’t found the word in any other dictionary I own. And I was thrown out of the chapter to look it up. There’s a lack of descriptions in this chapter as well, Duko’s house/establishment might as well be a void. I’d also move his description of himself to Lisu’s POV, it would feel more natural if she sat there looking at him, wondering how a fairly attractive man could’ve become so horrifying, rather than having Duko think vainly about himself.

You’re welcome, it’s good to critique your stuff again. You had some interesting things going on with the previous drafts and you don’t pull punches with your characters. I’m still really curious to see where you’re heading with this.

Having read your Jhuz chapters I’m already reasonably familiar with your magic system, but since it’s been a while the names of the practitioners took some getting used to again. The start of the chapter, the philosophical debate, didn’t do much for me. This early in the story it lacks relevance and it feels instead like a maid-butler info-dump. A little after that you do a sort of reversal of speaker and action, which makes the conversation between Lisu and Crissa hard to follow. I’ll explain what I mean. Someone speaks (attributed in places with ‘she said’ or a variation thereof) which is then followed by another character taking an action in the same paragraph. I found this confusing, since the speaker’s identity is not made clear. I had to backtrack when you finally wrote ‘Lisu replied’ to see who actually spoke where. The following scene in the restaurant I liked, conversation wise. When she goes out is where things go south for me plot-wise. She knows the soldiers are there for her. She plans to run. Why not leave out the back in the first place and get a head start? What I missed most though is descriptions. You don’t have to go overboard, but to me this chapter was on the wrong side of minimalistic. This is the first look at the imperial capital. From the chapter I get that we won’t be here long, but I’d still like to know what the capital actually looks like. What I got from the surroundings in this chapter is that there’s a restaurant, with tables and a bar and outside is the street. To me this feels too sparse. What is the architecture like? Is the street paved, cobbles, dirt? Is the bar made of wood, light or dark wood, or something else? Are there windows in the restaurant, etc. The same with the characters. I only know gender and nothing else. Do Lisu and her sister look alike, are the soldiers in uniform and if so, what does that look like? I don’t know. Final thing, motivations and name drop. You mention Duko and I hope this becomes relevant soon, because there’s no frame of reference. Is Duko a friend? A soldier? Some kind of familiar since she speaks of using him? And why does Lisu attack when she’s being drafted. Not liking the draft is one thing, but there is no reason why she’d react so vehemently. It came completely out of nowhere. The rest of the chapter was interesting, but I’d like to see it fleshed out some more with descriptions and motivations.

It’s been a while since I last submitted. I’ve been doing some edits to the previous chapters based on the critiques I received, but lost a lot of time with computer problems and being sick. I’m looking forward to getting back into it. In this chapter we find Black Rose in the Citadel of Thorns, recently occupied by the Imperium’s second army, led by general Orchid.

First impression, long chapter. It brings to mind the concerns I’ve had with the previous iterations of the story as well, which is length. I’m afraid there is little in the chapter that justifies it being thirty pages long. The excerpt at the start is a tantalizing opening. Then we get to Karemoth in the Hellfane desert. Right from the start there isn’t much of a connection to the prologue. The first chapter is so different it makes the prologue feel superfluous (at least until the story makes it clear what its significance is). Little to none of the terms you introduced there return and here you come with new terms, like ‘huuk’, or the Three (which refers to the three suns, but which the chapter only infers and never really makes clear). The biggest concern I have though is that little actually happened in this chapter. The first thirteen pages, almost half the chapter, is focussed on Karemoth luring the dando. Which he does by standing still and letting blood drip on the sand. That is all that happens in those pages. The rest is information about Karemoth, his surroundings, his tribe, etc. Now I like Karemoth better than I did before, but it’s hard to keep attention when in thirteen pages Karemoth does next to nothing. The threat of the dando is also overshadowed by the slow pace. After the dando breaks the sand things get interesting, all the way to the end. There are some smaller issues in the latter half, such as that even with a crutch, I don’t really see a cripple kicking his coat from the ground to his hand. There are other places where Karemoth is suddenly not so cripple at all, like when he pole-vaults. Now this doesn’t detract from the fact that the dando is a great creature and the fight, and the losses suffered, are good to read. The way Karemoth slips the hooked ends of the crutch over the dando’s head doesn’t make it clear he’s riding the beast as it ascends. When he drops to his knees I thought he did so on the sand. It’s only later, when he’s sliding down the beast that I realize he was on top of it in the first place. Another small thing is when you say “They were not beasts of blood like men or murts”, then you refer to the ichor they lose as blood anyway. This felt counter-intuitive the first I read of it. When Karemoth sees the child he is anguished that he has to choose between the dando and the child, but I had the impression the dando was already dying. So I don’t understand what he has to choose between. The end was a good one, he rescued the child, but with considerable losses – he knew the risks and did it anyway. So far Karemoth is a likeable character, but I don’t think it’s enough to keep attention going for the whole of the chapter, considering the contents. The first thirteen pages are a big drag on the pacing, which the latter half can’t completely make up for.

Hey LTU, good to see you back here, it’s been a while since I read something of yours. It’s nice that you’re coming back to this story. I’ve read what you submitted of the two previous iterations of the Canticle and the Forge, back when it was still also the Name of God, and the prologue instantly feels familiar to me. I like to see where you’re taking it this time. I did have some problems with the language while reading the prologue. You’ve got some really flowery parts that were a bit confusing here and there. The confusion comes in two variations, the first is that the flowery descriptions create a contradiction in my mind. The first sentence is an obvious example of this, “hollow echo of happy tears”. The other thing is that the flowery descriptions take too long before you get to the point, or subject, of the sentence. Take for example: “The blood long since dried and clotted made a dark stain on the bed which he, so high and so fallen, sat.” You go into the description of the blood, making me wonder where you’re going with it, before saying the blood stains a bed. Only at the very end of the sentence do I know it’s the bed on which Traxix sits. The prologue suffers from some missing words here and there. I can fill in the blanks in a couple places, but elsewhere it leaves a sentence that I can’t parse. That made the prologue a bit jarring to read. You also raised some expectations here and there, which you then broke for no reason I can discern. For example, when Traxix starts to imagine Charoh in his cage I expect to be given her description, but instead you write how Traxix looks. Later I expect Charoh at the slats, not his daughter. At first that confused me, did Traxix marry his daughter? It was only later I realized that this wasn’t Charoh at all. Plotwise I liked the chapter – I recall Traxix (or who I think must be Traxix) from the interludes of the previous iteration. This prologue answers a lot of questions I had about him from those interludes. It also raises questions that, without the knowledge of what I’ve already read before, are more confusing than tantalizing. I understand that to Traxix certain things are so normal he doesn’t even think about them, but to the reader these things are not normal. Things like the “Eye”, “Dissonant”, “Shroud”, “the Calor”, etc. It’s a lot to take in and combine that with sentence structures that are confusing that makes the prologue harder to read than it should be. Do you need to mention everything right now, or can some terms be cut, or explained, or likened to something the reader would know? The trial confused me too. You never explain why Charoh condemned Traxix only to speak up for him at the trial she instigated. I like the reversal at the end, the attack of the Calor and the best friend who wasn’t so good a friend after all. Maybe you could have laid a little bit more groundwork when they talked in his prison, but in all it didn’t bother me at all. Looking forward to more, though that’s more based on what I’ve read before than what I got in the prologue – right now the confusion hampers the story.

I've got something to submit on monday, if that's all right.

Interesting, I don’t see the connection yet between this new book and “Black Magic, Blacker Deeds”, but this chapter doesn’t need that connection to stand on its own. It’s a very good start. The way you did the prologue – a ‘leading’ conversation – is usually something I hate, but here it works for me. There are plenty of hooks here, humanity’s immortality, immortality failing (why?), Coil’s loss, it makes me want to read more. I agree with the others that the sickness of Rae should be made clearer from the start, I too thought she was wasting away rather than suffer other physical ailments. And I don’t much care for elves either. The immortality angle is a good one, but it wasn’t really clear what you meant by some of the time spans mentioned. For instance, their father left nine years ago, which is called ‘a long time ago’. The loss of immortality is also ‘a long time ago’. Is this also in the span of a decade or is it longer ago? I got the sense it’s longer, but the two senses of time conflict with each other. In the post above you mention generations, so it’s definitely longer, but it’s not clear how long ago this immortality started to fail exactly and how this related to Coil and Rae. I had to get Coil’s age from the above post – the way he spoke to Rae made him seem far older.

In this chapter we go back to Rosalin. I’ve gone back to edit the fourth chapter and removed the encounter on the plains at the end, it just didn’t work for me anymore.

Well, if it's possible I'd also like to submit again this week.

CHAPTER ONE Everyone’s already covered most of what I wanted to say for the first two chapters, so I won’t belabour the points. Your story has potential, I like court-intrigue stories (if that is indeed where this is going) but they’re also hard to pull off. I hope you’ll succeed. There are some grammar and punctuation issues, such as using hyphens to denote hesitation in speech in the first half of the first chapter instead of ellipses, but that’s nothing a good read through won’t fix. I’d have liked to have gotten more descriptions, it reads a little barebones in most places. The biggest thing that bothered me in the first chapter was that Alena was so emotionless. Her father just died and though it was expected it should have left more of an impact, unless there are reasons for her to behave this way (distant relationship, she hates him, etc). This chapter doesn’t offer those reasons (you don’t need to spell them out, just give a nudge the reasons are there), so I’m left to assume they have a normal relationship – in which case her coldness is really off-putting. Losing the throne seems her primary conflict, but I failed to care for it. CHAPTER TWO The info-dump about the regions really need to go. On page five you have Alena say something really odd; she’s giving Valla money to bribe some boys and some guards for information. She’s the heir of the kingdom and she needs to bribe her own guards for information? If she knows there are guards who can be bribed, why haven’t these people been thrown out of the palace yet? Alena would be stupid to assume her guards couldn’t be bribed, but this is an equally stupid move, just in the opposite way. What bothered me in the first chapter was how heartless Alena was. Now it seems that runs in the family. When Irina and Melina enter their father’s chamber they both say one meaningless platitude and then continue with the problem of the day, rather than any kind of mourning. During their conversation about politics I’d completely lost track of the fact that they were at their father’s deathbed. On page eight you have another info-dump, this one in the butler and maid dialogue format. Both Carida and Irina know of the prosecution mages have suffered , their conversation is only there to inform the reader and has no other reason at all. Also, in places it is Irina lecturing the master mage. While it is not impossible for an apprentice to know more about a certain field than the master, in this case none of the things Irina talks about should be unknown to the master mage.

Hello everyone, And a happy new year. I’m starting the year with another chapter for Maiden of Thorns. After a hiatus filled with China, NaNoWriMo and a busy December to top the year off, it feels good to submit again. The critiques I’ve gotten have really helped me in sharpening the previous chapters. In this chapter we continue to follow Dais after his escape from a group of suspected imperial sappers.

Looks right to me.

I was maybe considering submitting something on Jan 2, but I have no problem waiting until the ninth.

Time travel. The others raised some valid points about that and the chapter that I fully agree with. It’s a risky thing to write about because you need to know a lot, not only about the places the story takes place, but also the cultures and what effects they have on the people from them. Mashing three different cultures, spanning times, is not something that should be undertaken lightly. So take care. I’ll add that for me the chapter was mostly confusing. I didn’t get that it was time travel until the end of the second page. During the first two pages I kept trying to figure out when the story was taking place and failing. I got that it was a hospital, but with the initial references to knights sparring I thought we were in some sort of medieval hospital – which didn’t make sense, because they didn’t have hospitals like we know them back then. Even after I figured out there’s time travel involved (which was also proven unfound since it’s actually alternate dimensions) there were still confusing bits until I finally got that the characters are from three different eras. I like this concept, especially the Bridgeborn, but I think you need to make this clearer right from the start. When I’m confused this early in the story I’m liable to put the book down, despite how great it might turn out in the end. While I liked the bridgeborn concept there’s still something that bothered me. I got to thinking about how this conglomeration of times got to be. Uncle Charles discovered the Bridge, and we have several children around who seem to be, at their oldest, twenty years old. Given that uncle Charles is still around and not infirm that gives about thirty to forty years given present day age estimates, for people from three different eras, with nothing in common, to travel together, form relationships that produce children, and successfully blend their societal views in such a way they can function in all the different eras. Maybe it’s just me, but I found this to be rather unlikely. Aside from the confusion this chapter has one really big problem: I don’t care about any of it. I’m not hooked to the characters or the plot (nothing happens this chapter) and the bridgeborn concept (while interesting) is not enough. What I look for in a first chapter is character and conflict – why should I keep reading this book rather than another? In terms of conflict there isn’t really anything of note. Yes, the mother is sick, this is a sad thing but it’s not enough. With characters you introduce a big cast, but as a result we don’t get to know any one of them well enough to form a connection. Why should I care about these characters? That’s a question that should really be answered as soon as possible. Make the POVs more personal – I didn’t get any individuality from them; you focus on the outside, what got the characters where they are, who the characters around them are, but you don’t address what’s inside – their emotions, ideas, thoughts, the things that make a viewpoint personal for a character. The last thing I want to point out is pacing, since there simply is none here. Nothing happens in this chapter aside from the characters sitting in the hospital and you, the writer, telling the readers about the different characters, the existence of the bridge, a history of these particular bridgeborn and their families. You disguise a flashback / history infodump as a story told by the sick mother. I don’t care about these characters in their present. Why would I care about what happened in the past? I think you should definitely introduce the Bridge as soon as possible, but the rest you can address when and if the characters are in those particular times or let it come up naturally as different cultural views clash. If I can make a suggestion I’d start with something like the third scene, having Hugh go to the bridge. This introduces the concepts of what you’re trying to do without first miring the reader in the slowness and info-dumpiness of the first two scenes. Introduce a conflict fast. Everything else you address in this chapter can be far more subtly addressed later in the story. We don’t need to know everything right from the start. Knowing about the bridge is enough, knowing about the bridgeborn (Hugh) is enough as background.

The plot thickens with the dead ‘assassin’ as a spy, as well as Surr’s influence though he left the red council, the subsequent attack is just the kind of action I’ve been waiting for. After the arrival of the Mazer though you go into just about a page of info-dumping about what Surr’s done in the past, his involvement in the council, what a Mazer is, and the geopolitical stance of the red council. This drops the pacing of the chapter all the way to zero – there’s a time and a place for everything, but Till contemplating all this information shouldn’t happen when a giant monster is trying to kill him. I was caught off guard about Till’s leg. All of a sudden it hurts, so much that he limps and can hardly move from the pain. When did that happen? I can’t remember anything like that and he didn’t have that problem the previous chapters. And later you mention the black takes the form of his long lost leg. Long lost? I can’t remember any references to that either. It all comes across as too sudden and with too much focus. I understand that Till feels pain because his leg is unravelling, but the pain started before the unravelling commenced, without any explanation of why. That makes it seem off. When Till is sliced by Surr’s dagger he flinches after getting sliced and then also screams. Somehow the order doesn’t feel quite right. To me he should’ve flinched at the sight of the dagger, then got sliced, then he screams. Amateurs. You’re having the council send a lot of amateurs after Surr, a notorious red wizard. The first ‘assassin’ was an amateur sent to get killed. According to Till the Mazer is an amateur who can’t swing his sword to save his life, though the form of his magic does make him formidable. He’d be a real threat if he was trained. Why are all these amateurs sent after a professional? I’d suggest not referring to the Mazer as an amateur, since it dropped the tension from the scene a bit. Throughout the chapter you have more instances where you dump information on the reader in the middle of the fight. A few lines here and there aren’t that much of a problem, but in this case it was more like paragraphs of information, interrupting the flow of the action. What I got from this chapter is that the magic system really is very well done. Also, an action packed chapter is one way to raise the stakes and it can work here, except you had too much info dumping to keep the pace up all the way through to the end. If you can cut some things that will help a lot to make this chapter a good one.

I’m going to concur with the others, the first two pages of info-dump definitely need to go. Good news is I’m getting to like Till more, his mourning of his wife gives him the sympathetic edge his character needs. I am wondering where the story is going, after the prologue Till hasn’t been doing that much of interest (rebuff a client, drink and sketch in a bar). For now I don’t mind, after the hectic events of the prologue it’s nice to see Till and Surr in a normal situation, but I do want more to happen soon. The assassination might be it, though I have never heard of an assassin as inept as this one – who lets himself be seen like that. That’s not an assassin, that’s more like a scout – which holds its own possibilities if it is a scout. Nice chapter, interesting location and the interaction between Till and Surr worked really well. Like last chapter the language is a little rough here and there, with missing words and the like, but overall very enjoyable.

Interesting, so Till – the Black Hands – survived whatever happened in the (rewritten) prologue. At least I assumed (before reading your comment) that this takes place after the prologue, from the scene I can’t be completely sure since you’ve given no time frame here. I think I’d have liked to have read more about what happened directly after the prologue ended, since Coil was an interesting character, but I’ll see where this is going. Jumping to the perspective of the ‘bad guy’ is an interesting choice. He didn’t garner much sympathy from me in the prologue, so you’ll have to create that fast. I did find Till to be an interesting character in the prologue, the magic he used was intriguing as was his nature. We’re seeing his practical and impassionate side again here, but in a different setting – this time he’s not killing anyone, he just doesn’t want to make gaudy things for a client. The fact that he shows some good qualities here makes it easier to like him. He’s reluctant to use his magic to make things just because he can, which also raises the question of why he did what he did in the prologue – raising the black stuff and killing everyone, sacrificing the city to the invading forces. Mostly I agree with what everyone has said already, there are some rough patches here and there, but nothing that can’t be fixed with a good read over. It wasn’t as interesting as the prologue though, the pace dropped way down and while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing you have to be careful at the start of the book. Compared to Coil, who’s plight drew more sympathy than Till’s pathos in this chapter, Till isn’t that sympathetic. As Coil isn’t going to be a POV character anymore (I’m assuming) I’ll need some more reasons to hook me to Till – this chapter didn’t have much of that yet, so I’m hoping the next chapters will.

I haven’t read the previous prologue, so I’m coming at this fresh. You say the prologue or parts of it are up for cutting. Since I haven’t read the other chapters yet I don’t know how this prologue fits in, so I’ll refrain from judgement on cutting the whole. I will say that, in terms of things happening, you used a lot of words to describe the events. So you might want to consider trimming it in light of how long the whole book becomes. Mostly I liked this prologue, I found Coil to be a likeable character and the events leading up to the end of the chapter caught my interest. There were some parts that didn’t work so well, in part because there was some clunky prose with run-on sentences throughout the prologue, but also because some things didn’t make much sense. Take the last sentence of the first paragraph. I wouldn’t call the collapse of a house an anti-climax, even if the previous events showed more force and violence. At the least a collapsing house will sent dust and debris around, and if there are multiple collapses that is only going to be worse. Hardly an anti-climax. If I’d make a suggestion I’d rework it into the following: “Ages old houses toppled, segments of their foundation rose ten feet in an instant with a thunderous crack before collapsing.” Another really long sentence is “Blood rushed to his head immediately as he stood and the pains of being trampled dug into his flesh in a flurry of more distinct pains than Coil had thought himself capable of feeling at once.” I know what you're trying to say, but the way the sentence goes on dilutes the point you're trying to make. Also, the whole section this sentence is in is one where I had to pause for a moment. Coil is on the ground while a mass of people is fleeing. He’s being trampled and while you write that he’s in pain I don’t see it stick around for very long. I also expect him to be more hurt or even to die in such a situation. Or am I reading this wrong and is the stampede I’m imagining only a handful of people? I liked the magic system, using blood as a catalyst and tying man to sword, but with the first mention of the red mage cutting a vein I didn’t immediately recognize as him cutting himself. First I thought he was cutting open a different body and wondered why you didn’t make mention of this. When in the next paragraph you start mentioning bodies I thought the timing of mentioning those bodies was off, but that he was using them instead of himself. I mean, it’s not normal to go cutting into yourself and when you say that he opened a vein I’m expecting a massive flow of blood – that’s the imagery I get from opening veins instead of making a shallow cut in, say, a finger. Yet the blood flow doesn’t happen. In the last part when you’ve got both Black Hands and the red mage I was at times confused who was speaking or who was being mentioned as you started to use both magician and conjurer interchangeably for both the mage characters. The ending was a good climax and a nice way to show Coil’s character growth and resolve in the face of danger, he’s not dropping his sword. I’m looking forward to reading more of this.

Hey guys, I’m going to be MIA for the next three weeks for both submitting and critiquing. I’m going on vacation to China and I won’t have the time or opportunity to do either while I’m there. I can see the backlog growing on me already See you guys in about three weeks.

Thanks guys, I knew this chapter was going to raise a lot of questions and some of those need to remain unanswered for now. Others not so much, i.e. who the ‘ghost’ is and why she appears ghostlike before Black Rose. I’ll have to change some stuff, and rework some sentences while I’m at it, to clarify the points I want answered. The passiveness is not a trend, though it was in the first draft (people who read it will remember). That’s why I pretty much reworked the whole story and I hope that comes through. This chapter is the biggest exception. Due to the nature of the place where Black Rose is she is forced into passiveness. Now that she’s free that’s going to change. Good point, I didn’t think of that. I can change the order of the chapters a bit so Dais gets a bit more screen time so people can get to know him a bit better before the next viewpoint comes along.

In this sixth chapter we go back to a ruined village and the bugs who are threatening to breach its protection. As always I’m looking forward to hearing what you guys think, you’ve been very helpful and insightful so far.