Timewaster's Guide Archive

I don't have a lot to talk about here; I think the chapter flowed pretty well, and I like the addition of magic here. Some of Talvin and Del'Nosa's dialogue is colored so that it sounds like they think of Jin as an object or commodity, rather than a person. Coupled with the voice's little bit at the end of the last chapter, I'm interested to see how their relationship develops now and if Talvin is his father or not. I do think you need to be careful Jin doesn't sound whiney when Talvin talks about him being useless. He might not feel independent enough to get angry about being insulted, but mostly I feel like he's just saying 'not fair.' Depending on how you want his character to feel, I think he should either get angry about it, accept the insults as deserved and then try to improve himself, or maybe play some sort of prank on Talvin to get back at him. Jin still thinks of him as his father, so anything violent would be wrong, but I could see him do something innocent like a cut a hole in his pants or something. Right now he just doesn't seem very active about the situation.

I think by now Jin, being the sharp boy that he is, would have come up with his own name for the voice. It will also help readers to have a name they can refer to, instead of just 'the voice,' until you decide to give us his real name.

I'm excited to see more of your magic in play. I know you've said you struggle with how much information to give us, and I know you don't like exposition. But I think it's safe to say you can be a little more forthcoming by now. Anyways, I look forward to the next piece.

Sorry this is so late. Thought I had the opening scene worked out but then it collapsed on me. Anyways, here's the rest of the chapter, with a brief synopsis at the beginning of what the opening scene should have been. Thanks for the feedback in advance. I'm particularly interested to see how you all think Jhuz is coming along as a character.

4-25-11 Hubay, Lord Domestic Ch.9 (L,V,S)

Summary: The Imperial Legion is on the run, caught between the supernal Chell and barbarian Nothroi. Jhuz has just heard some disturbing news about the Capitol from Ezlio, and his maidservant revealed that she often spies on couples using flower petals and commetsi. One of her petals wound up in the wrong place, however and she overhears two men planning on assaulting the female Nothroi prisoner Jainifer.

Ch.9 Jhuz schemes with Zaisha, gets dressed down by Manto, and tries his hand and commanding some of the flyers.

I agree with akoebel, the epigraph was good. I would just reword this to make it stronger: "Bright or not, she was the victim and I was to consume her. " After the comma it just sounds a bit awkward. I think one of things I'm looking forward to most with your story is finding out who/what sin is and maybe meeting him/it.

Actually, I thought the bit with Chalinae worked. Since his mom mentions "bleeding" I assume she's being raped? I think it might make it more powerful if you have Jin wonder what she means by that for a half second, and then think "Oh. Oh no."

Right now two things are bothering me. When Chalinae says that "no one actually steals a flower, they just say they did," it sounds like some sort of coming of age ritual. If that's the case, shouldn't the woman by the flowers have known about the tradition, given him a sort of slap on the wrist, and told him that's not how it works? I feel like part of me not getting this is because we don't know why the flower is so important yet. Understandably, you're keeping us in the dark, but until you do I'm going to keep feeling like the whole ordeal didn't make much sense.

The other thing that's bothering me is Talvin. I get that he's not quite a people person, but they way you're writing him now reads like he's crossed over from just being a stern parent to actually coming close to hating Jin. He seems like a nice guy overall, so I can only assume you've written his frustration a little stronger than you intended, or he's a pretty terrible parent.


At some point soon, I think it would help to show what happens to an escaped slave. Unless I'm mistaken, most of the slaves are men, and a lot of the owners are women? So it's not unlike akoebel's world, just crueler and more intense. Two questions, then, that won't make much sense unless I'm correct: where do babies come from? Really, though –  normally slaves are bred by owners, so do women just pick slaves they want as fathers, and send any boy babies back to be slaves?

second: how is the slavery enforced? Normally you need a ruling populace with force multipliers (read: weapons) that allow them to keep down an unarmed slave majority. So the only way women should be in charge is via some sort of supernatural power, or else through the willing aid of other men. Which brings me back to seeing an escaped slave punished. If it's supernatural, then cool – we see magic. If it's through collaborators, it's also good because then you see the inhumanity of slaves that willingly persecute their own kind. And if it's something else entirely, well, show me that, cuz it's a pretty big part of how your world works.

Thanks for the feedback! I'm happy you guys enjoyed it so far.

@akoebel: you might have just been confused because I haven't really showcased that kind of power very much; I only really mentioned it once. And if you've already written an annotated version, its always welcome. Otherwise, you don't have to bother going through the whole thing. Thanks though!

Most of this chapter is well-written and enjoyable. There spot where she says "One day ... one day" bothers me a bit. It sounds like she's repressing a lot of hate, in a way popular fiction tells us will result in her snapping and becoming a psychopath. I don't know if this is foreshadowing or if you just worded it a little harsher than you meant to, but it seemed a little out of character.

I didn't really get her reaction to Omnk. She's seems too startled, considering her conversation with him on the carraige was calm. I feel like she should have just recognized him immediately. I also didn't understand his explanation for why he is. I get that you might want to tease that out a bit yet, but right now the way he talks is a awkward and wordy, while at the same time not really telling me a lot. I think you need to try to use less to say more.

I'm curious as to how your matriarchy maintains its power, and I'm interested to hear more about that part of your word's history. The men as described by Lorn sound like a sort of oppressed minority, but that seems a bit off since the male-female ratio tends to be even; they don't' have the advantage of numbers, so I want to know what else keeps them in charge.

Alright, hopefully I'll have something finished by monday. if not feel free to shame me into working harder.

Sorry about the wait, LTU.

I think you've been doing a good job with the epigraphs so far. I enjoyed the bit about the nose, and the end has punch.

Is there a reason they use gold leaf for dictation? I know it's malleable, but so is copper, which would be a lot cheaper.

Some of the hints you've put in about the sparks are interesting. I'm still enjoying the dialogue with Jin's invisible friend, but sometimes the voice sounds a bit awkward. I think you might be doing this to give the 'person' a sense of other-ness. but I actually think that might be stronger if he talked the same as everyone else, but just said very strange things.

I only have two real complaints here. The first is your voice. You have a tendency to write very clipped sentences, or just grammatically inconsistent ones. It's nothing a good copy-edit can't fix, but I'm also hesitant to tell you to just fix it, because it does seem to be part of your writing style. If you want a better explanation I could try sending you some line-edits

The other thing that bothered me was how little time they seem to have spent working on the hole. I feel like the lady should have been more concerned about this than Talvin, even, since the hole affects their magic. But unless I've read this wrong, they've only spent two or three hours of the huuk working on this. If Jin is doing poorly, I would expect they just bring in a different engraver to keep doing the work, and try to get Talvin to accomplish as much as possible.