The Order

Great setting, tension and adventure. I like your cast of characters, and the story promises intrigue.The dialogue is crisp and dramatic.
Critique-wise, there were two things I noted:
1. The opening narrative paragraph TELLS us instead of SHOWING us. It could easily be communicated as dialogue, either at the same place or slipped in in bits and pieces as backstory along the way.
2. You have a comma problem, which is that you use them too often, when you could let the reader catch his breath, instead you keep going, just like this, you don't need to! You have lots of spots like that. A few examples from chapter one:
"...still pointing at the man (cut comma / insert period) " He hoped to keep him talking."
"...the door swung open (cut comma/ insert period) A young elf walked in."
"...correct my Lord (cut comma / insert period)" His voice dripped with sarcasm.
I think you'll get a lot of mileage out of fixing those. Overall your writing and creativity are first rate. This looks promising!
Best of luck with this!
And if you have any interest in children's literature, please do come visit the Lost Wink.
Thanks!
Tod
http://authonomy.com/books/40646/the-lost-wink/

A very fantastic and imaginative read. Your style of telling story is quite lucid and writing is polished and crispy. Highly rated.

Dear Stephen,

The prologue was very good.
It raised enough questions to prompt me to read on. Who was the mysterious cloaked elf that vanished into the night? Was it Dagon Fel himself? And, who was the human who sacrificed himself? The entire sequence was cleverly conceived and the action was sudden and unexpected.

The next chapter began with ‘present day’. But for this to be effective, you need to attach some date to the prologue. Otherwise, the reader may lose direction. Through successive sequences, you’ve developed a very clever plot around the elusive Dagon Fel. It was very refreshing to find how cleverly you’ve fashioned an otherwise simple tale into a genuinely engrossing read.
Well done, my friend.

The writing was fine, except that in some places in the prologue, it took more than one reading to figure out who was doing what. I’m sure that you’ll be polishing your MS. When you do, please emphasize on punctuation, typos and sentence construction. You’ve got a very interesting and original story here with a skilfully conceived order of narrative. You just need to make it more lucid.

My rating: 6 stars (for plot development and style)
I look forward to reading it again after your next edit.

Best regards,
AGC

PS – You need a more attractive cover. :-)

Hello Stephen,
The Order is a brilliant story so far! The characters are really creative. The tavern felt a great atmosphere very mysterious and dark. It would be great to see what these creatures look like but your description made the dark elf sound very real. Stephen should defiantly be touted as you will make an incredible author one day! 10/10

THE ORDER
This is a book with an exciting beginning: spies and elves and swords mixed together into a deadly fight. I like the way you assume at the beginning all of us are familiar with elves by using a phrase like “he snarled the way black elves do”. Makes your imaginary characters become real with no trouble. Good writing style. I’m adding this to my shelf. Wannabeawriter. http://www.authonomy.com/books/38214/who-killed-the-president

brilliant premise and back, great characters and creatures...a truly epic fantasy novel...
l shall back...
6 stars******
read SEASONS...

The Order

Your pitches seem efficient. The long pitch just gets away with it I think – given that it is a longish exposition of the plot, though I would not include a question like that last sentence – it tempts the reader to think ‘Duh, yeah, of course he will’.

I noticed first in the Prologue, though it applies elsewhere, that you need a line edit. For example, ‘but there was still had an air about him but there was still an air about him’. There are also missing commas and inverted commas here and there.

Prologue: This was fine, though I think you need to be careful with your personal pronoun use. Here and there I had to check who was referred to.

Once I was into the story the pace seemed fine. It romps along at a good rate keeping the reader’s attention.

I did feel that several of your paragraphs were too long, especially considering the action content. When the practice fight is covered for example it would normally be better to have a short paragraph for each sequence. And it would help if you used new paragraphs when there is dialogue.

Stephen,
I read your synopsis and prologue to The Order. I often wonder how writers of the fantasy genre dream up all this imaginative prose. The conversation in the tavern is a very creative way of drawing your readers into this fantastic account. Dagon has an incredible adventure for the reader to experience vicariously and the plot you have outlined is one which would captivate someone who wants to be swept away to another world.

Walden Carrington
Titanic: Rose Dawson's Story

I read your prologue.

General comments: A captivating start. Compelling characters. Good descriptions. Excellent tension. Good pacing.

Specific comments on the prologue:
1) "So tell me the story again my friends, of the so called tyrant ... " Comma after 'again.' When you address someone in dialogue, offset their name or title with commas.
2) "Tell me his story" Put a period after 'story.' There are many more sentences that are missing punctuation.
3) "He was our enemy" The younger elf said ... Comma after 'enemy' and 'The' should be lowercase. 'The younger elf said' is a dialogue tag (tells who said something). When a dialogue tag follows dialogue, the last sentence of dialogue shoud be punctuated with a comma (unless it's a question or exclamation) and the first word of the dialogue tag should be lowercase (unless it's a person's name). There are many more cases of this type of problem.
4) "Yes, that is what usually happens when you cut off ones head." Ones (plural) should be one's (possessive).
5) "Dagon, he was like a brother to me. Put a closing quote mark after 'me.' There is another case of this type of problem.
6) "Lets test you again." Lets should be let's (contraction for let us).
7) "It missed his spine by a hairs worth." Hairs (plural) should be hair's (possessive).

I hope this critique helps you polish your all important opening pages. These are just my opinion. Use what works for you and discard the rest.

Thank you for supporting "Savannah Fire."

Have a wonderful day.

Al

Enjoyed this short story a lot. I look forward to reading more work by this author.