Two McMillion

I'd very much like to submit again next Monday if such a thing is kosher.

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Thank you for saying this! My concern was that when these things came up later, it would seem like it was random, without precedent in the narrative. I wanted to avoid that, but you seem to be saying it doesn't matter because the reader is likely to skip that part anyway. Good to know. I completely missed the bolded similarity. *headdesk* I've tried to make this less like Butcher in later chapters, but as you might have guessed, I do love Dresden. Infernus is simply Latin for "fire" (all of my magicians speak excellent Latin and Greek, unlike most others in fiction...). I suppose changing this to Greek (I believe the word would be purkia) should be easy enough. But I'm glad to hear it does somewhat capture the reader's interest, since that's the main job of an opening.

A quick note: This is the very beginning of an intended cyberpunk urban fantasy novel I’m working on. You guys may be seeing a lot of it over the next few weeks.  Issues I’m aware of and intend to fix: I’m aware there are mistakes with verb tenses. I originally wrote this in the present tense and haven’t quite revised it all the way back. Peter sounds a lot older in this chapter than he will in future chapters. I’ll leave you guys to decide which voice for him is better, but one or the other needs to be fixed IMO. The portrayal of certain elements of the world is different later. There are other issues I think are there, but I won’t bias your opinions by pointing them out ahead of time. Then there are issues that fall into categories such as issues I’m not aware of, things that are potentially issues but are okay as is, etc. Hopefully, this is where critiques come in. I'm wondering about things such as: Are you drawn in by this opening? Does it make you want to read more? Is Peter's narration believable? What issues distract from the main thrust of the narrative? Thanks a ton for reading. I’m really looking forward to sharing! Please note: This is my first time submitting for Reading Excuses. I'm not sure if I sent that email correctly, so if you should have received it and did not, please let me know so I can resend it!

Comments: I haven't read part 1, nor do I know about Dark Crystal. That in mind, some of these comments may be misleading, but here's what I see: The part when Lapp and Selvi were Dreamfasting (BTW, where does that name come from? It doesn't seem like a Fast to me.) started out really good ("I've lived my whole life in the forest/I've lived my whole life underground), but the end where Lapp tells her what his grandfather saw seemed too... pat. Even if it's a telepathic thing where keeping stuff quiet is hard, I wouldn't have expected it to be so easy, given how clearly nervous he was about telling them previously. I might have accepted this more if Selvi had tried persuading him to tell her, and he couldn't help it because she was pretty (since that was mentioned to be a factor previously). The fact the characters met up by hearing music might seem a little contrived, too. The speech patterns of the characters were very formal, more formal than the narration, actually. That's okay, but as I got used to it (it really started sticking out to me after the Dreamfast), the characters starting using contractions in speech and being a bit less formal, which threw me off. I'm not sure I'm getting "innocent, naive, forgetful" vibe from the Gelflings in this piece. Gurjin seemed nothing of the sort, Lapp seemed mostly sad, and while Selvi might have been that at one point she seems to be more than that in the piece. I would potentially be interested in reading a 50,000 word story in this world. Not knowing what happened in part 1 makes judging this difficult, but I did find some aspects of the story (Gelfling race, spirit, etc) interesting. I don't know a lot about what's happening or what these new terms mean, but that's okay, I'm used to it in fantasy novels. However, while I meet read some more after this chapter, if this was the first thing in the story that I read, you would not have much time remaining to really grab my attention. Perhaps the end of the chapter at best. I hope you find this helpful! Good luck in that contest!

That would be a Seon and a Skaze, wouldn't it?

Buy. We will a fight between an Awakened blade and a shardblade sometime in the first five books of the Stormlight Archive.

Buy. Kelsier will appear in the second Mistborn trilogy.

Interesting to read this. Hoid calls the letter's recipient "you old reptile" at one point. I had assumed he was being figurative, but it appears it was meant literally.

You 17th Sharders are sooooo polite! Seriously, I've been completely impressed by people who apologize for things like this- which are totally par for the course on practically every forum out there. Great job!

Well, here's an excerpt from your chapter: And here's an example of how you could possibly vary sentence structure. Not saying this is the "right" way to do it, but here's a way it could be done. Personally, I think this is a stronger excerpt because with the greater variety in sentence beginnings helps keep the reader in the action more.

Haha... am I sensing a desire for an Epic RP? I think the sense would be distance based, with more information gleaned the closer Blaze got to another epic. At the edges of his range he would mainly know that there was an epic in a general direction; as they got closer he would begin to learn details of their powers, with full information known only on a touch for a certain minimum period of time, perhaps? To know the location of an invisible Epic, he would need to be fairly close to them already. I was going for an effect kind of like Bronze in Mistborn. Of course, this bronze might need a copper to counter it.

Not a bad opening chapter. Far from the best, but also far from the worst. The thing that stuck out most to me was sentence structure. You used the subject-verb structure over and over again, and very often the subject was simply "I". Additionally, your sentences tended to all be the same length, which makes the peice sound choppy. I would suggest a more varied sentence structure, trying to have some more compound sentences, sentences that begin with adverbs, adjectives, verbs, etc. That will make it more interesting to read. Lastly, the final paragraph is also quite long, which can result in a bogged-down feeling. Perhaps you could split this into several paragraphs. Those are my main suggestions. Good start; I would read a fic with an opening chapter like this if it came with good reviews. Check out Writing Excuses elsewhere on the forums for a more formal place to get critiques on writing.

None taken Darn. I think it's reasonably balanced, personally, given it's a set of powers with no protection from usual harm (Reckoner with a sniper rilfe has an easy job), and the fact that 2/3 previously posted weaknesses (love and respect) are not things an Epic could reasonably expect to bring to the table against another epic.

Buy. Gemhearts are Honor's body, sort of how Atium was Ruin's body.

Sell. Not everything people call magic has to be magic. Kaladin and Szeth will eventually become friends.

1. Primary power: Superhuman speed and reflexes - I can move at speeds that are presumably less than the speed of light, but too close for any measurement device to tell the difference. Not just my body, but my mind is sped up as well, allowing me to read books at impossible rates, solve problems in record time, and give my punches incredible kinetic energy. Thankfully, Calamity protects me from pesky things like air friction and momentum when I'm using this power. First Secondary - The ability to create and manipulate fire. Blasts of flame, shapes of flame, make things explode, etc. Last Secondary - The ability to instantly sense other epics within about half a mile of myself, and more importantly, to instantly know the exact nature of their powers and weaknesses. 2. Temperatures below freezing inhibit my speed and ability to make fire- I can be imprisoned in ice. Also, any epic who wears an aluminum-foil hat will not be sensed by me. 3. I call myself The Blaze. 4. I get my fun by riding around at speed and causing chaos by melting or burning things.

We'll never know.

Good point, because he uses Feruchemy to know where to go. I wonder if he's been to Scadrial more than once? Or is there Feruchemy on Yolen? Hm, well, apparently Lightweaving was both on Yolan and Roshar, so...

Pretty simple theory here. The letter states the following: Assuming the letter was indeed written by Hoid, and "the element" refers to Lerasium (as I've seen suggested here), it seems reasonable to believe Hoid has made a metalmind from the Lerasium and wears it regularly. This would explain how he "protects it like he protects his own skin". At one point I thought that "protect it like I protect my own skin" meant he had swallowed it and become a Mistborn, but that doesn't really seem like it's "quite safe" and has a "good home" to me. So, I think that Hoid is using the Lerasium as a metalmind. We know from WoB that he can use Feruchemy, so it fits. Perhaps this is how he knows where to go in the Cosmere?

His shadow cloak seemed different from the sunlight- it seemed solid and substantial, while his night was just ordinary darkness.

Yeah, I can imagine that for a lot of people here, "Figure out the answers to all the questions we still have about the metalic arts" would be high on the list. "Yeah, I could have taken over the world, but I had to figure out the way to Shadesmar." XD

Re: Deathpoint, I suppose it's possible that part of the whole Epic Insanity package is paranoia. Even so, it's something to think about.

Seems like TLR had a lot of factors going for him: - Feruchemy to fuel his Allomancy (Feruchemical nicrosil?) - Being a savant - Hemalurgy - Using Lerasium - Changing his body with the WoA I hear people say that each of these factors isn't enough by itself, but all of them together? I think you would certainly end up with the kind of guy who single-handedly destroys armies.

It's an interesting theory, but the things I see against it are: 1) David could be gifted powers by Prof 2) It would weaken the book series if the solution was "surprise, David had a power all along" rather than "David is a normal but determined and smart guy".

That's a good point. I did briefly wonder how likely it was that absolutely nobody had ever faced Steelheart without fear before. What about Deathpoint in the prologue? Are we expected to believe Deathpoint was already afraid of Steelheart before Steelheart survived his attack?