Timewaster's Guide Archive

Okay, I've finally gotten to this. I'm not sure what I can say that hasn't been said already, but I feel I shouldn't comment on 2b and 3 until I've commented on this.

Also, thanks for suggesting Tofu as a reader. It's fantastic!

Anyway, I've mentioned I don't mind Nmae as a name. Don't put an apostrophe in it, it's just fine as it is.

Wow, first chapter was a lot shorter than I expected. It was interesting, if confusing due to being thrown in this world rather quickly. Bending seems very interesting, and I'm curious as to the limits of what it can do. However, before I can begin to think on this, we're suddenly introduced to people having frequencies and tones and all that jazz. All of it very intriguing, but I didn't feel as if I was given enough.

I like Nmae. The thing with the emotions was rather odd, especially this line:

"She knew shouldn’t be this afraid, not yet, but it was getting difficult to ignore."

Which leads me to believe a cost of Bending, or of seeing things in audible terms (which, now that I think of it, could easily be more Bending at work), is that it makes you feel fear. This is further solidified in the final line of the chapter:

She was so happy that she felt she might just make it out of the city before being overrun by terror.

A very interesting ramification of using the magic, and one I haven't seen before. If this isn't the case, then I am so stealing that for another story because that is an awesome concept.

Not much else I think I can say on chapter 1. I would have liked to see more to it, but at the same time I'm not sure what else you could add. The only thing that comes to mind is more on Nmae and what she's doing; as Justice1337 said, there's so little on her and what she's doing, that I have a hard time caring about any of it. I'm intrigued, but not really intrigued enough.

Onto chapter 2.

Love the first line, although it seems like a lot of stories I read lately seem to start with people in jail or imprisoned in some other way. Nothing wrong with that, just coincidence in what I've read recently.

I like Dalrymple, especially how he argues with his brain. His escape seems to involve magic, obviously, and I'm wondering if the magic he uses is related to the Bending Nmae used in the first chapter. He doesn't seem to know what he's doing or how he's doing it, only that it works, which says quite a bit about his character. One page in, and I feel I have very good impression of the man, so very nicely done.

The corridor into which they emerged was posh, with polished marble floors and wood-paneled walls.

Use of the word 'Posh' threw me out a bit, as it's a British slang term (as you're using it here, at least) and unless this is set in our world, or Dalrymple has knowledge of the United Kingdom, it doesn't fit the rest of the story.

"{Countrian}" makes me laugh. 

Interesting chapter. Not sure exactly what I think of it. There's nothing quite yet to really hook me to this story, aside from a few mysterious motivations, and while that can work, I haven't been given enough to really care. Well, that's not completely accurate; I do want to know if I'm right about the magic causing fear in those who use it. Again, though, not quite enough to make me care beyond more than a few chapters, so the following ones will need to have a good hook to really get me into them.

Nice job overall, though. I'll be reading 2b and 3 and commenting on the shortly.

I like this. I was a little confused about it up until the ending, which took me by surprise, put everything into perspective, and tied almost everything up perfectly.

That 'almost' is the one complaint I have with the piece. Like Silk, I wanted to see just a little bit more. The piece whet my appetite, but like most flash fiction failed to sate it. I want to know just a little bit more - why these two are adversaries, what the creature is, stuff like that. Just a little bit more.

Then again, maybe that's the impression you want to leave me with. I don't really know. Regardless, I enjoyed this, and didn't have any real problem with the word choice, and found the entire thing to be quite a neat idea.

@Shivertonge: If you read the book, you will see it in Turtledove's style. He likes to make a change to history then write what he thinks will have happen after that. He uses time travel the same way. It is a very good book. You may not see it that way, but you will see the same pattern in Guns of the South as in other books. It is his best and I think most popular book.

It is also smart. Robert E. Lee gets 100,000 AK-47s, but he has these guys act realistically after he gets them.

I'd disagree that it's his best, personally, and I don't know enough to know if it actually is his most popular. I've read a little of it, and while the writing was as good as his other books, the method of the change didn't appeal to me. Time travel always feels cheap to me, and while I understand the every concept of the book relied on it (how else could the Confederacy get AK-47s?) because of it, it just didn't work for me. I've read over thirty of his novels and several collections of his short fiction which I enjoyed much more than I did what I read of Guns of the South. The Darkness series, where World War 2 is played out in a world where magic works, or Southern Victory (the previously mentioned Timeline 191) were far more enjoyable, I thought.

Just a difference of opinion. Not saying it's bad, I just don't agree that it's his best.

I didn't get anything from Comatose...

I've put Essence on hold for the time being, and instead have been working on this. Wavepainter is an idea I've been percolating for several months now, and only recently got the spark I needed to begin writing it. I'm approaching it differently than most other projects... but I'm not telling you how. Not yet, anyway. It might colour your view of the story. Or something.

The prologue is pretty short (and I might be cut, I'm not sure. That's one of the things I'm hoping to get some feedback on.) Both are unedited, for the most part, and quite unpolished and rough. The prologue was actually typed up in the last fifteen minutes, and hasn't been edited at all XD

Some quick summarizing...

Prologue: Too small to summarize. It's like, 600 words.

Chapter One: In which an exhibition is attended.

Please, tell me anything you can about this. What works, what doesn't work, what I'm doing well and what i can improve upon. I'm really excited about this project, and want to make it the best story I can.

(And let me reiterate: Give me the good as well as the bad. Pure negative or pure positive is the same as giving me nothing. I need both in order to improve.)

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

Just finished Guns of the South, not sure what I am up for next, a series or a stand-alone? hmmm need to think about that, it is not like I have a whole lot of time these days, but I will coming up....

I gotta ask...  is songs of Fire and Ice worth starting?

It's worth starting only if you willing to wait long periods of time for new books in the series to come out. Extremely compelling, extremely well-written, but because of that the wait is almost unbearable. Add in that all this other stuff related to A Song of Ice and Fire is coming out, but no definite release date for the next book, and it becomes rather frustrating. I decided a while back that I'm not going to pick up any more of his books, or have anything to do with any of his other properties, until the series is finished.

Guns of the South is one of the few Turtledove books I haven't read, mostly because I don't care much for alternate histories where things are changed by time travel. Have you read the Timeline 191 books? That series is among my favourite of his.

All at once, please, unless you can find a point in the middle that works as a good cliffhanger, or if you'd like specific feedback on two halves independently.