I'm not a professional writer. I'll try to give honest feedback and try to help with your writing. Remember, it is completely up to you whether you change anything or not.
Hi there, I'm Tam and I saw your item (well, the one following this one) on the Review Please page, so I thought I'd stop by to give you some feedback. Please remember that these are MY personal views. Take some and leave some. Also, Welcome to Writing.com!
First Impressions: Luka, a guard, is waiting for the enemy(?) king of another kingdom to arrive, and with some impatience. His companion seems to think his anxiety is amusing and jabs at him good naturedly about it. Luka is embarrassed, and hungry. With all the attention drawn to it, I think he tends to be hungry very often.
All this opens up into a rather confusing state of events, of which I (confess) skimmed slightly over for want of a way to get through the huge paragraphs. Luka goes to deliver a message to the king for another guard(?) only to find him dead. Murdered.
Luka, terrified, hurries off to see if he can save the queen and prince from the murderer, but when he arrives he is greeted by a cold blade. This turns out to be the queen.
After she is convinced she can trust Luka, she makes an ultimate sacrifice by giving her son to him to take away from that place so the child can someday reclaim the throne. Luka has no idea what to do with children, but somehow he still agrees to perform the task.
He makes the little prince look dirty and more vagabond-ish so that - should they be caught - no one will suspect where he is from. This accomplished, he comes up with a cute little excuse to go and visit the girl he has a crush on. Aziza.
Together they make plans to escape, and give the servants a tip to follow them out five minutes later. Just to ensure they can get away first and save the prince. With this, they both hurry out to leave their besieged (mind if I use this term?) home.
Sadly on their escape, they are discoverd and attacked by one of the enemy men and Aziza loses her life to save Luka and Marco's (the prince) lives. Luka is crushed and stays by her for quite some time, then remembers his duty and carries the prince off to safety. There is no real explanation as to how he escapes, but this does leave an intriguing cliffhanger for the reader.
My Favorite Elements: Okay, so I liked the concept. It's a bit abrupt, but the characters do seem to have their own voices. The scene featuring the queen giving up her baby is the best in my opinion because everything seems to slow down to take in every moment. Everything else goes by in a bit of a blur by comparison. Not that this is such a bad thing, I guess if you were experiencing this kind of thing it would seem to rush by too fast as well.
Suggestions: Since you said you would rather this story stay on the 'telling' side I will not point out the fact that it is indeed, telling.
My first problem with your prologue is just that. This is a prologue. Prologues are not supposed to be roughly eight thousand words in length as if they were a miniature novel. They are supposed to be short, to the point, and unable to be anything else. As a result, this is difficult to view as just a prologue.
You use huge blocks of description. Whether or not you want this story to be 'telling' rather than the desired 'showing' you should not need to infodump this much information on everyone at once. This prompted skimming over your prologue to get to the important parts which were signified by dialogue. I needed to force myself to slow down and take it all in. Cutting back on things that you deem less important should be sufficient to eliminate this problem.
In the king's chamber you showed the king's dead body and his dog's, but where were the guards? Were they killed too? Were they dragged away?
I felt as if the scene change occurred too fast from after Aziza's death, also. I thought they were still in the courtyard, only to find they were actually out in a side street. This was confusing, so maybe some explanation somewhere in between could help with that.
She reached behind her and picked up her shawl, and then she stood up.
Stood should be sufficient. When one stands, they generally stand up. Not down.
Aziza's face flashed before his mind's eye, but he tamped his feelings down.
I think you meant 'tramped'.
The man must have weighed three times as much as small, slender Aziza,
I can't help but feel that saying 'small' and 'slender' is a bit repetetive.
Overall: I think you have a fascinating idea here, it just needs some cutting back on descriptions. Hard to find the story in there sometimes (and anyway, when you see a prologue you generally think short and sweet). I was surprised about the length when I saw it and needed to convince myself to read through it. Although I found your story to be decent once I got into it.
I don't mean this as a 'bash you over the head' kind of review. I really think you have great potential as a writer and your plot was interesting enough to keep me reading. I look forward to reading more.
Keep writing!
~Tam
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