Timewaster's Guide Archive

Alright, good points. I'll look into Blackout though, just for fun.

In that case I'll check out Sajer and see if the librarians have any good recommendations, but do any of you guys know other good WWII non-fiction? I'm mostly interested in the common soldiers, as I mentioned before, but also snipers.

Thanks!

Thanks for the feedback.

You both made it sound like you haven't read my other chapters, do you want me to re-email them to you? I know I haven't been very consistent with my .doc/.docx formatting.

All right, here's the last POV, Aela. I know a couple of you guys mentioned that I'm putting in too many characters, and I'm hoping that this won't push it over the edge. A lot happens in this chapter, and it's a little bit longer than my normal ones. Rip her to shreds.

Fathers of Gods, chapter five - Aela (L, V, S)

Last chapter ended with cumo fighting a squad of Daltri soldier.

Here, Aela starts her training as an elemental and trys to essent. We get a glimpse of the Little City, and the first Polaesi funeral.

I'm trying to write a short story set during WWII and I realized that I don't have a lot of knowledge about the time period – or rather, I know my history but I don't know the everyday bits and pieces that would make the setting believable. So I'm wondering if there are any good WWII fantasy books out there that might help.

To narrow it down – and I hope I'm not being too specific– I don't want anything too epic in scope, I'm more interested in a foot soldier than a general. If at all possible, I'm wondering if there's anything analogous to Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. Or, in terms of the sort of scope magic is given throughout the world, Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker books.

For that matter, I probably wouldn't mind a few non-fantasy WWII books as well; I'm sure there's quite a bit more of those  out there.

I'm staying out of this one.


Content aside, the prose wasn't terrible, but you tend to be a little melodramatic in some of your descriptions/metaphors. The opening line stood out to me – you say 'match' twice in the same sentence, which makes it sound clumsy.

The "show don't tell" rule is always essential to writing, of course, but for what you're trying to say here it's particularly important. If you spend too much time giving backstory on a character in a standard piece, the narrator stands out. Here, when your character talks about his past, and the narrator (you) sticks out, you run the risk of just sounding like you're ranting. And while I'm no expert, I feel like if you're going to satirize/parody a real figure, you might not want to tell the story directly from their POV.

You might also want to put in a (V); you did reference a bit of gore.

Do you think you could start this up now and put your work on it? That way we could have an idea of what it would look like.

Or, what if the thunderclasts fly into the battle? OK, not like they can fly, but Odium or surgebinding or something launches them to wherever the battle is. Then they hit the ground so hard they're buried into it and thus have to rip themselves free of it. This would also explain Thunder = come from the sky + loud noise when they hit the ground. Do you think the crater/ blast radius would ruin this theory?

I'm not sure what I think about most of that, but if you're trying to come up with a logic behind the name I think you're going in the wrong direction. 'clast' as a suffix generally means "to break" or "destroy." So either this mans thunderclasts create thunder – you can refer to thunder as breaking – or it means they fight it. Obviously not literally but it would be a poetic way of writing them as demons – if stormlight is holy than one who fights the storm is evil.

So although the current sticky explaining the cosmere does a good job, I thought it might be nice to write one with a basic explanation at the beginning, and to write it so that new readers can find out what's going on without ruining any of Brandon's books they haven't read. If you're new to his books or even this forum, or just confused by some of the concepts the more hard-core fans are talking about,  you might want to quick read this before you dip in to anything else.

First and foremost:

Yes, most of Brandon's books –Mistborn, Elantris, Warbreaker, and Way of Kings, but NOT Alcatraz and obviously not WoT – take place in the same universe. It's called the Cosmere. No, this doesn't affect how you read the books.

Think of it as more of an "easter egg." That's how this began for fans – a couple of readers noticed a reoccurring character named Hoid. In Mistborn, Elantris, and Warbreaker he never got more than a very brief role, but in Way of Kings, well ... I said this is spoiler free so I'll just say that the Stormlight Archive appears to be a little obviously intertwined in the overarching story of the Cosmere.  However, Brandon has specifically said in an interview that the Archive isn't the overarching story. He said there's another series where he wants to write that.

There are a couple key points to be said here, but  most of them are explained better in longer, more in-depth threads on this forum. If you see a title with the words "Shards" or "Hoid" it's probably one of them.

You see, the idea behind the Cosmere involves a magical/divine artifact/god thing called Adonalsium, which was shattered into sixteen shards. These shards provide the energy necessary to create life on different planets, as well as a source of magic. The magic in Warbreaker, Elantris, Mistborn, and Stormlight is all a product of the shards, sometimes from a single shard and sometimes from the interaction between multiple shards.

Additionally, every shard is controlled by a god-like consciousness that used to belong to a mortal. Each shard has a sort of ... pathology to it that eventually turns the mind of the shardholder until it matches the shard's will. Some might be considered "bad", while others are arguably "good." Some fans believe Hoid might be a shardholder whose power allows him to jump between worlds. It also appears that one shardholder is attacking others.

I'm not as steeped in this as some of you guys are, and I know some what I said is probably still speculation, so let me know if I got something wrong.