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 Review #3790263 |
| (3.5)  Welcome to WDC from "Newbie Welcome Wagon" ! Good evening, Karl. FN here, dropping in to raise a few concerns. I'm sorry I've been so slow; life has been kicking my ass lately, but not so badly that I'm not still with you! In the course of reading the last couple of chapters I have been losing the feeling that I mentioned earlier, that you have too many main characters. Now it's back, although it may be needless. I have the impression, that may be in error, that you are introducing at least two more main characters here, Olsen and Rogar, and possibly setting the stage for a third, Kitarand. This is an awful lot of people to keep track of, and one rule of thumb I've encountered in my studies is that you introduce all the main characters in the first quarter of the book, and in the remaining three quarters, you tell the story. If you are still introducing characters in Chapter 14, that means that to fall within that particular guideline, your book must be a minimum of 56 chapters long. Might be. I don't have that information yet. A second concern is with the angelic being addressed as Sean. I'm reading about two boys setting rabbit snares, and suddenly without preamble, I'm in a conversation between God and his Messenger (I think). This yanked me so harshly out of the narrative flow, it was like being stopped short by a bungee cord. I read it several times, couldn't figure it out, and finally continued in frustration, hoping it would become clear later. Yanking a reader out of the spell you're weaving around him is never a good idea. I would suggest you separate this section with a pair of asterisk breaks, thus, * italicise that whole conversation as this line is, or both. Something needs to cue the reader that you're shifting gears; it is never a good idea to tamper with the reader's acceptance of the magic. Finally, your viewpoint seems to bounce around a lot in this chapter. First Dylan is watching Eno roast the rabbit. Then Eno is watching the rabbit roast. Eno goes to the glade, meets the angel (I assume; still not 100% clear on what happened there, but it's all right to be mysterious.). They get to town, are almost run down by the wagon, and suddenly we are in Olsen's head. The tipoff is As he had expected, both boys nodded their agreement. If we hadn't shifted point of view to Olsen, we wouldn't know what he expected. Toward the end, you flirt with getting into Father Rogar's head as well, though that never definitively happens. There is no need to do this. It bats the reader around the narrative like a shuttlecock, when you could tell everything from Eno's viewpoint with complete clarity. Obviously, he cannot narrate the scene with Sean, but setting that apart gives the reader the visual clue that this is happening out of the boys' view, and makes it much more clear what actually happens here. Again, with all this viewpoint-jumping, you risk pulling the reader out of your own spell. Of course, there are no hard and fast rules about how many characters you're allowed to have, nor when you have to introduce them, but these points I make are intended to help you understand the problems I had following this chapter, and I am, I think, a fairly typical fantasy reader, in it for the enjoyment of the story, not to be challenged by reading it. That sounds harsh, and I apologize for that. I don't want to discourage you, you're doing a commendable job. These issues are easy to fix, if you even agree that they need fixing. I post them here for your consideration, and will continue the journey with a view toward an overall review when I reach the end. This was a good place to raise these points, as they all occured in a very small space. I hope you find this helpful; none of it is meant to be condescending or demeaning. Carry on, you're doing fine! ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "The Frontier Navigator"
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