Aug 2 - Daddy Warpig - When Gods War, Part 1

[Daddy Warpig]

A rewritten and expanded version of the first part of "When Gods War." Looking forward to comments. Thanks in advance.

[Valkynphyre]

Much, much better. The story flows better, nothing felt forced, And there was much more emotional impact.

I do miss the gradual progression from omniscient to limited you had. It's still there, but the transition is stark now. Which is fine for a prologue and first chapter.

Her reasons still aren't clear, but that doesn't matter anymore. It feels like they will be explained now.

I like him more now, too.

Next chapter, please!

[Comatose]

Wow.  That was great!!!
I hope you didn't think I was saying they had to have sex.  It just seemed like it was natural for them to in the other scene.  Now you could go either way.  I like it with the sex, but I would like it without as well.  It's completely up to you.  Don't let our suggestions make it anything other than your story.
Disclaimer out of the way, great response to suggestion!  I felt immensly more attached to both characters, and I liked the build up to the destruction of the city, very sodom and gommorah.  I also liked the new way you split up the sections.  I especially liked the title 'paradise,'  It makes a really nice picture, like they are the only two people left in the world, and nothing else matters.  You made the sexual tension much more realistic, and both characters were more consistent. 
Agree with Valkyn!

[Recovering_Cynic]

I very much enjoyed the chapter, and I really only have three critiques.  First, though, your writing is superb.  It's easy to read, clear, and tugs you along.  The story is interesting.  It's just started but it already has depth.  By all means, keep it coming, keep writing, and finish this thing.

Critiques:

1) You use the word "pit" like six or seven times in the matter of a few paragraphs.  Swap it out for some synonyms, e.g. chasm, abyss, etc.

2) The playfulness at the end was a bit much for me.  This was "comfort" sex.  They've both been through a lot.  It's okay to have some levity, but it should be a little strained.  These two were behaving like newlyweds, not people who've just met and who are making love in public just outside a burned out city.  It didn't fit.

3) DON"T REVISE ANYMORE.  Write down the critiques, but don't re-write the chapters we just read.  That's how I killed my last book.  This story is good enough, that I'd hate it if you did the same.  Write your next chapter, then the next, then the next.  Note any changes you want to make later, but resist the urge to make them now.

Anyway, bravo.  Well done.

[wisteria_purple]

So, first page... I think that there's some potential with the falling god-star imagery. I hope that you do something good with it.

In the second chapter, it felt like there was a bit of an info dump. For example, who ARE the Vedrans (or any of the other groups)? A religious group? A nationality? An alien race? Just something as simple as "the Vedran tribe who now..." or whatever would go a long way toward making the reader feel less overwhelmed.

For the third chapter, I immediately noticed that the scene in which the young officer is squished as though the gods were playing Tetris could be either horrifying or darkly comical. Since it's so early in the story, it's hard to tell what kind of tone you're going for, but I hope that you take at least one of those possibilities and run with it.

I must note that it seems that your chapters are awfully short. Is that intentional? I don't mind if you like to break your work up into small chunks (it certainly beats the endlessly dragging chapters you sometimes see), but the addition of a new title every page or two seems kind of jarring. I'm curious... what kind of effect are you going for here?

I'm not really sure what the fourth chapter is for. If he's able to literally walk away from having a building pin his leg down for hours, well, it seems like something more should have come of it. I would have expected him to have sustained an injury, or for someone to have found him, or SOMETHING other than just "here's an obstacle, but he got better."

I won't go through the rest chapter by chapter, but I do want to add a bit about the meal scene. I understand what you're going for with the juxtaposition of the incredibly unappealing bread and the extraordinarily valuable wine, emphasizing that this is a devastated warzone and that the situation is truly desperate. I understand that neither item is something that they would eat under normal circumstances, and that normally eating them together would be unthinkable, and I think that it works to underscore just how bad things have gotten. However, one thing really threw me... why the lemon? It just kind of comes out of nowhere, almost photobombing the bread-and-wine juxtaposition. I don't ask for every single word to have a purpose (I mean, that's a nice goal to reach for, but we can't all be Oscar Wilde), but the lemon really kind of stood out.

Anyway, I hope that you find this useful, or at least interesting.

[hubay]

Like the people above me, I think you've improved on your last chapter consireably, but don't worry too much about rewriting everything until your story is finished. You might also want to trim down the passive voice, but that's more of a line-edit thing. Valkynphyre also brought up a good point about the transition; you could probably still pull off a little more cinematic imagery about the star/god fall, if you talk about them specifically headed towards the city, then switch to the limited perspective as  Karrus sees feels the affects. But that's just personal preference.

A few extra thoughts:

I'm interested to see how big of a role the gods play in this story. The title would suggest they're pretty important, but your intro makes them sound a bit detached from the mundane world. I like the imagery, but the general idea I get from the opening scene is that the gods, though powerful, kind of just mind their own business and fight their own wars. That humans are affected is just a side affect; the gods only make an impact (pun?) when they die. Not a bad thing by any means, but if your gods do meddle in the affairs of humans, it might make sense to make it a little more apparent from the get-go.

I think everyone else covered it pretty well, but I'll put in that your description of Akara seems a little over the top. I do like that you added 'regal' in her description, and combined with the way you describe her crying as that of a leader you create a good way of hinting that she's someone important – assuming she is, of course. But you use the word 'exquisite' too much, for one thing, and after you spent so much time describing her beauty I'm waiting for a catch. The cynic in me says there has to be something wrong with her, and the writer/critic says there needs to be in order to have depth of character. Even if she is actually that beautiful to behold, it might help to give her a fresh scar or something – I was a bit surprised she wasn't hurt, considering the devastation of the star-fall. You don't need personality problems yet, of course, so long as they pop up eventually.

All in all, it's a good start. And since I waited this long to review the first chapter, you can expect the critique for part two in a few minutes.

[Asmodemon]

I agree with what the others have said, this version is a lot better than the first – which read more like a summary of what the chapter/part should be about. I liked most of it and I don’t have much to add to what’s been said already, but I would like to address the one thing that I found jarring and which, for a moment, took me out of the story.

It happens when Karrus is stuck beneath the obelisk; his leg is trapped and he can’t feel it, he’s lucky it’s not broken. That’s all fine and good, but this means the circulation in his leg is cut off, or at the very least severely limited. Too long of that and the leg can die, but even before that toxins in the blood will collect in the cut off leg. The moment his leg is freed the trapped blood will start rushing through his body, taking all the toxins with it; think heart attack, yet Karrus walks away scot-free.

There’s also little trouble with him baking in the sun for hours after he stopped sweating. What you describe is heat stroke, which is a potentially fatal condition which should be treated immediately. One of the things that can happen is, like in the previous example, a heart attack. With Karrus there is no treatment, yet again, he suffers no real ill effects.

Karrus should be dead several times over, but he’s not, and he’s doing pretty great walking away from the scene looking for water. I find this a little hard to believe since he appears to be human.

[RavenstarRHJF]

Still agree with Asmodemon about Karrus simply walking away from the obelisk with no apparent weakness (other than being delirious).

However, the rest is so much better than the first version that there's simply no comparison.  I pretty much agree with what everyone else already said here.