April 11, LongTimeUnderdog, The Canticle and the Forge, Chapter 14

[LongTimeUnderdog]

The Chapter in which Jin executes his plan and we have a small run in with someone familiar.

[hubay]

Again, the 'Sin' bit interests me. So far I've been torn as to whether or not the speaker is human. Not knowing how everything works in your world, I thought for a while that if it's in a memoir, a person probably wrote it. Now I'm starting to wonder if it's a darken, or another nocturnal creature that is more intelligent (i don't know how intelligent darken are, yet).

I liked the bit where he tries to mimic the walk of a slave, though I don't know if it needed to be in italics.

I read most of the chapter pretty quickly and easily, so I guess that's good. This whole process seems a little convoluted, especially as a means to get a flower,  but for now I'm going to chalk that up to me not knowing enough about your world. Jin is coming off to me as a Bean (enders game/shadow) minus the savantism. He's clever but physically weak, and his main advantage is that adults don't bother noticing him.

But keep in mind that everyone's complaint with Card's kids is they seem a tad unrealistic, and you might want to watch out for that yourself. The fact that Jin fails here helps minimize that, though, as does all his second guessing. I think the one thing that seems surprising is just how driven this boy is. He worries about being caught a lot, but he never – unless I skipped over it – stops to wonder if this is all worth it, if maybe he should just give up.

Otherwise, I thought the ending was good and I'm looking forward to the next chapter.

[akoebel]

I too liked the ending, even if it seems a bit extreme. I guess I don't know enough about this world's culture to judge the weight of Jin's transgression.

The first epigram paragraph didn't work for me. I kept feeling that the wording and tense were wrong for memoirs - things are too urgent there to come out from someone recollecting past events.

The rest of the chapter was good, without the dragging I found in parts of your previous chapters. I too find Jin's plan too convoluted. Frankly, if someone had asked me to steal a flower, I would have tried to steal the flower (using stealth), not trying to barter for it.

I've send you my annotated version, as there were a number of spelling errors and small questions.

[Asmodemon]

For this chapter I didn’t find the Sin excerpt as interesting as the last one. Sin is tossed in a desert. Somehow I expected more after the last excerpt. That one was so strong, this one pales in comparison.

The pacing of this chapter is very good and may just be the fastest read of this story so far.

You’ve got some odd sentences and structures her e and there, such as the first two, where I stumble over word order (first sentence) and meaning (first and second sentence).

Devla stood much longer this time over him. She did not wave her hand to raise him.

Seeing Jin put his plan in motion really brings home to me how convoluted it really is. You don’t steal one item from one family in order to barter it for another item someone else in that family owns. If you’re going around stealing things, steal the thing you’re actually going for. For Jin to think he can barter when he has never bartered before and has no idea what the value of the flower is, it makes far more sense to steal the flower.

 I don’t know who the voice is, maybe Sin, maybe Traxis, but from the way the voice spoke before it’s old. It really should know better and make clear to Jin, who before this time has always listened to adults, that this is both stupid and suicide. I know the voice already said so when they first started speaking, but the moment they actually went into planning the voice was leading Jin along instead of slowing him down.

Within the confines of this plan Jin does surprisingly well, showing that he is smart and observant. It’s so jarring to see him behave like that, but still have him come up with this plan in the first place. It’s also hard to keep his age straight most of the time – he comes across as older than ten years old.

Nice to see Karemoth again, but I wonder at the wisdom of speaking of their plans with the forging of weapons and of a victory where everyone can hear them.

The ending was inevitable, I’d have been really disappointed if despite the odds Jin actually succeeded. The punishment is very severe, but feels more like the thing you say when you catch a thief – maximum punishment – combined with humiliating an important scion and show of power. On the other hand your society really is that brutal, so it might not be far from the truth. Very nice cliffhanger.