[Mason of High House Death]

Below is an exerpt from Chapter One of a series I've been working on for a couple years now - three quarters of the way through book 2 at the moment.

Just thought I'd post it here and see what you folks thought.



Chapter One

3891 After the Departure (AD)
A city of rage…

Decay was a dark undercurrent that permeated every shadowy alcove of the city, every crumbling wharf and rotting dock pier, leaving a faint, miasmic stench that hung heavy in the turgid air, competing with the odour of decomposition that rose from the jungle floor with its padded layer of leaf mould and animal remains. Through the sulphurous yellow haze of sea-coal, mingling with the gasses that drifted in from the lee-side swampland, the buildings of the city rose squat and hulking, wreathed in fumes and appearing like some vast, primordial beasts looming out of eons past, eager for blood-sacrifice. Their craggy, stained visages, laced with pitted cracks where fungi and creeping vine had eagerly taken root, told a tale all of their own, a tale of neglect, oppression, and a slow, backward slide into bestiality, the splendour of ages past cruelly malformed into something that was dank, foul and perverse.

The man named Kaine scowled. He had hated Baagre on his first visit, and the intervening years had only proven that however bad things might appear, they could always grow immeasurably worse. Hardly a comforting thought, that. He passed in through the gates, noting that he was alone on the road, as he had nearly been the last two days. The guards atop the square, tapering watch tower, if they noted him at all, paid him no mind. He spent a brief moment studying those guards, his overly acute gaze taking in the stained, sloppy uniforms, the rust-pitted blades of their halberds and their shoddy stances, then moved on.

The road opened out onto a broad, sweeping concourse, the cobbles cracked and broken with weeds thrusting up from beneath. At one time, the square would have been crowded with caravans, the cries of carters and the lowing of oxen and mules a steady, rumbling roar. Now there was silence, but for the cry of a chalpotza circling on high, winging its way inland over the maze of vibrant greenery that was the rainforest. Textile trade with Artosia had dried up years earlier, eliminating one of the main sources of income the tropical city possessed, and the concourse rarely reverberated any more to the iron wheel-rims of the desert wagons. The long-nosed potola that had at one time been hauled by the thousands from the sea twenty miles westwards had also vanished, leaving the fishermen poor and destitute and their urban cousins, who had relied on the potola for sustenance, with tighter belts.

But there were far deeper currents of darkness swirling about the city's fetid underbelly, and as Kaine moved further along the mostly deserted streets, he felt his hackles rise, and had to work to suppress the feral growl that rumbled in his throat. He passed the slumped body of an old man, lying in repose across the threshold of a worn-down temple, and noted the man's skeletal hands, the yellowish cast to his skin and the angular lines, almost scars, radiating out from the corners of his mouth. All the signs of malnutrition were there, and while the man was a beggar…still, it did not bode well. Kaine cursed. He would get what he came for, fulfilling the debt he owed, and then get out.

And the Black Lady curse me if I'm ever witless enough to set foot in this stinking shithole again.

[Use Of Weapons]

First thoughts: I like the imagery, and the sense of place is acute and would get me to read on were it not for other factors. Those other factors, though, make me hesitant to continue, and they are: 1. I feel like I'm being beaten about the face with awkward adjective/noun combinations, especially in the first paragraph. 2. Too much alliteration. 3. Occasional sloppy word choice (e.g. 'visages' for buildings, which creates an entirely unexpected visual for this reader).

There are strengths there, definitely. There's a palpable sense of 'something bad about to happen', which is possibly being over-egged. I don't know what your audience is, but I feel like I'm being thumped repeatedly with a big stick from the ominous foreboding tree.

On first reading, I got the impression that your sentence construction was following a fairly predictable pattern, but that eased as the excerpt continued. You might want to think about re-writing the first (couple of) paragraph(s) having got back into the feel of the story, as it feels to me like the most stilted.

Your characterisation is probably the best thing about that excerpt. Small, deft strokes that give us a picture we can immediately relate to. I don't like the name, but the character is strong, and would probably carry me through until I got used to it.

HTH!

[Mason of High House Death]

Definately helps. Thanks for the tips, I'll keep them in mind.
This was writing that I did about a year and a half to two years ago, so hopefully i've improved a bit since then.

Funny thing about the character name is that Kaine is an alias. His tribal name is Athuli Macothe (Don't know if that sounds better) , which eventually he starts to go by. Kaine is sort of a generic-soundign name I came up with before I really knew anything about the character or who he was, so I may change it.

[Hull Beddict]

I agree with what UoW said; the your excerpt seems to both casts the mood and develop some characterization successfully. I like the atmosphere, which reminds me a bit of Heart of Darkness (which is an awesome book, in my book).

However, I think your first paragraph in particular suffers from a common mistake: trying to pack in too much. I think that creates the "beaten over the head" feeling. Though the details work toward your goals, there are too many, too quickly. Pick and choose more carefully, try to leave in the most important details while removing the ones that accomplish the same thing. For example, the "visages" of the buildings are "craggy," which to me already suggests that they're "laced with pitted cracks." Dropping one could streamline the prose without loss of meaning.

If you feel you really need to keep the plethora of detailed adjectives and nouns, I'd try to spread them over more sentences; break them up with more actions to give the reader's mind a break from inventorying the scene and let them watch it in action.

Keep writing new stuff, but don't forget to run over your work once it's on the page!

[wade]

Well, I'm no professional by any means, but I'll give it a try:

I really enjoyed the scene setting, we had just the right amount of detail given; not too little that we're having to fill in gaps, and not too much that it bogs down from what's actually happening (I must say, I tend to do that a lot ). However, I do feel you could have stretched it out just a little, or removed something, just to dilute what's being said. Because the first paragraph, at least in my opinion, serves just for imagery, and the second paragraph jumps a little too quickly from the doomy atmosphere building, to Kaine, who starts entering gates and analyses guardsmen. Perhaps there could have been just a small piece in-between those two segments to make them flow together nicely.

The other three paragraphs don't have an issue with their flow.

As mentioned by the others, you really are skilled with your imagery, atmosphere and characterisation. But there are some issues with flow/structure, which isn't a massive detraction from your strong writing, but if fixed, could really emphasize that sense of foreboding, and your characters sense of everything around him.

"The long-nosed potola that had at one time been hauled by the thousands from the sea twenty miles westwards had also vanished, leaving the fishermen poor and destitute and their urban cousins, who had relied on the potola for sustenance, with tighter belts"

This was really nice, being able to see some social effects this event has had, but I wanted to read more about what was happening to the actual residents who had lived / were still living there, not just the urban landscape. So possibly incorporate a little more of the effects that this destitute time has on more people, it makes the world feel more populated.


Hope that helped a little