Local Authors > Reading Excuses

July 11 – Hubay, Lord Domestic Ch13

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hubay:
Good points, all around. I'll have to rework some parts of this scene based on what you've all told me.

@akoebel – As for the act structure: I'm probably going to beef up act one, but part of the reason this seems so short is it's only one character of three. I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but after Jhuz's story is over there are two more characters with related stories; the reason I'm setting this up this way is because it allows me to focus better when I'm writing. But yes, Jhuz should really take charge sooner.

SkyhunterCommander:
Coming to this as late as I am, I feel like just about everything I would have said was mentioned already.

I enjoyed the chapter, it read well as was engaging. I liked the surprise about the Jackal, and I look forward to reading more about him. Whether or not he was telling the truth here, I want to see more of him. His ability is very cool, and I'm just enjoying him overall. (Personally, I hope he was not lying, because if he ends up betraying them, we would see him less, if he survives at all.

I will agree with what other have said regarding the scene of Ezlio talking to Jhuz, I felt like it didn't need to take place when it did, with the whole thing with the Jackal being what we want to see.

Apart from that, I don't have much more to add, everyone else was pretty thorough, and repeating things won't add much.

Now I just want to find out who the attacker was.

Asmodemon:
I liked parts of the chapter well enough, such as that Jhuz and Lexio finally confront each other, but there are a number of things I did have problems with.

I don’t like explanations about what a character can or can’t do very much, I want to see Ezlio get tired if he uses his quills as projectiles, I want to see him have trouble with deflections or have  foes hit him where the quills are ‘less real’. You telling me this just doesn’t have the same impact as coming to realize as a reader that Ezlio can’t use projectiles during a fight since it’ll wear him out.

I had mostly forgotten about the Jackal, the fears that he’s a turncoat were important at the start of the story but in the recent events he hardly had a role, except one in passing when Jhuz took command, but only in passing.

In the segment with Lexio he’s explaining his metsi powers. That’s twice in once chapter now, you’re more telling us what metsi are and what they can do rather than show us. Also the metsi are far too free in explaining just how their abilities work, removing any tactical advantage they might have by keeping their power secret. Lexio and Jhuz don’t like each other, it doesn’t make sense for Lexio to spill the beans like that. To explain how he knew Manto was dead he could say that his metsi allowed him to tell, but he doesn’t need to tell them he can detect personal flaws in people. It’s more tactically sound for him not to reveal that ability at this time.

It also makes me wonder about what they taught Jhuz at the Academy; it’s not weaponry, it’s not engineering, and apparently nothing about metsi either. What good is an academically trained officer who doesn’t know the abilities of his special forces?

Ah, so Lexio used to be a raider and thus an enemy of the army. I can see where the distrust comes from now – I’d like to have known about this sooner, since before this reveal the whole distrust against Lexio seemed completely unfounded and strange in the same way that everyone derided Jhuz at the start of the story but it was actually under orders.

This sensing weakness ability seems very powerful, why wasn’t he present more at the strategy meetings before Jhuz got in power?  Such an ability is too valuable to waste on leading a single company.

Cliffhanger at the end wasn’t as effectual as it could be. The chair already got mentioned by others, an invisible opponent has better means available than a chair. Jhuz is already on guard, the moment the chair was lifted he should’ve/could’ve shouted for help and that’s not something an assassin wants. Stealing your target’s breakfast and messing up his tent also isn’t a good way to remain undetected. An assassin would probably have silently killed Jhuz in his tent, then rummaged through his stuff to get what he needed  while no one was the wiser.

I also saw your comment that you’ve still got two POV characters to introduce. To do that so late in the game when we’ve read all this stuff about Jhuz is risky. There are authors who do this well, such as Steven Erikson who can have you read 200 pages about one character than switch to completely different ones for hundreds of pages, but it’s not an easy thing to achieve so be careful there.

hubay:
Thanks for the feedback!

I think there's a little confusion on what I said about the POV characters. This only my first write, so I decided it would be easier on me to focus on one POV at a time. So once I'm done with Jhuz' story I'll start writing Lisu's, and then Duko's. But the finished product won't be read that way; it'll go much  like a standard epic does – I'll have one Jhuz, then one Lisu, then one Duko, and then start over. So if you got this far in the finished book, you would already have read a 12 or so chapters of the other 2 characters. Does that clear things up?

Asmodemon:
Ah, all right, that does clear it up. Carry on :)

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