You posted this review request a few months back. Sorry for taking so long to get to it. It's not always easy to find the time to deal properly with multiple chapters and it sort got shelved until now. I did read the prologue initially and found it interesting enough that I wanted to get back to it and give it more attention. So now I'll see if I can do that.
Let me get the picky stuff out of the way first. You're putting a lot of time and effort into this, and you have a decent product so far to show for it. The things you're doing well are hard to come by; many never manage it. You owe it to yourself not to get tripped up on the kind of things that you can easily learn just by opening a book.
You have numerous run-on sentences that stick out like bad scars. No excuse for that, not when a comma turned into a semi-colon or a period would shift something clumsy into something effortless. Get a basic text on grammar and syntax and work it out. Or make sure you give it to a professional copy editor before you submit it. You never want to give an editor a reason to think you don't know what you're doing. They are predisposed to think that in their default state anyway. Your job is to prove otherwise, and rookie mistakes like that do you no good.
I wonder if the misspelling of "oracle" is intentional. Perhaps you wish to evoke a sense of some earlier, more archaic version of the language? If so, I don't think it works, particularly since you don't seem to use it as a generalized style. If it's simply misspelled, fix it.
In general, don't stumble over these kinds of issues. Pay attention to your verbs, your punctuation, and all the other simple nuts and bolts stuff that will keep your text from getting in the way of your content.
So far I've read the Prologue and the first three chapters. I don't know where you're going with this, but some points are in order for these opening passages. You're a good writer. You have a delightful sense of character, your dialogue works, your imagination never fails you and your descriptions are vivid and effective; rare as it may be, you seem to be working in a universe that hasn't been mined before. I'll confess up front that, aside from Tolkein in high school I've had little to do with fantasy as a genre, mostly because so much of it seems to be recycled Tolkein. Or The Brothers Grimm. Further, much seems to be more concerned with the processes of the fantasy genre than with placing an actual story with actual characters in the midst of a believable, albeit alternative, universe. You avoid that.
The main structural flaw I've noted so far is the opening scene in your prologue and its focus on The Lady Jaharwynn Almarin. There's nothing much wrong with the scene at all, but you abandon her halfway through and move to Aylane, who then seems to claim center stage, at least through the next three chapters. I wonder if it's really a prologue since it seems to occur in the same general time frame as what follows. At this point I'm left with some questions that really should have been answered by now:
What's the story?
Who's the main character?
Who's the protagonist?
There are more to be answered, of course, but if I'm at chapter three and not clear on those three, you haven't done your job as an author. The way it appears at the moment is you are planning to have a multiple POV structure; you'll move from one character to another, each in their own scenes, during which their POV will be the third-person restricted perspective. This certainly is workable and often used, though it does require you to come up with a fully formed story arc for everyone so treated. So far, based on the amount of face time given them, it is obvious that your primary story is concerned with Aylane, her upcoming transformation, her interaction with the guardian, her relationship with the Keeper and the events that will evolve out of this set of conditions. All of which identify Aylane as your main character, the person through whom the reader gains a personal experience of the events and with whom they identify. Our brief encounter with Jahar does not suggest that we would be nearly as inclined to identify with her, but she seems perfectly positioned to create the kind of external problems and complications for your main character that will allow you to develop your actual plot.
The problem is you have thus far given us no hint of her role. As I say, there are two chapters left for me to review, but you've already missed your window of opportunity. We need to know from the start what's going on, what drives your characters, what they seek, what they need to avoid, what's in the way of them achieving their perceived goals. You don't have to necessarily lay it all out in the first chapter. But if a storm's coming, we should see the clouds gathering on the horizon, and so far there's nothing beyond the charming tale centered around Aylane and the ritual transformation she's about to undergo. That narrative, while well done and captivating, isn't enough to justify a long novel. While it has an arc of its own, it also needs to serve as the defining conditions for the larger plot to unfold, whatever it may turn out to be. I'm assuming that Jahar will have some role in that larger story (otherwise, why lead with her?)
You may want to rethink your sense of what a chapter is. I'm not convinced you have three chapters here. (The prologue is a separate problem, but I think if you rethink your chapters, you'll find that your prologue can be absorbed in the new structure). First of all, you need to approach your chapters the way you would a short story. Unlike a short story, chapters are not self contained, rising as they do out of what has preceded them and feeding into what will follow. But like a short story, they need to be concerned with a specific plot element, and the treatment of that element needs to have an arc of its own, a place where the chapter begins, a series of transforming developments, and a place where the chapter ends, having carried the energy of the plot from one point to another.
Right now, your first three chapters are more or less dealing with the same thing, which is the prep work for Aylane's ritual. You have an arbitrary separation, of sorts, but there's still a seamless quality to the whole sequence that doesn't seem to require three chapters. You might do much better if you broke it up into two larger segments, one focusing solely on the individual responses of Aylane and her guardian as they come together, the other focusing on the influence of the Keeper. In between, you would want to insert a chapter that kicks off Jahar's storyline, whatever it proves to be. If she is going to become either a problem for Aylane, or her ally, you don't necessarily have to present her involvement all at once, but you need to establish her as a presence from the outset, so that when you do need to use her center stage, she's already fixed in our minds as a viable character. After her brief appearance in your opening, she fades from the story and our awareness as well. (Of course, if her ultimate purpose is to be aligned with Aylane, then you'll still have the 'problem' to deal with, whatever it is that they will be aligned against, and that will need to be prepared for in the opening stages as well).
A couple other thoughts off the top of my head. For the most part your story works in it's present nicely, without a lot of reference to backstory. However, what backstory you've found necessary isn't being dealt with as efficiently as you might. Just keep in mind, when you are detailing backstory, your characters are standing around looking at their watches, wondering when you're going to come up with something for them to do. And so are your readers. Backstory is unavoidable sometimes, but you need to feed it into the mix without disrupting the flow of action in the present, because that is where your story is happening.
A good rule of thumb: use the natural pauses and time suspensions of your present action to slip in your back story. If a character needs to fill some water bags at a well or fountain, take that opportunity to give them some internal reflection, a recollection, or simply a narrative intrusion where needed information is imparted. Make it no longer than the activity in the present would seem to require. Pausing to light a cigarette would afford your character enough time for a quick, solitary observation about something. A taxi ride uptown would present an opportunity for a much more involved narrative, but never make the mistake of thinking that you can channel the energy of events in back story into the present action. It can't be done. Back story is never anything other than something someone tells us, whether it be a character or you as author. It's only in the present that action can assume center stage and unfold before us, drawing us into the moment and allowing us to experience events as they happen. Probably the worst way to present back story is through a character's internal reflection. It's their story. They already know it. The only reason they'd be thinking about it now, in such detail, is because you haven't found a more elegant way to clue the reader in on important information. Go the extra distance and figure out how to do it better. Or decide it's not necessary, and just get on with the story. If your characters are behaving believably, based on the circumstances out of which they've evolved (the back story), we may be able to intuit all we need to know just by watching them in action.
Be careful of those Oracles. They strike me as having the potential to turn into a magic hat. You don't want your plots to depend on pulling needed elements out of a magic hat whenever you need them. The Oracles seem to be a little too omniscient and omnipresent for my liking. If they always have the answers, your characters will continually be let off the hook, and you'll be taking shortcuts. And your reader won't be fooled one bit.
So that's all I have for this reading. I'm interested in where you go with this, and I plan on reading further to find out, so in that you've accomplished your one true task as a writer, which is to keep the reader reading. Without that, you got squat. Of course, if you keep them reading with the promise of a compelling development, a gripping conflict and a satisfying ending, you then have to deliver. Oh, and there's the third act. Gotta have a third act. Maybe we'll talk about that when you get to it. |
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