[Aptorian]

40% in. Just read the passage at the whorehouse where Solvi the lordling comes to visit:

Spoiler

I thought you were setting up some new bad guy who was going to be a window into what was going on in the inner city and what ever political affairs going on.

And then Kaenna returned with a vengeance. Fuck yes. Kill the lot of 'em. This was kind of the pay off I was hoping for after the pain and missery described in earlier chapters.

One of the things missing in Kaenna's chapters was this notion of retribution. Of defiance, anger, resentment beyond what Kaenna was expressing. There's an internal logic to her behavior but not one that I felt was satisfying or made me sympathetic to the character.

Now, this incarnate "The Crow" with ice magic business. This I can get behind. Now I am waiting for that traitorous bastard that sold the crew out to get his.

[RACHEL]

39% in.

Spoiler

Likes: Herick's attitude, different races, Herick, Wheel of Time reference, giant sewer worm, little barefoot blue rafkas, magic system seems pretty cool so far, and Herick.

Biaraiyan - faun or centaur?
I keep picturing kaenna as a blue kender.

Dislikes
Repetitive descriptions of, Herrick taking a drink or thinking of alcohol, kaennas second eyelid, kaennas never used a weapon and thoughts how anyone who does is sloppy. Are these your intentional character "braid tugs" cause I find them just as overused.
Extremely lengthy and overly descriptive journeys to Carstens.
It seemed odd that when Kaenna was in jail she "instinctively" reached for her knife, which she has never had to use, instead of her pouch or lock picking supplies.
My biggest gripe is the fact that this artifact was ever at Carstens at all. The whole excuse that it was in a place no one would ever look doesn't work for me considering it seems so important. After the first break in they added one, non magical guard. Kaenna wasted no time breaking a lifelong rule of not going back to a place you just robbed. I'm sure the thing was calling to her somehow but still she slipped in one night after a robbery with no problems and security measures were barely increased. Why wouldn't a nmenos just disguise themselves and watch over the artifact for one night? I'm hoping I get a more satisfactory answer to why this important, reincarnating, god gem was just left at some random guys shop with no protection when there are people out there that could smell it if someone wanted to find it.

Ok so I do like the book and I am well aware that I have a lot left to read and I'm sure explanations are forthcoming. I will update when I get a little further in the book.

[RACHEL]

By the way, your complete seething hate for Way of Kings makes me laugh every time you comment on it. I loved it so I can't say I agree with you but for some reason I picture an enraged viking going berserk every time you comment about it.

[Aptorian]

In reply to RACHEL's spoiler:

Spoiler

I found the whole business surrounding Carsten's strange as well.

From the Oithyrian side (spelling?) I assume that there is an Ageless acting behind the curtains. That incarnate gem was left there to set things in motion. Either to attract those shadow guys or to attract a vessel/avatar for the new ice incartnate.

But there's still a lot about the whole thing that seems unsubtle and unpolished from a writing logic stand point. Why is the best lock smith in the city hiding stuff behind books in his office? (Also what's with there being tons of trinkets gold behind all kinds of books as well? That's a bit too video game to me). Why doesn't he have a safe or a vault? Why doesn't he have a guard in his office? To watch it over night? Especially when he's scared shitless by the shadow guys. Why is his building in general so poorly secured? The thinking behind it is presented in the book but as a reader it just sounds dumb. What kind of professional security expert is that dumb?

Similarly it's not explained why Kaenna just beats Carsten's locks with apparent ease. That box for the ice heart should be Carsten's best work but Kaenna opens it with relative ease. Why not have her steal the box and then open it later after spending hours getting it open? Similarly, lets just assume that Kaenna is just born as a natural lock picker/puzzle solver... why not explain this to the reader? "Kaenne effortlessly broke through the locks systems. It was an innate ability she'd had since a child, when she fell into a radioactive vat of lock grease. Ever since that fateful day, she'd just known instinctively how to break locks. As though she was blessed by Securitas the Ageless of Padlocks".

EDIT:

Actually while I am nitpicking:

Spoiler

What's with the thieves in the temple living like urchins? They're dressed in shitty clothes, they eat moldy bread, they sleep in damp, ratty rooms, etc. Yet, they're stealing gold coins and jewellery, Now, I don't know how bad the economy is in Skjøl but as far as I can tell the city is not in war time or suffering from shortages of supplies, quite the contrary. So, going by medieval old time money logic, just a gold ring with a gem should be enough to feed a family for months, at least. From the sound of it, they're pulling in a ton every week.

Now of course Leader guy takes his cut but where the hell does the rest go? Like maybe if you had some off the cuff mention of a crime boss of the slums taking 80% and then leader guy taking another 15% it would make more sense but even then. Why the hell are they living off shitty food? Go burglar a baker you fools.

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 21 January 2018 - 09:20 PM

[RACHEL]

Spoiler

I also wonder why there had to be two robberies. Why not just introduce us to the characters on a normal day and then have Kaenna just bond the gem during the first break in. Having her go back and being met with barely any obstacles just seemed nonsensical.

[Maark Abbott]

Wellp, I did say I was playing a LOT of Thief TDP/TMA when I wrote the opening! Ot sounds like you are denying the words of Karras, my children...

Anyway, there are explanations to the points raised but they're addressed later on. Some not in this book.

Spoiler

a lot of early stuff going inexplicably right for Kaenna could be attributed to Nixuin's meddling. Why did the box open so easily? Why did that rope snap? Why did she die only to be reborn? And does meddling with the physical world have a consequence?

Carsten is sort of an embodiment of feigned competence. Trump & Co Locks.
Loosely based on Lord Bafford. I saw false competence at my old job every damn day and it was maddening.

Fair comment about the knife. I'm sure I rationalised that bit in my head at least! Oh well. Who needs a knife anyway?

[Maark Abbott]

Goose:

Spoiler

Kristof mentions that they owe money to a local crime boss as an offhand comment. It's pretty much a case of give him most of it and then keep the remainder, or he sends the boys out. Said crime boss might make an appearance.

[Aptorian]

RACHEL, on 21 January 2018 - 09:22 PM, said:

Spoiler

I also wonder why there had to be two robberies. Why not just introduce us to the characters on a normal day and then have Kaenna just bond the gem during the first break in. Having her go back and being met with barely any obstacles just seemed nonsensical.

Spoiler

From a plot standpoint it makes sense, she needs to discover it first and that initial robbery sets a lot of other wheels in motion in the story. However, from there, logically the gem should have been moved to some other place in town (Unless some Ageless knew that this was the right circumstances to attract a certain thieving rafka).

If I'd had to write that segment, and two burglaries where needed for plot pacing purposes, I would have made Kaenna mention a weird magic box with a symbol on it to the crew back at the temple. Then have one of the other thieves recall that there is a billion horn bounty out for a magical item that just arrived in town, and supposedly it has that symbol of the Moon Frog Ninja's on it! So, Kaenna is sent out to retrieve it, accidentally triggers the gem thing, bobs your uncle...

I might also had thrown in a but more fanfare for when she got zapped with the gem. Needed a bit more oomph to demonstrate the power. Like, it should had blown the top floor off Carsten's or something when it zapped her.

But hey I am just armchair writing now.

[RACHEL]

Spoiler

When the mystery shadow assassin's saw Kaenna get eaten why do they just give up. They just killed people and blew up a guy. You're telling me they can't kill a big worm? They could have waited for it to poop her out, or did they know she was bonded to the gem and would be reincarnated? RAFO I suppose.

[Maark Abbott]

RACHEL, on 21 January 2018 - 09:36 PM, said:

Spoiler

When the mystery shadow assassin's saw Kaenna get eaten why do they just give up. They just killed people and blew up a guy. You're telling me they can't kill a big worm? They could have waited for it to poop her out, or did they know she was bonded to the gem and would be reincarnated? RAFO I suppose.

Spoiler

The logic here was that they knew the gem itself would resurface in time and that actually finding that worm would have been fiendishly difficult. Carsten was a low effort target.

Your comments about pooping get addressed, by the way. I may have given Kaenna something of a complex about it.

[Aptorian]

Maark Abbott, on 21 January 2018 - 09:29 PM, said:

Goose:

Spoiler

Kristof mentions that they owe money to a local crime boss as an offhand comment. It's pretty much a case of give him most of it and then keep the remainder, or he sends the boys out. Said crime boss might make an appearance.

A fair point. I probably just sped right past that mention. Good points about Ice God's influence as well, could explain the locks.

Are the ageless able to nudge people's minds from afar? Like we saw with Andreas in the old temple.

RACHEL, on 21 January 2018 - 09:36 PM, said:

Spoiler

When the mystery shadow assassin's saw Kaenna get eaten why do they just give up. They just killed people and blew up a guy. You're telling me they can't kill a big worm? They could have waited for it to poop her out, or did they know she was bonded to the gem and would be reincarnated? RAFO I suppose.

Spoiler

I thought they gave up too easily as well, considering they could throw death hexes at it. But maybe they recognized the worm as a ice god being and as such did not want to start a fight with it. Hell the damn thing was enormous. What if it had friends?

Also say they murder it, what then? It sinks into this probable very deep hole? Do they hire a team of workers to pump out the water?

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 21 January 2018 - 09:45 PM

[Andorion]

I finished the book, and I really quite liked the book. I left a review on GR.

Maark, you write like a pro. Most parts of your book read like they written by someone who has been published numerous times before. Your writing is polished and focused and I onl see you getting better.

Stuff I liked

Spoiler

I liked the setting, I loved the character of Herik, I absolutely love the mythology you have built in, especially the floating island.

Also I rather like your pacing, you cut a nice middle path between breathless rush and the stop-to-smell-the-daisies approach.

Stuff that was Ok

Spoiler

The name Agatan Empire puts me off, mostly because there is an Agatean Empire in Discworld by Pratchett and they are also a riff on ancient China, though I think yours leans more towards Japan. Also Shiza's coming to the city so early didn't make a lot of sense to me given his status and position. I would have expected a senior spy or warrior.

You can sometimes be a bit overly descriptive, especially in the early sections. This can get irritating after some point. Now there are ways to get long descriptions to be more readable - see Toll the Hounds, but they don't really fit into your book.

Stuff I disliked

Spoiler

Now your book is dark, violent and full of gore and I expected nothing less. That is fine and it fits well into the grimdark genre without really embracing the nihilism of it.

However, the scene in Kaenna's mind when she is suddenly back in the Worm and basically gets tentacle raped, really put me off. It took me out of the book, made me stop reading and that is always a very bad thing to do to a reader. My problem with the scene is twofold. Firstly, it really is your stereotypical hentai tentacle rape scene - which will naturally raise a lot of eyebrows, but what makes it worse, is the second part of my issue - it felt unnecessary. I imagine you used the scene to show her helplessness and the rape of her mind by the Ageless, but I could also think of other ways you could have shown it without resorting to such a cliche. This is the one and only scene in the entire book that made me stop reading and raise my eyebrows.

Overall, I liked your book a lot, and I will definitely be waiting for the second book.

[Maark Abbott]

I've never read Discworld so that was a complete unknown to me. But I'm glad you enjoyed and the comments are certainly appreciated.

Regarding that scene:

Spoiler

you're right with the intent. It was to force Kaenna back into a position of helplessness and Nixuin's visions were specifically targeted so as to cause maximum mental damage. She hits Kaenna right where it hurts during that sequence.

Also, thanks for reading the whole thing, Ando. The biggest compliment is someone finishing it!

[Whisperzzzzzzz]

Any updates on a printed edition?

This post has been edited by Whisperzzzzzzz: 23 January 2018 - 01:11 PM

[Maark Abbott]

Whisperzzzzzzz, on 23 January 2018 - 01:11 PM, said:

Any updates on a printed edition?

I'm still looking into that. Apparently my cover image isn't clear enough to translate to print well (something about the DPI level) but I don't have easy access to the original base image as a friend created it for me.

I'll keep you posted.

[RACHEL]

Made it to 78%.

Spoiler

Well it took me till almost halfway through the book to finally have things going on that have me genuinely excited to see where things are going. Ancient technology, wtf are the ageless, floating island with death robots, Kaenna on a murder spree, things are getting exciting.
That slow beginning I feel should have been shorter to draw people in faster. I have noticed that Kaenna is now my least favorite point of view and that may be why the beginning dragged so much for me. I think a huge problem for me is that I feel like you are overly descriptive and repetitive with descriptions. On most pages I can find a word, up to even a whole paragraph that could easily be cut.
Examples: Fire incarnate Asian guy checks out a women and then tells his men to have her brought to his chambers. We are then told that it is common, natural, and considered a privilege for any man or woman to be brought in to have sex with him. Then a page later he asks for a dude to be brought to his rooms and you give us a whole paragraph where it says if the servant thought it was weird he said nothing because in this culture same sex relations are normal. This was a repeat cause we were already told that same sex stuff is cool and why would a servant think him asking for a man in his chambers is weird considering he grew up in a society without same sex stuff being taboo.
Kaenna is on the run from groups of men and we are told that they are wearing clothing similar to the clothes of the men who came into the temple to get her. You then you go on to describe the clothes and tell us they are thick to keep out the cold. Kaenna is escaping and I don't care about the men's clothes beyond that they are similar to the other men's and I certainly don't need a reminder that people need to dress warm in this cold climate.
Kaenna kills a female guard and in the woman's viewpoint we learn her age but then when Kaenna bites her you tell us she bit into young flesh. You could have skipped the word young since we already know she is young.
I'm not trying to be a nitpicky ass but merely pointing out examples that I remember just now. I feel like I see this kind of stuff on almost every page and I feel like the book could have been a lot shorter and more streamlined if you had weeded a lot of this repetitive stuff out.
I genuinely am excited to finish and hope you get book two out when you say you will.

[Maark Abbott]

The Erikson/Bakker/Jordan influence seeps through a bit, eh? Maybe in Book 2 Nynaeve will make a guest appearance with a coffer full of potsherds. Ahaaaaa~

Kaenna was EXHAUSTING to write book one for (book two less so). There were a few scenes where I had to quit writing her at all and just move on because she's that unpleasant.

[Aptorian]

I finished Incarnate earlier this week. As promised here is my rambling criticism of the book.

MASSIVE SPOILER GLYPHS ABOUND

I think I mentioned it more than once during my read through but this book didn't sit right by me from the start. The pacing seemed slow or just off in terms of events shown and time spent following Kaenna, I thought there was illogical story plots and Kaenna was not a fun character to read about. This more or less solidified into a disliked of the book overall the closer I got to the end.

I think you've got what it takes to write a book, Maark, but I think you've written a book that is at best mediocre, at worst a complete miss fire. I'd say it was a 3/5 star book but to be fair to you as a new author, figuring this stuff out, I think it's better to be harsh. I think this is a sub par fantasy book that probably shouldn't get more than a 1/5 or maybe 2/5 if you were reviewing it commercially.

Now why do I think that? Ignoring the books editing issues - that the book is too long, that there's lots of misspellings, etc., my gripes are twofold. One, I think you've written a miserable tale for a set of unsympathetic characters and I think the story path you've laid out, lacks ambition, logic and edge.

Just a heads up. This is pretty much just one long list of negatives with few positive elements inserted. I think you have more need to hear the bad than praise. So hang in there. You mentioned in another thread that you'd mainly gotten positive feedback and if this is true, I think your advanced readers have done you a massive disservice (Or their taste in writing and fantasy differs greatly from mine).

Now let's start with your characters and how they're treated.

There is a meanness to the way you write these characters. Mainly Kaenna but also Anderas and Anderas girlfriend. There is traditionally a contract an author enters into with his reader. When an author lays out a story of pain and suffering and setbacks for the character, it is with the understanding that this is a trial - for the reader and the character. When the story concludes there will be success, ascendancy, glory or revenge, etc. Some kind of release. Some significant change. There is none of this in the book. Your characters get raped, humiliated, beaten, murdered, etc. and it doesn't let up. Life in Skjøli is harsh. Which for me personally is uncomfortable to read and left me with blue balls on the last page.

This isn't unique to your book. It's quite common in many dark and gritty stories in these modern times. But usually, when these dark stories are told, it features a strong character who has the personality that carries the reader through. Cain Blackknife, Harry Dresden, Garfield the Cat. The character has the intelligence to figure things out or the sheer toughness or single mindedness to see them through. But neither Kaenna nor Anderas have these features. They're weak and stupid people. They get fucked over and fucked up all the way through and none of them have the personal drive or focus to change this. In Anderas case it's mostly just a case of existential suffering but it's awful none the less. There is a difference between writing a sympathetic character and a character that is just pathetic. I can't root for a character that has no likeable characteristic and little spirit to persevere. Anderas disposition is written soundly. You've created a truly weak human being. It's just a protagonist that is truly unappealing to read about.

I don't want to read about a main character like that. It has no pay off for me. Maybe you, as the author, are looking past the first book to the finale of book 3 and as such, you know that patience will payoff but as a reader I have no such knowledge. I just suffered through 500+ pages with characters I never grew to like. In my optics, you've written 3 main characters Herik, Kaenna and Anderas who never grow, who don't change and who's outlook and station don't really change over the course of the book. Sure Kaenna is now a god puppet and Herik got a promotion and Anderas got married, but they're still the same. Especially Anderas is frustrating because you see a change in him, when he fights his brother but then he goes back to being a coward and an anime character (I'll get back to that).

I mentioned in another post that I wasn't happy with the rape in this book and that didn't change. Kaenna's rape scenes were depressingly frequent and that tentacle rape sequence was just utterly unnecessary. I'm no feminist or social justice warrior. I'm not bothered by women getting roughed up in fiction but there are limits and there are matters of taste and there are ways to write that. Kaenna's lot in this book seemed like torture porn for neckbeards to me. Similarly, when you introduced Shiza or what ever his name was, magical shogun guy, you use his sexual use of his people as a way to characterize him and the Agatan society. But it just seems like a cheap ”look he's a villain rapist” characterization. A throw away line about him raping a boy messenger that night because he feels like it. You can chalk this down to it being a different fantasy culture and youøre adding character to the story but it just seems unnecessary. Maybe I'm just squeamish but you should keep in mind that many readers are and this could effect book sales. Or maybe you'll just attract a lot of Terry Goodkind readers. Maybe there's money there. Rape all your characters while you expound your moral views.

As for Anderas, he is such a weak human being that I felt no sympathy for him. He brings out the bully in me. That part of the male psyche that has me mentally shouting at the book "Man the fuck up, you fucking pussy!". Made even more frustrating when he vacillates between cowardice and anger. You see a change in him but then you drop it again? Which actually has me wondering.

Do you read a lot of manga/anime? Because the way some characters speak in this book, but especially Anderas talks to women, is very anime. Tons of scenes where he is blushing and shy, stammering and don't know how to behave when confronted by an authority or a love interest. This kind of stuff I connect with anime and I find it really off putting. Nobody speaks like that. I know stammering is a literary affectation in some stories but I've never met anyone in my life who actually began to stammer when talking to other people. I don't know if it's something you can sell to a western audience of readers. Maybe it's just me but what ever the case is, when ever Anderas would mentally rebuke himself "vile, sick boy!" I mostly just hoped he'd get shanked by a hobo on the next page.

I'd prefer something more Jane Austin and less chess club about Anderas writing.

And Anderas really does piss me off because he has no pay off for the reader from start to finish in this book. He doesn't become a man at the end. He doesn't turn into an incarnate. He doesn't get his father's respect. He doesn't even receive reciprocal affection from the woman he pinned for and nearly died to save. You could emit him from a second book and I would thank you for it.

Herik on the other hand I liked. Herik is probably the most likeable character you've written (all though I also sort of like magical shogun guys confidence). But his character begins to get annoying when his entire being seems to revolve around drinking from a flask, being annoyed that people don't like him drinking from that flask and him always remarking on how the flasks contents taste bad or burn. It's tedious beyond anything else in the book. And it's also utterly paradoxical. You could probably save 10,000 words by editing that down.

Seriously, considering your early jab at Robert Jordan in the book, it's amazing how many similar affectations your characters have.

You've written a miserable soldier character with PTSD and alcoholism. What appears to be a self destructive, abusive man. But you also write him as a competent "cop" and a functioning alcoholic. Which makes no sense. You hand wave it by claiming that his vow magically makes Herik more resistant to drink but it doesn't really work in my opinion.

A person that drinks, what sounds like 5 liters of spirits a day ,is either going to be a stinking, putrid mess of a human being on death's door or, it's just going to be another day in their ongoing suffering and as such, the alcohol should be something in the back of their mind but not something that takes up every second of their thinking. You've over exaggerated his drinking and completely let it take over the narrative in a way that clashes with Heriks station and function.

So overall, you've treated your characters like shit the whole book and never let up. And you've made your characters either annoying or horrible to follow through their day. This is bad because the only people I was rooting for at the end of the book was the bad guys. At the end of the story I wanted Nixuin to kill every last person at the court and I wanted Shogun guy to flatten that mudhovel of a city.

--------------------------------------

Now to the other side of my quibbles with this book. The actual story. It goes no where and never builds up tension beyond a slight boil.

Now, early on, I remarked that I felt the book was slow and you mentioned that it would get into gear. I never felt that. When the book ended I felt like we were at the point where a normal fantasy thriller was at the half way point.

The pacing is completely off. You spend pages and pages on the characters life that are unimportant or repetitive or brush over chances to really build up tension. You are taking your time in place where you should be rushing and vice versa. For example, let's take Anderas storyline.

Anderas goes to the hidden temple. Anderas touches an incarnate link. The loreseekers go to flying island. Thye come back and Anderas mopes around and courts woman loreseeker whose name I am too lazy to look up... and that is that. What about the incarnate orb? Why don't you activate it at the end of the book during the fight with Nixuin? It would both have giving Anderas the power up and character building we longed for the whole book and also given you a chance to make Nixuins Manifest form more formiddable. By having her stuggle to defeat two mortals, you fail to sell the incarnates power in the readers eye, but if you had Incarnate Anderas come to the rescue, you'd have been able create a cool scene where storm god ageless awakens and two gods punch it out Ascendant convergence Malazan Book style.

But going back, more importantly, the A, B and C of the places Anderas and the Loreseekers travel to seem more like a checklist in a manuscript than important events in the actual story.

When Anderas and cowman (I forget his name) wander off into the temple alone (not a very believable act by the way, too slasher movie logic, not enough academic excavation procedure) why does what they discover mean they have to go the flying island? They find a map? So what? Surely there are a hundreds or thousands of ancient temples that reveal stuff about this proto-Ageless civilization? The Otheriyan Empire is old and vast. Surely they have tons of knowledge about this stuff. But lets assume they don't. Why on earth would they put Anderas in charge of the trip? If this was some paradigm shift in the understanding of the Ageless, wouldn't some chief Loreseeker and a hundred veteran loreseekers, plus a god damn armada of ships had been sent to the floating island?

You had a chance to build up the grandness of this revelation and the following undertaking but up make it seem like just another archaeological excavation.

Hell you could have had Cyborg Skyrim zombies in there that the Umbral Shields had to defend the loreseekers from. I found it strange that the Umbral Shields would not go with the academics into an unknow ancient fortress in the ground. Like, did Ridley Scott write the Loreseeker manual on entering unknown ancient temples of doom?

It feels like there should have been more information waiting in that first temple and something more concerning that made the loreseekers eager to quickly seek out the floating island. You don't sell the mystery and wonder. It just seemed like a necessary set of scenes that served as a story vehicle for Anderas to get the incarnate orb.

Which bring us to the trip to the island. Again it felt rushed. You don't sell that place at all to me as a reader. You should have had a more thorough history dump on prior trips to the island, failed expeditions, legends, maybe a Memnos revealed to know a lot more about the island than the rest realize, etc. Think something like the beginnings of the movies Sphere, Alien, Avatar or what ever. Some meeting that gets you pumped and builds up the idea of the place.

Next, when they arrive on the island, it should have taken them weeks to get to that pyramid and delving into it should have been a fraught, organized affair, not just a couple of buffoons bumbling into the lair of Zordon the Power Rangers leader. Nor should the retreat had been so simple. You undermine the power of the Mnemos mages by suggesting they were all easily taken down, when a couple of loreseekers managed to protect themselves for a prolonged running retreat. You could have made this escape from island much more tragic and disastrous by showing characters (that you should have introduced more thorouhhly) getting cut down. Showing the lead mnemos fight a dozen robots to a stand still giving other loreseekers time to retreat, etc.

Not that those automatons weren't cool. I loved them. But you could again has sold their danger by having a scene of say an evening the first week on the island, where a couple of engineers is trying to dismantle one and they discover these things are still active and very dangerous to disturb, etc.

Similarly I might have liked for you to have used Anderas as a scholar to actually describe and analyze not just the remains of the culture but what about his new found magical ability? How these runes function and how they are manifested. What's the difference between Otheriyan glyphs and ancient Ageless glyphs? Not to mention what is the difference between glyph writing and glyph magic casting?

Actually that reminds me of a missing element in the story. You have Anderas suddenly begin to be able to make glyphs after the incarnate gem enters him. Why not have scenes where Anderas is practicing and showing him mentally analysing how magic now comes to him. So that you give the readers their first proper explanation about the magic system? How the glyph casting feels, what it takes to create these glyphs, etc. maybe with comments from the cow friend about how to use the magic, etc.

Anderas becoming able to summon magic should have been a momentous experience for the kid. Not something you just brush over, like "oh by the way Anderas now casts glyphs, anyway...". Hell why not throw in a scene where his father hears about his sons change, comes to evaluate him and then discards his son once again when he sees how weak he is, furthering this image of a separation between the father and son? Considering how much focus you have on Anderas inferiority complex, you don't spend a lot of time showing the relationship between father and son.

Moreover, why wouldn't Anderas incarnate ability manifest itself to save his friends and the ship when the automatons came to kill them? Why save that reveal? And save it again during the ending. You'd wait 500 pages or more before giving the readers the joy of seeing this weakling of a man exploding into action? For what purpose? You should reward the reader here. Explosions = Happy Apt.

Overall there is a lack of depth, complexity and sophistication in the world building and character perspectives. I'm not sure how else to say that. It feels like either you're not "good enough" to write a book this complex or you were rushing and didn't do enough rewrites to add layers of detail to the dialogue and observations. Like the last finish is missing. Mainly I think the book overall demonstrates that you are a (I assume?) new author and you don't yet have the perspective and experience to really squeeze the blood out of the metaphorical stone.

When reading about Herik's chapters I wanted to know more about the order, their vow, their patron, other orders and magical groups in the world. When reading about the Loreseekers I wanted to learn more about their civilizations structure, what loreseekers do, what goes on back on their continent, etc. When reading about Kaenna and her thieving buddies I wanted more info on the slums and the harbour district. And I don't just mean that in an impatient "wait and find out" kind of way. I felt you were stalling and unnecessarily drawing out revelations. I should have had info dumps on Ohlsson and the fence within the first chapter or two. Not half way through the book, etc. Do call backs to earlier mentions. Generally I wanted more information boiled down to a shorter page length. Which I realize is a tall order to ask of an author, but that is the difference between a bad or mediocre book and great tale.

I wanted the characters to be more complex and more adult. I felt like, because Herik and magical Shogun guy are the only adult POV's, most of the inner monologue we got, was the minds of children. Kaenna, Anderas and One armed loreseeker were written in a manner I associate more with Young Adult writing. I feel like you need to go over these characters again and again and beat their dialogue and thoughts into something more prosaic but also more focused. And generally I don't think any of them were intelligent enough. Kaenna wasn't street smart and cynical enough and Anderas and One armed loreseeker weren't academic and nerdy enough in their perception of their surroundings. I was left with the opinion that especially Kaenna and Anderas are just dumb as fuck. Naive, unsophisticated, weak minds that couldn't fight their way out of a children's sudoku. Not poorly written, just unappealing.

And I realize what I've just spent 2-3 A4 pages describing is just me armchair writing your book for you. My gripes can be dismissed as simply an expression of the story I wanted to read and not your vision. But it ties into my overall feeling through out this book from start to finish. There was far too many times where I thought ”why don't they just...” or ”Why didn't Maark just show this?”. This is not a good thing. This suggests that you've failed as an author to solidify a logic narrative and the feeling of a grander scope and vision than the reader can perceive of.

In my opinion a really great book is surprising and overwhelming. It's written in a way that you feel that the author is always a step ahead of you. That the author is smarter than you are and it's you, the reader, who's job it is to try and figure out what is going on. I didn't feel like that for most of the book. I could see the powers moving in the background and I could tell where the story threads were heading, But nothing was happening. Not with the speed I was anticipating anyway.

Which means we've now come full circle back to my issue with the pacing. You're not in enough of a hurry and I think you did a poor job of selecting the right characters, in the right scenes, to show and tell what the story is really about – IE the first steps in what otherwise appears to a promising introduction to a God War that could rival the Malazan books convergences. But the convergence never came in this book which drove me absolutely mad.

Seriously, why would you drop an epic fight between Nexuin and the combined strength of Umbral Shields, loreseekers and mnemos... to sell a secret mole plot inside the government... that I won't get to read about for another year or more? You undermined your own convergence to build a narrative reason for reading the next book, which really wasn't needed. You just set up an alliance between a fire god and an ice god. That's cool enough for me.

Anyway. I realize this was a long ramble of barely coherent opinions. Look on them as a readers complaints more than another writer's professional criticism. God knows, I've never had the stamina or drive to write a brick of fantasy.

I think you should join a writing circle or something and have people throw poop opinions at you every week until you figure out some way to condense your writing and become better at creating interesting characters.

I think you've made a good attempt at writing a big fantasy book but I think there's way too many flaws and inconsistencies in the book for it to ever be picked up by a publisher or gain popularity by a discerning audience.

The hard truth is that there is a ton of very good fiction out there. Mediocre isn't good enough if you want to do this professionally.

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 01 February 2018 - 06:57 PM

[RACHEL]

I finished the book last night and Goose managed to put into words almost exactly how I felt about it. I'm not quite as disgusted with the book as he is but the points he made had me nodding my head. I might be mistaken but I think you mentioned that this series is planned to be four books long. Given how little seemed to happen in this book I feel like four books is a mistake. Goose nailed it when he said the ending felt like how the middle of most books feel. I just did not feel like it had a satisfying ending. Maybe it's because you defended the slow beginning by saying you are a big fan of slow starts and epic convergence endings and yet we got no such epic convergence. All we had was a god inside a human being beaten off by a prosthetic arm. I feel like you wasted time describing every breath Kaenna took on her way to Carstens but no time on the history, how the magic works, what is known about the ancient technology, ect. Why did Anderas only power up when he was pissed at his brother and not when his life depended on it.
I admit I have a lot of questions that I want answers to and I admit I am intrigued enough to try out book two when it's out (something about ancient mystery technology really does it for me). I would like to be a beta reader if you have any need for that. I think you are a good author with a good story I just think you struggle with how to trim the fat.

[Maark Abbott]

RACHEL, on 02 February 2018 - 02:07 AM, said:

I finished the book last night and Goose managed to put into words almost exactly how I felt about it. I'm not quite as disgusted with the book as he is but the points he made had me nodding my head. I might be mistaken but I think you mentioned that this series is planned to be four books long. Given how little seemed to happen in this book I feel like four books is a mistake. Goose nailed it when he said the ending felt like how the middle of most books feel. I just did not feel like it had a satisfying ending. Maybe it's because you defended the slow beginning by saying you are a big fan of slow starts and epic convergence endings and yet we got no such epic convergence. All we had was a god inside a human being beaten off by a prosthetic arm. I feel like you wasted time describing every breath Kaenna took on her way to Carstens but no time on the history, how the magic works, what is known about the ancient technology, ect. Why did Anderas only power up when he was pissed at his brother and not when his life depended on it.
I admit I have a lot of questions that I want answers to and I admit I am intrigued enough to try out book two when it's out (something about ancient mystery technology really does it for me). I would like to be a beta reader if you have any need for that. I think you are a good author with a good story I just think you struggle with how to trim the fat.

Re Anderas:

Spoiler

He didn't power up when he lamped Marcellos - if someone gets angry enough, then they often have the potential to do things that they otherwise wouldn't, because they don't believe that they can. Re the fight near the end, to say that it was just the arm (which is in and of itself an inherently magical item) is quite an over-simplification. Cezia is relatively powerful with her Glyphs, and Kaenna is nascent and as such hasn't the ability to really go toe-to-toe with other mages, even when she's fully possessed. Also, Kaenna isn't human!

Re the world, history and magic - the worldbuilding is spread over the series, as is the history. The magic system was, from memory, explained in earlier Herik and Anderas chapters (also there's a glossary at the end which categorises it for ease of reference)

I appreciate your comments on the level of description but I honestly feel that strimming that away would leave me with a rushed book and as a general rule, the current state of books right now (very short,100k or so words) always leaves me feeling unfilfilled. My objective was to write something that I'd want to read!