A lot of people describe Scalzi’s Old Man's War novels as military science fiction, but I would classify its sequel Zoë’s Tale as a space opera. It’s a story about, well, Zoë, a teenage girl whose parents are invited to take leadership roles in building a colony on a new planet. Zoë is an enthusiastic member of the group sent to colonize Roanoke, despite the risks—and the risks are considerable even before the political machinations of greater powers boil to the surface. Continue reading Zoë’s Tale
Review by Silk
Discuss it in our forums.
Show Posts
This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
I had removed that a little bit after I sent out the email lol. It was one of those things that I didn't like at all but I kind of put it aside. And for the too much proper nouns and internal though thing, thats a side effect that happens during the rewrite 
I always put too little of both the first time around and then try to fix it by adding too much. I guess the third time around will help me get it into the gold zone 
I just thought about the Fairy queen, elves never popped into mymind until I read this topic. "A motley of emotions." Nice.
I'm not sure why Isaac suddenly decides to trust the man who he was chasing after in a rage just moments before, or why he seems to know absolutely nothing about the bead.
Isaac's whole spiel where he's telling Alden about how he won the bead sounds kind of stilted to me, not like real dialogue.A lot of it feels more like the author inserting himself into the dialogue. And I find it kind of odd that Isaac would give such a blow-by-blow description of the scene anyway. More likely he'd just say he helped pull someone out of a falling building.
Alden is WAY too convenient a fixture. He's someone that Isaac just randomly saw in the crowd, who he has a chance encounter with, and it turns out he knows all the answers and can tell Isaac exactly what to do.
A sailor in labour? *blinks* As in, having a baby?
Is the bouncer Teris, or Terri?
The farewell scene at the inn feels awfully drawn out for what actually happens. Isaac has one kind of angry, unhappy moment when Ned "fires" him, but other than that it's all smiles and tears and happy farewells, and it doesn't really feel like it's doing much. You could add a lot more emotional conflict if you wanted to. If you don't want to, that's fine, but in that case I think you need to trim down all the farewell stuff by a fair margin.
Good start though.
must have forgotten to go back and change. And ya as in having a baby lol, I wanted to make something preposterous and clever so I kind of put that in as a place holder and when I came back to it I just liked it so much I kind of left it They were there to take the castle. Jena had seen it almost two months ago, just like she had seen there would be no bloodshedthe bolded bit is a little hard to understand.
Her heart pounded in her chest, and she breathed in slowly a few times, trying to calm herselfThat sentence felt a little like a list, maybe instead of saying how she breathed in slowly you can describe the breaths themself. for example - her breaths came in slowly, or something like that.
The outside force neared the courtyard, and leaned closer to the window, looking down over the area belowThis sentence is pretty confusing, you mention the outside force which makes me think of the army but then you mention the window which snaps me back to the MC, I couldn't understand what you were talking about here.
And started pulling her back toward the courtyard.this sentence was a little awkward in positioning.
She glanced out a window on the other side of the tower and noticed the lights on in the librarysince its a castle and an army with swords is coming I'm assuming they don't have lightbulbs yet, so that means that the library was well lit at night with a lot of torches. It seems a little dangerous to have so mch fire with so much dry paper, you would think they closed the library at night or used single candle flames to light the way at night for midnight reading.
She flipped around, and saw five men run out of a passage into the courtyard.the five men thing sort of threw me off, its like saying "He walked out into battle field to fight the approaching army of five thousand six hundred and two men." In a life and death situation, exact number counts seem akward. A simple 'few' or 'many' or 'half a dozen' usually works well (even though it specifies an exact number it still sounds nicer)
Making the servants mocking would help explain his reaction, but in my humble opinion, there's still a contradiction. You can't do both, you see. You can make him pretend to be an idiot raised with an exaggerated view of his own importance- that would explain the arrogant glare- but then he wouldn't bother helping a nobody errand boy. Or, you could make him a simpleton too dense to understand when people are mocking him, and that would fit with innocently helping a little boy who's fallen down. But you can't have it both ways, because that would betray him to the servants, and servants talk.
Either way you do it, though, internal conflict will definitely help us understand his actions.
That fruit of yours sounds intriguing...
I'll be sure to fix the stuff and add more details like the ones you mentioned, it will certainly give this chapter more depth
but I liked it. There were only a few things that kind of bothered me though, mainly was the absence of their motivation. I would have liked to have known more on what his organizations cause is and why they fight with the Crashers. Basically, a little more background on the conflict would have been nice.The blonde man pointed to a set of foot-prints. “Those are hers.”Since the characters are in a city setting with buildings and concrete it would have been nice if you added an extra detail concerning to where the footprints were. In the dust from the rubble? or were they prints on the pavement made from her dirty shoes?
and she lived in a little city about 40 miles to the east on Long Islandinstead of saying little city you can just say the actual place.
Gabe was only eleven when it was destroyed, but he remembered the fireballs over New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Cairo, and Moscow.It sounds like he was in all those cities when it happened, maybe if you put "seeing on tv" or something like that.
The left sleeve of his shirt was missing and his whole arm was red and blistered with what looked to Gabe to be a first-degree burnBlisters are characteristics of second degree burns, and if they do appear on first degree burns (which they rarely do) it's usually at the end stages of the healing process
The black skyline of New York rose sharply to the west of himWasn't sure what that meant, were you talking about the city and the buildings?
"I don’t really want to mess with them, regardless of how boring this,” he motioned around the room, “is.”This dialogue break sort of took me out of the action since it happened in between dialogue that doesn't necessarily need a pause. I think it could have been better if you wrote something along the lines of: -this is," his final words accompanied by a gesture that captured the whole room.
It tipped precariously and Gabe steadied them
He sat there, breathing and feeling the cool, yet stagnant air in the room, until Thack’s voice shocked out of his thoughts
He looked up at Adam, who smiled and said, “Check mate (it's one word.).”
Yup! Just post here a couple days before the Monday you'll submit.
ahh ok great, I'll throw my chapter 2 down the intertubes on monday I guess. Small chapter that I was very satisfied with
No chapter one?
Yup! Just post here a couple days before the Monday you'll submit.
