OKAY so it's an upper respiratory tract infection, hooray! Now as promised to address each post.
Alternative Goose, on 17 January 2018 - 09:26 PM, said:
It can indeed cut both ways. I'm one of those people who like when fantasy and sci-fi writers break the mold and turn things on the head. In a sense I am actually not a fan of traditional fantasy with all its tropes. I think Lord of the Rings and all its copy cats, when looked upon at a distance, becomes a boring rote backdrop. I want Space ships in my fantasy and dragons in my sci-fi and everything in between.
Part of why I like the Malazan Universe so much is the different ideas Erikson incorporates. Anthropological logic to the races, geologic time scales, munitions and giant bugs and intelligent dinosaurs, etc. It's almost that familiar fantasy setting we all know but much of it is perceived from a very sceptic POV. It's different enough that I am hooked, even in between Ascendants throwing power at each other. Alternatively if it wasn't for how ruthless GRRM wrote the first books of ASOIAF, I'd never had bothered to read the first 3 books. The world is barely fantasy. Might as well just be alternative time line Europe/Britain.
What I really want is the opposite of modern low fantasy. I want ultra high fantasy. I want to read about the golden age that usually came before what ever dreary setting your typical fantasy book is set in.
I burned out on high fantasy when I was younger. I did try to take some inspiration from Erikson with the races, however - the original draft going back to approx. 2003 had orcs and very typical fantasy races. When I sat down to really get this thing written I realised that wasn't going to cut it, hence the rafka and baiyairen. I rather like the latter, but so far haven't had much reason to use them.
worry, on 17 January 2018 - 10:10 PM, said:
I'm about 15% in too. I don't mind the slowness or the setting, and as far as plot goes I'm still in wait-and-see mode (which I think is natural for a long book like this, no complaints).
Any issues I've had so far have been editorial in nature -- either pet peeves or genuine issues I think would be more universal. For instance (and sorry I can't cite something more specific from the book right now), sentences with 3, 4, even 5 clauses could be broken up into a couple impactful 1-2 clause sentences. Like if you have a sentence that reads
"Pooble looked at his wife and smiled, recalling the day he first saw her across the town's main thoroughfare, her gorgeous red hair dancing gracefully with the breeze, its coolness bringing rose to her cheeks."
Just break it up so it reads:
"Pooble looked at his wife and smiled, recalling the day he first saw her across the town's main thoroughfare. Her gorgeous red hair danced gracefully with the breeze, and her cheeks were rosy with its coolness."
On other occasions, maybe just sacrifice one of the clauses all together. (I'm not sure if 'clause' is actually the right word, sorry, just like every segment of a sentence divided by commas, aside from lists).
Anyway, so while I have no problem at all with the overall word count or length, on the small scale there are some overstuffed sentences. And there are a few other issues on a similar scale (agree with Apt about the occasional over-explaining), and if you ever get the chance to work with an editor like Tatterdemalion did, it would help with shaky first-timer habits and flow issues for sure.
The good stuff: More generally, at the macro level, your language isn't unsophisticated at all, and on par with plenty of working authors. Your characters, particularly your main characters (so far?), are all well drawn. And in terms of maybe the most important thing, I as the reader wanting to continue, to learn more about the characters and what happens to them, you're good to go. This post may seem imbalanced towards negative because of the example above, but to be clear, I think there's a lot more good than bad so far.
It's long as hell, as you know, so I don't know when I'll be checking back in.
All feedback is valuable. The clause use was perhaps more of a stylistic choice? When I'm doing things like that I speak the sentence in my head. If there's a pause in between the words and it sounds wrong without one, the comma goes in. I look forward to your further thoughts as it goes on.
Andorion, on 18 January 2018 - 02:47 AM, said:
3 chapters done.
Maark, I really like your writing so far. It really does not read like a self-pub debut at all.
I like the setting, I like the two PoV characters that I have seen so far, and best of all, I did not want to stop reading last night, which gives your book the hard-to-put-down factor that is really crucial for any author.
With regard to the above comments, I think Worry is onto something regarding sentence structure. For myself, I rarely analyse that aspect of a book on the first read unless the writing really sticks out by being either exceptionally elegant - GGK, or extremely jarring.
As for the slow burn vs faster pace thing, I don't think that there is something inherently wrong with a slow burn buildup as long as you justify it with later events. I personally favour a downhill model of gradually accelerating pace, kind of like most Malazan books.
Thanks! There's a third POV main character to come but you won't meet them until Act II. Which is where the story really kicks in. And the Malazan pacing is EXACTLY what I was going for. Call it the Erikson Snowball, perhaps.
Minty - for some reason the multiquote didn't add yours but I look forward to your feedback and hope you enjoy it.
Maark Abbott 
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