Timewaster's Guide Archive

Well I don't have too much to say right off the bat, but I'll try to get a little more in-depth tomorrow.

Overall the chapter is well-done, but the first half is mostly introspection and a bit of dialogue. You already have some actions happening to give it more meat, but I think you could expand upon it so Matheiu seems to actively trying to do something through all the talking and thinking. It could be as simple as trying to find something special, or sit up straight.

So far most of the girls seem to fall right into Matthieu's lap. In general this works; it fits with his persona and the feel of the times. It's a pretty common thing for literature about renaissance italy. But you run the risk of him being too charming. Most of the women seem to be making the first move – which is sometimes good, but isn't very realistic unless Mattheiu is charming by virtue of his silence. I wouldn't mind seeing him hit on a girl a little more aggressively (unless that isn't his thing) or else be rejected by a girl or have someone treat him with disdain from the get-go. On the other hand, I haven't truly seen him interact with anyone romantically after Cassandra, so it's hard to say how his character handles love.

Lastly, I don't think you need to change this, but watch out for ending too many chapter with your narrator being knocked out. Plot-wise it makes a lot of sense here, but it's always been a pet peeve of mine when writers do this as a means to skip over action at the beginning or end of a book.

Hah, yeah I definitely missed that in proofreading.

As for the terms: I don't have a problem just explaining them to you because I plan to have a re-write of the first chapter, or else just toss in a prologue, that explains the magic system a little better. Since that's not coming in this draft, I might as well just tell you off-screen.

I originally used -mancer instead of -mejji in describing the different magic users, but I decided that sounded a little to gamer-y (although the Nothroi say -mancer. I just wanted to show a difference in speech because they speak the same language). But knowing that might help you understand where the word came from and what it's trying to say. Saying "men are faunimejji" sounds a little more original than "men are faunimancers," but it doesn't make nearly as much sense.

Anyways, a commejji can speak to any animal or plant that's the same species of his or her familiar. A dommejji can do the same, only instead of speech they can control it (commejji usually can't convey commands because the creature isn't smart enough to get them). A manimejji can control the flesh or wood of an animal or plant – they could heal a broken leg, change the shape of a tree, or withdraw meat from a living animal without harming it.

Potemejji get a sort of 'power' related to the species. I think you've picked up on that by now. They're the only ones with real magic in my world; everyone else is less powerful. I enjoy etymology, so a lot of the names I give to different types of mejj stem from the latin root for the familiar's species. A man with a dog familiar is a canimejj (canis or canine), a woman with a tree familiar is known as an arbormejj (arbor=tree). Still, I know that gets confusing so I try to switch it out and still say dog-mejj and tree-mejj. It also probably doesn't help that I can't decide when to say mejj and went to say mejji.

Chell also take familiars, but not of animals. Epidimejj, as you probably guessed, has the  familiar of plague (root being epidemic). The other term are from bastardized Latin, but I hope they aren't nearly as overwhelming.

The opening sequence of this chapter works pretty well, you manage to make Carrerra someone I can empathize with, even if he's still hateable.

The paragraph where you explain a wheel lock is unnecessarily long. I know you like your history, and the early development of firearms is something I find fascinating, too. But in the midst of the duel, after he just talks about how he should put thoughts aside for later, it ends up slowing down the action. You could probably condense it into a sentence that just said "the weapon was complicated enough to require a clockmaker's touch, but it was deadly accurate..." or something along that vein.

The duel itself was very well-written, and I thought the tension was handled excellently. As a minor quibble I don't think you need to say "black matte" in front of stiletto, when describing how it saved his life. It's kind of like saying "my silk armani suit protected my from the poisonous acid thrown at my face."

I don't know what to think of having quotation marks around 'boom!' because it made me think someone yelled it.

I'm not quite sure if Matthieu's actions at the end of the duel –  firing even after his honor was upheld – was merely cruel or actually dishonorable. Perhaps you could show a reaction from the crowd that would explain this (angry mutters, gasps, you know).

Otherwise, I quite enjoyed this chapter. I'm expecting it to set the stage for a great deal of conflict.

Ok, assuming I don't get bogged down in superbowl craziness this weekend (I live in milwaukee) I should have my next chapter ready for monday.

Yeah, to make it easier I decided my centuries are a true 100, and made the penti in charge of 5 centuries.10 penti = 5000 men per legion, more or less. Hrm. I hadn't minded before, but now that you brought it up I'm going to have to come up with a replacement for 'captain.'

I agree a little about the 'futbol' mention, but for slightly different reasons. I always think that those sort of "I bet this [real world big thing] will never pan out" asides have to be treated with great care. If your series is about rapid change and turbulent times (say, like shadows of the apt) then it can fit it rather well. But if you simply want to talk about italian-esque cities – and then the futbol reference is solely for our benefit as a joke – then it might make more sense for them to go see an opera. football wouldn't have quite made it back then, but opera was still a thing to be viewed by the masses. Old style opera always had a couple of drinking songs, and usually included a couple of songs catchy enough that people would riot in the streets afterwords, still singing them (beatle-mania style).

And along that vein: if your world only resembles italy, and isn't some sort of metaphysical shadow of it (like all the pseudo-historical references in WoT) you might consider tweaking the city names so they sound a little less similar to those of real-world cities. "Fiorence" particularly stuck out.

But that's all setting. character-wise, I enjoyed these two chapters. they were a nice contrast – carousing the first night and then ptsd panic attack the next. I also enjoyed the "truth is a color ..." phrase. an earlier mention might have been nice, though, like akoebel said. an easy fix could be just having him flinch when a bell tolls once in an earlier chapter. I don't think anything extra would be needed.

I think overall you've done a very good job with the characterization and plotting so far, but I think some of your prose could still be cleaned up. the middle was pretty good; it's mostly the intro and ending that seem off:

The repeating quality appeared to be that graceful stride that fairly screamed ‘here walks a swordsman’.

I understand what you're trying to say with "repeating quality", but it just sees clumsy. 'Appeared to be' could probably be chisled down to one word, even if it means you have to change the structure of the sentence. And as a personal touch, I've never been fond of quotes withing a paragraph, unless they're sarcastic. It disrupts the flow of the paragraph by making readers focus unnecessarily on the phrase.

and your finishing quote, which I'm guessing was intended to have a little more punch, sounds odd because he says, word for word, what eduardo just did. You might want to find away to give it a more emphasis, say, by changing it around to: "an enemy indeed" or something suitably dramatic.

Other than that, the chapter worked quite well. Just a question: can every person gauge humours on sight, or is this a particular talent of Matheiu's/cold ones?