March 28 - LongTimeUnderdog - The Canticle and the Forge, Chapter 13

[LongTimeUnderdog]

Picks up right where 12 left off.

[hubay]

Sorry about the wait, LTU.

I think you've been doing a good job with the epigraphs so far. I enjoyed the bit about the nose, and the end has punch.

Is there a reason they use gold leaf for dictation? I know it's malleable, but so is copper, which would be a lot cheaper.

Some of the hints you've put in about the sparks are interesting. I'm still enjoying the dialogue with Jin's invisible friend, but sometimes the voice sounds a bit awkward. I think you might be doing this to give the 'person' a sense of other-ness. but I actually think that might be stronger if he talked the same as everyone else, but just said very strange things.

I only have two real complaints here. The first is your voice. You have a tendency to write very clipped sentences, or just grammatically inconsistent ones. It's nothing a good copy-edit can't fix, but I'm also hesitant to tell you to just fix it, because it does seem to be part of your writing style. If you want a better explanation I could try sending you some line-edits

The other thing that bothered me was how little time they seem to have spent working on the hole. I feel like the lady should have been more concerned about this than Talvin, even, since the hole affects their magic. But unless I've read this wrong, they've only spent two or three hours of the huuk working on this. If Jin is doing poorly, I would expect they just bring in a different engraver to keep doing the work, and try to get Talvin to accomplish as much as possible.

[LongTimeUnderdog]

Thank you so much for reading.  I'm glad you like the Sin stuff.  I like that character a lot.

You're right that gold is much more expensive then copper and the like.  Aside from more "symbolic" reasons for using gold (as you'll learn later in the story), gold is unique among metals because it doesn't corrode.  If you want to make a lasting account of anything, you write it in gold.  It will never oxidize or tarnish.  Gold literally lasts forever.

The voice . . . well I agree with you.  He does sound odd.  And that's because he's written to sound like Puss in Boots from Shrek.  That aside . . . I appreciate your observation about sounding like other people but saying weird stuff being a stronger.  You're probably right, as usual, and it would be good of me to listen to you.  So I will.

[hubay]

Heh, I'm going to read him from now on with a spanish accent in my head.

[MannyBrainpan]

Sorry to take so long. I really liked this piece, not as much as last chapter though because it didn't really seem to get much done. For one, Talvin seemed pretty easy on Jin until his sudden decision to send him to the stables. Although the disembodied voice made the chapter worth while. And the Spanish accent in my head is seriously gonna make it funny now. There were a few typos like "he" instead of "the" but that is minor if you are just laying out the story. Anyway, at this point in time, I have absolutely NO confidence in Jin's plan. I'm just letting you know in case you wanted the reader to have confidence in his plan. I like the other commenter, would like to have seen more messing around with the hole in the universe or whatever it is. I am interested in the sparks that come from Jin's hands, very cool. Anyway, thanks for writing, and I might be late on this week's chapter. Sorry.

[Asmodemon]

Great Sin excerpt, especially that last sentence. The moment I might start to think Sin is a victim of some kind you show that he thinks in twisted ways and so deserves whatever it is that’s happened to him. Goo d stuff.

Unfortunately the rest of the chapter didn’t have the same impact. I’ll even go as far as to say that I don’t really seem the point to it.

Continuing on from the last chapter Jin keeps thinking about his plan and reveals more of it to the voice. Aside from the fact that it’s a horrible plan that’s going to fail spectacularly and that the voice seems to encourage him rather than try to talk him out of it, I feel like I’ve already heard enough about the planning last chapter. I’d rather see him try it than read more about him thinking and planning about going. The plan itself, while bad, is pretty well thought out for an (average) ten year old. Jin isn’t average, so the plan is even less impressive to read about.

The other major part of the chapter is the investigation of the hole. For something that negates magic and goes against all their beliefs, e.g.  that the Shroud is everywhere, neither Zarfar nor Talvin really seem that bothered about it. If it was that important wouldn’t someone have called for a different scribe when Jin started to mess around?

This chapter was shorter than most of the others, but it still felt too long considering the Jin-Voice scenes don’t add much to the story – Jin still has to execute his plan, so what they talked about we’ll read about twice. And the scenes about the hole don’t go anywhere.