Timewaster's Guide Archive

Hi everyone,

Here is The Fifth Compendium, Chapter 9!

The situation : Destra, throws herself into the river to prevent Lorn and his men from taking away the book she's carrying. Ciera, a librarian, discovers the book while doing inventory and finds an old friend, Onmk, in the process. Lorn discovers that the book is still hidden in a library he can't enter. Onmk tries to help Ciera perform her library's inventory. Lorn finds a way into the library. He finds Ciera inside with the Compendium and gets her to accept translating the Compendium for him.

Chapter 8 : Ciera is a prisoner inside Lorn's house

When I first wrote the novel, I heavily researched cryptography (actually had to break my own cipher). As a result, two chapters did rely heavily on cryptography stuff, including this one.
In the next rewrite, I ended up removing much of the code breaking information. Pretty much all that remains is what you'll read in this part. Tell me if this is still too technical.

As always, comments will be greatly appreciated.

How did I miss this reply?

I ended up going to Eurocon in Stockholm. It was very fun and instructive on some aspects (I learned a lot about e-publishing from listening Charlie Stross), but it failed miserably on the business side.

In retrospect, with my goal to get to know editors and agents, I should have gone to Eastercon.

Maybe I'll do that next year, unless I decide to cross the ocean and go to Worldcon in Chicago.

For the process, I think the main strategy is to get a feel of the editors and agents out there, so I can select best where I'll submit. In that case, personally meeting them at their booths isn't the main goal, as you don't know yet if you'll ever submit to them.

At any rate, it's a long and involved process...

It's refreshing to see some 1st person POV here.
I'm not against it personally (the POV I hate is omniscient), so it was a good change. What's important in 1st person is the strength of the narrator's voice, and I think you got it down.

I'm not a fan of the "It all started when..." beginning. I think you can find something more original than this overused trope.

The book excerpt felt too long (and a little boring) to me. Perhaps because I don't like that sort of book about hunters and all. I almost skipped the section.

I liked how you showed that the reality is very different here : having him puking around was fun. As the others, I wonder why he wasn't called on his behaviour. I guess I'll have to read and find out.

I noted that a few times, he's referring himself as "no coward". Is he that self-deluded?
Why isn't he convinced that he's dreaming? In his place, I would be!

The last line both pleased me and left me wondering. It's a wonderful joke, but is it in character for a 14 yo boy ? What does he know about marriage really to describe it as being worse than dying?

It was very interesting to see the Nothroi's side. We've been so much shown of the Imperial way that it's refreshing to see the Nothroi describe themselves as civilized and think of the Empire as a group of savages.

That being said, the thing which worries me a little here is the fact that I'm not feeling like Jhuz is in any real danger. As such, it's just like he's a tourist visiting a strange country. The scenery might be refreshing, but we know it'll end soon and Jhuz will be back to the legion.

Lisu's introduction also threw me a little off before I understood they were former friends. If she's to become one of the POV characters, I'd worry a little about the fact that so far, we've had only Jhuz's POV. It seems a little late to introduce other POV characters, since the reader won't be expecting any changes at this point.

I'm eager for the next chapter : I love the Chell!

Thanks for all the comments.

For the two of you jumping on the story right now, the society in this book is a pure matriarchy where women have put an effective ban on education for the men.  Basically, men can do pretty much anything that doesn't require reading or writing, but any woman worth her salt should see men as uneducated children - not people you can trust to perform elaborate tasks.

The fact that Lorn just happens to pick up Ciera's mother's book always felt a little too coincidental to me. My primary alpha reader already pointed this out, but at the time, I didn't know how to fix this, so I left it. With your comments, I think I found a nice way to do this, so thanks.

The "us" sentence isn't a typo : Lorn has some friends (henchmen :-) ) who are staying at his place.

As for Ciera giving out too easily, I can see the issue now. Maybe I should make this last a little longer. The fact is, she's under a lot of pressure to go with the book at any cost. Since Lorn already has the book, the voices in her head demand that she accepts Lorn's proposal and try to escape later on. For her chattiness, maybe I should tune this down a little, you're right.

@Amnonian : Are you requesting a partial? :-)  I'm sending you the prologue (since chapter 1 is basically 3000 words to say that Ciera went to work).  It's been revised a little after the group's input back in february, so you might notice different things than the ones they saw back then.

My next chapter is ready - it was ready a few weeks ago, but my primary alpha reader decided to take a few weeks off, and I wanted her input, since it's an important chapter.

If 4500 more words to read this week is OK with everyone, I'll post tomorrow.

When I opened your chapter, I told myself that there was no way I was going to read it in one sitting (I had some writing to do half an hour later).  Then, I plunged in and couldn't stop until I reached the end.

So congratulations, your chapter completely hooked me. In fact, it hooked me so well I'm wondering if it wouldn't make a strong beginning for the book.

My grievances will be few this time:
* as said in the previous chapters, Darkclaw always explains himself more than he should. All he needs to tell them is that he's going away. They don't need to know  why.
* Darkclaw's conversation with the High Lord felt a little strange to me. I got the feeling that the High Lord wasn't taken by the alliance idea, but didn't say much. The whole scene looked awkward.
* I feel that the taking of the batteries was way too easy for so little troops. Even shock troops shouldn't be able to dislodge an entrenched enemy this fast.
* How could fighters destroy capital ships? I'm willing to accept that the one which rammed his was successful (even though any ship should have navigational shields which should deflect something as small as a fighter), but the other ones went down a little too easily.
* The Felinari are very trusting people, I see : the security measures are very limited (as seen by Darkclaw's POV). Darkclaw could have gained audience with the king and killed him quite easily. Also, as a ruler, I wouldn't have signed any alliance treaty with someone I had heard of the same day - at least, not with some serious intelligence backing my decision (which they do not have). I get that there is a large political pressure to answer the Alliance's attacks, but everyone would have understood the king taking a few days to consider his options. Darkclaw never put any firm deadline on the matter, so what was the hurry?

Things I liked:
* The felinari are once more shown as feral and cat-like
* Darkclaw's emerging emotions which have been foreshadowed since the beginning.
* The Felinari's emotional response to his proposal (though I would have liked a little more insight about exactly what happened with them and the alliance)
* Nayasar's chatter with Darkclaw felt very woman-like.
* The unease between Darkclaw and Felivas

Once more, nice chapter. I hope the next will be as good as this one.