The good:So far, I'm digging your world. The magic system looks interesting, and the fact that none of the characters are human could turn out to be a great strength - or it could blow up in your face. Little details here and there, like the scent of blossoms drifting down, give color to your writing and hint at a well-developed universe.
I like Meles as a character. We haven't seen much of him, but I feel like a know him. The twins are somewhat more forgettable, despite the fact that one of them has a viewpoint in this chapter.
The very bad:The italicized intro didn't work for me. If I had picked up your book in a store and that were the first thing I'd read, I would have set the book back down, for several reasons (in order of importance):
- It actively spoils the ending of the opening scene, dampening its impact.
- It doesn't really tell us anything important (doesn't pull its weight)
- Many of the things it does tell us are confusing and unnecessary (for example, the bit about treaties and alliances - with who? Or, the bit about the boundaries reciprocating in kind - reciprocating what? Reciprocating how? It's not clear from the text.
- It's the weakest bit of writing in the piece - far below the relatively high standard you set in the rest.
The thing is, I don't think you need it; the rest of the chapter works better without it. It could conceivably be cleaned up, expanded, and placed in its own prologue, but if it were me I'd just cut it (sprinkling a bit more inline exposition on the rest, of course).
The "not as bad as the very bad, but still reasonably bad" bad:The paragraph starting:
Each T’Awn had a particular and unique way of accessing what they called ‘the hidden power,’ ...
Practically jumped up and down, waving its arms and shouting, "Hey, look at me, I'm exposition!" I'm exaggerating, of course, but I think it could use a good smoothing.
The ending to the first section felt rushed to me. Once Meles calls on his power, I wanted to see what was going on, but it was over practically before it started. I felt you could have slowed down a bit - just a bit - and injected more detail about what each character was doing and what happened when they were "lost".
You pointed out that the twins didn't really know what was going on. How did they know what their part was in the working? How did their not knowing what to do contribute to their demise?
The mildly badWatch out for the passive voice; it's an evil impact-killing monster.
I personally am not a fan of giving unusual names to ordinary things. There's a tendency to do that in speculative fiction, but I don't think it works. For example,
Taq was usually attentive to the various announcements and other trivia that took place at the morning gather;
Is there something unusual about this "gather" that sets it apart from, say, a gathering, or an assembly? If not, then why not just call it an assembly?
I like to think of it in translator's terms. Presumably, the English language does not exist in your world; the story is therefore implicitly interpreted for our benefit. And translators do their best to render things in terms that are familiar to their audience, even at the expense of literal accuracy.
I guess what I'm saying is, let your culture shine through the things that are truly unusual, and let ordinary things stay ordinary and invisible.
Well, that's all I've got. I hope you're not put off by my forceful tone; the fact that I feel strongly enough to present my opinions forcefully says to me that I liked your story well enough to be passionate about it. I look forward to reading the rest.
