Blind Fate

This had me from the start. The opening instantly pulls the reader in; we feel Charlie's bewilderment at his transportation into this strange world. I really like the use of the Narnia reference as it defines the story as fantasy whilst being very appropriate! The confrontation with the strange creatures creates an immediate interest with their cryptic words and references to 'Gifted' and 'Lieur'. The flashback tells us more about Charlie's character, and keeps the reader wondering how he ended up in this situation.

The narrative flows well; description and dialogue are well-balanced, and I couldn't find any stylistic errors. Though I've only had time to check out the first chapter, I'll be back for more - this is a fantastic start and your writing style is captivating. Best of luck with this!

Emma, 'The Puppet Spell'

Hi Danielle,
I’m here for our read swap. So sorry it’s taken this long to get here. Below are my findings/comments. They are of course my humblest opinions, so please take them for whatever they’re worth and disregard with you might disagree with.
Chapter 1
Don’t underestimate the significance a strong opening-line hook can have. Frankly, this one could use strengthening.
“knee deep” should be hyphenated.
“his very own Narnia” implies a lot of different things. Could use some elaboration. Is he in an unknown world? Does he know it? Or is he just making the comparison because of all the snow? It’s interesting that he can make such a comparison without being able to see his surroundings.
Might be a personal preference, but we have a lot of bears around here; I’ve even seen them in the wild. I’m not sure “slink” is the right word for what a bear does. They don’t prowl or sneak on prey like a wild cat might. “Lumber” might be a more appropriate word. Just a thought.
Drop the comma after “grasping was how…”
“it confirmed how inappropriate shorts were in winter” This is a very nice touch, but too understated and too much telling. If you make this more prominent and show the reader how ridiculous this scene is by showing how it effects his senses (his exposed legs that had been warmed by the summer’s sun now numbed by winter’s cold…yadda yadda) it brings the reader closer to the circumstances, making him/her feel what the MC feels, instead of just reading about it.
“Guessing they were asking him what he was doing there…” Again, this is telling. Why not just have him start explaining why he’s there? You can infer the prior line without having to say it in how you write their characters. What is their expressions? Do they do anything to make the MC nervous? What physical symptoms do we see in Charlie that shows this.
“blue eyed” should be hyphenated.
Read the rest of the first chapter. Ditched the line-by-line edit in favor of trying to get a sense of the overall story. I like it. This is solid writing with a captivating tale. Your greatest strength is your flow. The writing is polished and easy to read, which is a testament to your abilities. I think the biggest thing is to edit with the thought of where might I be telling too much and where can I show more to bring the reader into the scene. Obviously, some telling is inevitable, and sometimes it can be a better move than showing, but I see some missed opportunities here. Great stuff, though. I really like the story and your writing style. Again, so sorry it took me so long to get here, but I’d be honored to give this some time on my shelf when space becomes available. In the meantime, highly starred.
Best of luck.
Phil
(Deshay of the Woods)

This is good, solid fantasy writing. I liked your opening a lot, and the line about him being in shorts humanized him and slipped some humor in nicely. You do a good job with dialog and description.
Critique-wise I think you would benefit from an objective line-edit, if you've got someone in your world who can do that for you. I jotted down just a few, to show you the things I was noticing:
One of them stepped forward, their head fur moving (grammatically if one steps forward, you're stuck identifying them as him or her. So you can either have two people step forward, and say "they", or you can have one person step forward and say "he" or "she". In this case, you are allowing the main character to see the person as a "he", so go ahead and refer to "he". A few sentences later you can spill the beans. I.e. "This wasn't a man at all, but a woman. "Why do you come here, stranger?" she asked.

He stuttered (cut: desperately)(insert: period) (the hugely successful novelist Stephen King advises writers to kill most adverbs. The reason is, they come across as poor attempts to tell us something the writer thinks we couldn't figure out due to their inadequate descriptions. If the reader can guess the speaker was desperate then we've done a good job writing and don't have to spell it out. I hope that makes sense!) Sometimes your sentences get to be too long. Break them into two and they'll be stronger.
alternative question: (cut: the) how the hell did I end up here?

So... I hope that's helpful. It's the kind of thing I appreciate hearing about sooner, rather than later (like people telling me if my fly is open!)
You're a good writer, you just need a line edit.
Best of luck with this!
And If you're interested in kid lit, I'd love to invite you to take a look at my novel, The Lost Wink. Although I'm aiming for 9-12 year olds, I get differing feedback on what age it's right for, so your opinion would be valued.
Thanks,
Tod
http://authonomy.com/books/40646/the-lost-wink/

This is good, solid fantasy writing. I liked your opening a lot, and the line about him being in shorts humanized him and slipped some humor in nicely. You do a good job with dialog and description.
Critique-wise I think you would benefit from an objective line-edit, if you've got someone in your world who can do that for you. I jotted down just a few, to show you the things I was noticing:
One of them stepped forward, their head fur moving (grammatically if one steps forward, you're stuck identifying them as him or her. So you can either have two people step forward, and say "they", or you can have one person step forward and say "he" or "she". In this case, you are allowing the main character to see the person as a "he", so go ahead and refer to "he". A few sentences later you can spill the beans. I.e. "This wasn't a man at all, but a woman. "Why do you come here, stranger?" she asked.

He stuttered (cut: desperately)(insert: period) (the hugely successful novelist Stephen King advises writers to kill most adverbs. The reason is, they come across as poor attempts to tell us something the writer thinks we couldn't figure out due to their inadequate descriptions. If the reader can guess the speaker was desperate then we've done a good job writing and don't have to spell it out. I hope that makes sense!) Sometimes your sentences get to be too long. Break them into two and they'll be stronger.
alternative question: (cut: the) how the hell did I end up here?

So... I hope that's helpful. It's the kind of thing I appreciate hearing about sooner, rather than later (like people telling me if my fly is open!)
You're a good writer, you just need a line edit.
Best of luck with this!
And If you're interested in kid lit, I'd love to invite you to take a look at my novel, The Lost Wink. Although I'm aiming for 9-12 year olds, I get differing feedback on what age it's right for, so your opinion would be valued.
Thanks,
Tod
http://authonomy.com/books/40646/the-lost-wink/

The writing flowed very well in this, and the dialogue read believably. I spotted just a few things that might help to improve it. One is that you often used gerunds without commas, and gerunds always have to be separated from the main clause by commas. Examples are--
...in a full circle, trying to see

and
Squinting, he concluded...

The other thing that struck my oddly was the mention that he both had a black belt in jujitsu and baby fat. My brothers both gained black belts, and I don't understand how any baby fat could remain when gaining that level of mastery! Hope this helps.

Ted

I’ve read the first 3 chapters and have enjoyed reading Blind Fate. I liked Charlie immediately, and was intrigued by how he ended up in the snow, surrounded by the women in white fur. The women work well for me, and seemed very believable as a cultural group. The character of Novinrhuar comes across well, as do the Seer and Lia. I like Tom and found his confusion at the appearance of the woman genuine. For me, the POV changes work, as the chapters are short enough to carry the story and enable the reader to understand the connections that are emerging. I also think the mesh between the world of ‘fantasy’ and ‘reality’ worked excellently.

Reading some of the other comments here, I have some thoughts on Chapter One and the sudden introduction of the Tina and Charlie back-story. Although it serves to characterise them both and establish their relationship, at the moment you have a short linking para to the flash back saying: ‘In an effort to stop his mind from shutting down, he ran over the events from the past few weeks…’ Perhaps consider instead that Charlie is feeling distraught at the thought that he might never see Tina again – how will he get home, back to his old life? And then introducing the back story.

BTW, I think you characterise Charlie really well by using dialogue to ‘show’ the reader what Charlie is like. At the end of the chapter, Charlie explains to the women that he likes finding out how things work – looking for patterns. Nirvadra’s reaction to this revelation also helps to characterise them both excellently.

OK, so a few general comments. I would avoid over-using adverbs – e.g. ‘soft brown eyes’ and ‘small table’. Suggest an experiment: try deleting any adverbs in your text and re-reading it to see if the text is stronger. I’ve tried this and I think (at least I hope!) it has really helped. (Plus it helps to keep word-length at bay and increases pace). It also helps with showing rather than telling. e.g. ‘He watched her go sadly.’ You have already conveyed well how the Seer is feeling, how about just ‘He watched her go.’

You have some excellent imagery here. You might want to consider strengthening it further by choosing one description that may be stronger than putting two together. For example, you write:
‘…hoped for, longed for…’ I think this would be more powerful if you chose one and delete the other.

‘A tear leaked from the corner of his eye and rolled down his cheek following the intricate path of creases that did not even hint at his age.’

How about either of these instead: ‘A tear rolled down his cheek, following the intricate path of creases that did not even hint at his age.’ Or: ‘A tear leaked from the corner of his eye, following the intricate path of creases that did not even hint at his age.’ (BTW I like how this characterises the Seer as an ancient being who is still very human despite his doubts that he has the capacity for kindness anymore).

A quick editing question: you tend to use full-stops instead of commas in dialogue. For example, ‘A change my dear.’ He replied fondly…. I felt the text might flow better using commas, e.g. ‘A change, my dear,’ he replied fondly.

NB some interesting advice about word length based on different genres here: http://theswivet.blogspot.co.uk/2008/03/on-word-counts-and-novel-length.html

Well done and highly starred.

First, I enjoyed this. I read the first five chapters and can see how the story is falling into place. You manage to sustain interest as you introduce new characters in each chapter. It would have been easy to lose the reader changing tack at each chapter but you don’t. Is this story really 215,000 words long? I would have thought you could easily get three books out of that, especially for YA. Has anybody else commented on the length? It certainly gets off at a cracking pace for such a long book.
You write extremely fluently, the dialogue is smooth, the story engaging. Charlie is a likeable character and I’d like to get to know Tina too. Justin is still out of it by chapter five, and Rianne’s character hasn’t yet been developed. Richard and Tom seem solid and dependable though, and Carlos is well-drawn. It’s always a challenge fitting modern ‘earth’ speech with parallel world speech, but you pull it off nicely.
I just had one point of confusion – in the scene where Richard is examining the mad beggar, you mention Ben out of the blue, then Morgan. If these two were already present it might have been better to mention it before.
The few nits and typos I picked out I can send you in a message if you like.
It’s just a matter of opinion, but for what it’s worth I’d disagree with the suggestion to cut the reference to Narnia. I don’t think you should be afraid of presuming upon your readers. Narnia isn’t quantum theory, it’s common culture. If you didn’t mention Narnia somebody would be bound to say you pinched the idea.
You’ve got a good story here, I’m giving it high stars and wish you the best of luck with it.
Jane

Wormholes
The Dark Citadel (both to be found in the Fantasy Lending Library)

Hi Danielle,

First off, fantasy isn't my usual genre, it rarely holds my attention. So unfortunately I can't compare it to much.
I read the first two chapters. I find it very well written, well constructed characters, good description and good dialogue.
I wish I could be more useful really. I hope other people who are knowledgeable in the fantasy genre pick up on this book and can offer advice and suggestions where I can't!

Cheers,
Adam

{Blind Fate}

Danielle,

First, thank you so much for taking the time to read part of and comment on The Ark of Humanity! It is greatly appreciated.

I've just begun Blind Fate (planning to read more soon) and am really enjoying the read. Your book as a good premise and has clearly been well thought out. You also have a strong writing style, leading mostly with dialogue in a way that keeps me entertained and able to easily visualize the world you've created. I also like both Charlie and Tina a lot. The only true crit that I'm afraid I have for you is that when you brought the story of Tina in I didn't know where it had come from and was momentarily confused. I'd suggest leading in by telling us about how Charlie is having a memory about her.

I really enjoyed the read and think this would be great for YA. 5 stars and I'll be back soon!

Have a fantastic day!

- Scott, The Ark of Humanity

Read the first three chapters! They were very well done! I'm impressed. I did think that the intro of new characters that pop up in the new world was abrupt, that it'd help to have a bit more back story. Like begin with a clue of what had happened to put them there, and then proceed with their reaction, perhaps? But that's just me. Otherwise, very impressive. Your new world seems very believable, and interesting. Like the different characters. I did notice a few errors in chap 3, like using "of" for "or", and vise versa. Small stuff like that. It's impressive that there's little wrong, as far as typos and grammar goes. You present a very professional piece of work. Will back when I can!

--Shieldmaiden

I read chapter 1, so my review is in regards to this chapter only. I thought it was a good start for a YA book. Charlie is instantly a likeable character, his flaws making him more of a real teenager. I found the back story on Tina was nicely slotted in. I'm not usually into big back story pieces, but the way in which you did it worked well, and the story flowed from present to past then back to present again without any hitches. I also liked Tina's character, her sticking with Charlie even though it led to her not being popular is endearing. She obviously sees more in him than he sees in himself.

I like Charlie's predicament: the confusion from being at the airport then suddenly plonked into the middle of snow. The tribe of women are also interesting, mainly because they have a fantasy element to their description. That comment by Nivadra about his manhood and the cold was funny.

In relation to the structure of the chapter, as said above, I think it worked well, plus there were no typos that I could discern and the words used were appropriate for your genre. All the best, Marita.

Other than to agree with Edwin that a Dark Lord as a baddie is too well used as an idea I enjoyed your tale so far.

Hey Danielle,

This is a very good read, intriguing and vividly imaginative. You're clearly not campaigning for your book, otherwise it'd have risen in the ranks. So, please, start spamming people all over the place or visit the forums and make some noise.

Your characterisation is quite solid and your descriptions have a level of detail that brings your world to life. I love a story that transports me to another place, puts me into the skin of the character and takes me through their every experience. You do that excellently here.
You clearly have more than a few POV characters to follow here, and that's a hook for me already and promises a rich plot that is common with epic fantasy.
The Dark Lord, "master of evil" character is kinda cliche and is common with old fantasy but what the hell, every good fantasy story needs a villain.

Can't say much about your writing except that it's good and ideal for the kind of story you're trying to tell but of course there is a lot to do as regards to editing. A few commas here, a typo there, nothing a closer look can't fail to find. If you want me to point out every one, I will but that would be a little lazy on your part :D
A few I noted

• didn't really didn't want to put
• he did not expected the reaction he got
• make sense fo any of this.

6 stars and will give it a go on my shelf as soon as I can free up some space.

Edwin - The First Oath

I read the first two chapters and so far I’m hooked. I love a book that gets off to a running start and keeps on going. You have a wonderful gift for imagery and you do a great job of building your world in the first chapter. My only nitpick is the fourth paragraph. Something about it didn’t read well to me and I found it a bit confusing. Other than that I can’t really find anything to complain about. I think your story is well paced and easy to read. This is the kind of book I would buy. Thanks so much for posting it. High stars on this one.

BLIND FATE

Hello Danielle,

Here is my return comment over your book. I don’t go over grammar, unless I see something that really jumps out at me. I think there are others on Autho that are better at grammar advice than I am. So, my comments are mainly as a reader and my thoughts as I move through the first chapter. Take whatever advice makes sense to you and just ignore the rest. Only you know what is going to work best for the overall story. That being said here are my thoughts:

CH 1

I would be careful about the Narnia reference. I’m not sure how this will be received, but I personally have never read the series. I just know of the book. I would have liked to seen you describe what you meant by this instead of using a place from another book. This could just be a personal preference though.

“Charlie stared at... him? Blankly” is an awkward sentence for me.

I would have liked to see the story stay more in the present with these strangers in the snow and your MC. Instead we are going off, getting some back story about Tina, which is making the abruptness of the snow scene lose some of its impact for me. I’m wondering if this Tina information could be placed before we know Charlie is unfamiliar territory. That way we can experience all of his emotions that must be going through him without losing the momentum? Just a thought.

I like how you are telling us that Charlie likes to figure things out such as languages, machines, etc, when he asks what the hand sign means. You had mentioned this earlier through the narrative. I think that it becomes repetitive when we see it again. I would keep the second instance to demonstrate this characteristic of Charlie because you are showing us through his observations of the hand movements instead of directly telling the reader. This makes him more believable for the reader. A really good bit of dialogue too.

Nice tension at the end with having the “Circle” decide. I’m left wondering what Charlie’s fate will be. Nice first chapter. Five stars from me!

Ashley

Firstly, what a great title. It carries a lot of resonance. And I like the whole magic=religion analogy, if that's what you intended. The story and the writing seem fine. Just noticed one typo ('but not expected'). But there were a few things I thought you might be able to change to strengthen the book still further, using active verbs and avoiding, for example, 'was', ending speech with a comma inside the final quote mark and starting the speech tag with a lower case letter, and describing the effect of feelings more rather than naming them. Though you could probably get away with the latter, or even all of the above, but I just wanted to come up with something useful rather than simply say I liked it, which I did.

Mark, The Devil's Fan Club

For me the sentences are a bit too long to clearly get a view of what you are trying to say. p. 1 why does he tap his heels....should probably read "tapping his heels". p. 3 sentence is too long I lose track of the point being made. For example: The paragraph that begins - Before his brain ... could possibly read....Before his brain fully recovered from the shock the ground in front of him suddenly rose up.... Sometimes the action is so clear in our minds that we leave info out for the reader. Just my opinion though I will put you om my Watch List though because I like the story content. I like your characters and subject is interesting.