Nano is, indeed, an eater of lives. I agree with pretty much everything above. I'll add:
I really got excited when the prologue started. I thought it was cool and had a lot of inherent conflict, especially because it's a different, more terse style than I was expecting, given your writing style in your other chapters. It's cool that you can stretch yourself to both extremes. I love the first line. Great hook.
That said, it could be shorter. I'm not entirely sure which parts are important to the plot, but a lot of the info you're probably going to have to repeat in other places anyway. The transition between his present and his memory of the great witch needs to be softened. I thought the witch was flying into his cell at first. I love the ride the gord part. Or is it a spaceship? I suppose I just assumed water vessel as in drinking gord because I'm thinking of the American slaves who were told to 'follow the water gord in the sky'...
How do walls "collapse closer?" If picture collapse = crashing to the ground.
You could make things less random by throwing out fortress and labyrinth, unless they're immediately important. The God is trapped. We don't need the details of how he got there. Are Chalot and Immortals the witches? Why was he asleep? By bringing up these sorts of things, I think you raise more questions than you want to answer at the moment.
The longer the prologue goes on, the more it turns into gibberish to me. I think there's a sentence where you use about five different terms and I know what none of them are. If I picked this up, I would probably flip past the prologue and read the first couple pages of the chapter and if I didn't get drawn in by then, the book would go back on the shelf, recommendation or not.
I like the idea of men's minds having color.
Salem has too many modern connotations for me to like it as a name.
I like the idea that they have stolen God's name. That's pretty bad-ass.
I would love this prologue...if it didn't confuse me. If you kept it to just the God and his warden without the history. Good voice, too much unexplained terminology.
I think the transition between the prologue and chapter 1 is fine.
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Chapter 1: I agree, too info-dumpy with Caramoth. If he were the main character, it would be fine, but he's not.
I agree that maybe you should skip this scene and start with Anaiah as an adult. I like the ideas and the tension, but unless this story is going to be mainly about Anaiah's conflict against her society, it seems unnecessary. If that's what the main conflict is, then I wonder what's the point of the darken, witches, homes and Jin.
That said, I like the scene. I like the tone and the characterization feels the strongest of anything I've read from you. So I would hate to see it go. I have mixed feelings.
You should probably mention Anaiah's skin color which Cara first sees her. He must see some part of her if he can estimate what age she is. I mean, how can he even tell she's human if she's swathed in so many blankets he can't see her skin?
Watch comma use. You're not using enough of them to separate your phrases.
A two year old is not an infant, in my opinion.
I didn't get the impression that it was a hard enough wind to tear his face off. You need to make that clearer when he first felt it. Unless he's not being literal.
I'm fine with Ziphod's description. I like it being a little mysterious, although I wonder what replaced her hips. I really like her spitting phlegm all the time. It makes her unique.
The term 'Apara' needs explaining.
Amoz seems to be too young to be making religious/philosophical arguments to me.
Dialogue seems a little long in this scene. I think the scene in general should probably be cut. Anaiah can think about how difficult she found it to find acceptance later, and how Amoz had protected her even when they had been children.
If you don't cut the first chapter entirely, I think it's fine unidivided with the first and third parts. The Council Anaiah's interactions with Amoz are cute, but the scene is too dialogue heavy and boring for me.
How can they "despise her and love her" at the same time? Too cryptic for me, even if its intentionally so.
I like the end of this chapter. I like the whole chapter a lot. I like the stones, but I'm surprised, if the others hear the prophecy, they don't kill her. An easy solution to that is just to have softhearted Caramath hear the prophecy.
I would like to see him have a better reason not to kill her, as in he had a sister once her age who died and she reminds him or her. Or something along those lines. I mean, he gives up a year of his life to protect a daughter of his worst enemies--that's pretty intense. It's a cool characterization but I want more of a reason to it.
Now I'm looking forward to reading all the rest. Make all the of the chapters this good