In the eye of a fish

Thanks everyone for your reviews, I've edited this, and written a little bit more to it. Could you take a look at it for me please? thanks


At the start of the novel, Amora discoveres a space in matter and falls through it into the crossover dimension between Laìssir and the rest of the fishes eye. Here she meets Crim, and they decide to stay together and discover the secrets of her missing mother.
When it becomes clear that nothing is as it seems and everything is more than it pretends, the pair sets out on a journey to the truth. Soon they unearth a hideous secret. Now the two half-gods from the eye of the fish must travel through time and space to save a child that died when time started.

I've gotten as far as sentence two.

-1-
Prologue


Galaxies colliding on a regular scale, worlds coming into and leaving existance. Swirls of cosmic nebula fluctuating in the ever expanding desert of the universe. Every world is as trivial as a sandcorn in this desert which is irregular in its path yet unstoppable in its proceedings. Stars sprinkled in the atomic soup as sugar spread on sweet bakery, constellations as accidental as clumps of flour in the dough.
And yet, if moving at faster than light speed away from our home planet, you may expierience a world, a place of mysteries and far-fetched tales, a land totally unexpected in its eccentricity. I n the ocean of this universe a mighty fish swims, and each of its eyes is a world.
If you look closely at these greenish-muddy planets, in one you may well make out what the generous would call the lights of civilization. These seem particularily bright in the ancient metropolis Laíssir whose flaring rooftops suggest a mass reduction in historical relics.

So as not to get confused later on in this story it is important to follow the path of one exetremely pannicky boy of around fourteen to fifteen years who has lost all his worldly possesions to the fire and is now seeking to leave this burning city by means of many passageways connecting cellars and important hidey holes.
His name is Crim

North from Laíssir lies Kerreth, an important university town. Here many important philosophers were born and bred, and it is slowly expanding to a small city because of the masses arriving for tuition under known and famous thinkers.
The suns are rising and their pure white light* sweeps across Phylos avenue, then Market corner. It moves through Affington park and College lane, then University – stop!- In one of its many colleges a girl stands in front of a mirror and combs her hair, getting ready for another day. She is by far the youngest here, and there is no real use for her.
She moves through the buildings as if she was at home because she is at home. Here is where she was born.

She came on a cruel night in december, it was snowing like blazes and no one would open the door to a late pregnant woman with hardly any substantial clothing.

Amora gasped as a strange feeling somewhere between a headache and motion sickness washed over her.
She blinked. The strange feeling was gone now. She stood up straight again and carried on combing her hair.

She wandered around the streets until late into the evening, but no one would open to her.

Goosebumps raised themeselves from her skin and the feeling of sickness returned. Either she was going mad or... or something extremely strange was going on.
She splashed cold water over her face and that helped. Then she started brushing her teeth.

*There are eight suns, but they are not very bright, and also quite small.





-2-

When she had lost all hope for a warm place to sleep and was just about to fall over with exhaustion at fighting the contractions and the cold, she was opened to.


Suddenly there were white spots in front of her eyes. Her toothbrush fell out of her hand. She could feel the pushing of a baby that she knew wasn't there. A freezing wind blew through the window.
Then there was a creak as a big door opened. Amora fell onto her knees.

The old master opened the college doors, he was the only one with the keys in those days. It is said that she fell onto her knees and crawled the last few metres until the hearth and had the child within an hour.

Amora curled on the floor, and wished she was dead. The feeling was extreme... there were no words for it
.
Her last wish was that the girl was to be called Amora, and should be cared for like an own child.
These were also to be her last words.

The startling blue eyes of a baby girl swam in front of her but also behind her. She turned, confused, and the eyes were always there. They were at the back of her head, inside her.

When she had been given her own room, the scholar who was given the task to making sure she was well, retreated into his adjoining bedchamber.

Strange calm and the sound of a child gurgling quietly to itself. She shook herself. Birds outside were singing a beautiful melody.


He decided to check on her every half hour. As he came back after only twenty minutes it is said he exited the room hastily, for he later told the headmaster that the lovely lady had flown out of the window in accompaniment of hundreds of birds, but the worst part, he said, was that she was still wide awake and breathing, and seemed to have sprouted wings. She was never seen again.
It was christmas eve.

The feeling was gone, as were the strange apparitions. Amora hummed the birds melody to herself as she got dressed.















-3-

Chapter 1


Some things don't exist. It's easy to grasp, and really quite reassuring most of the time.Exept if they start popping up, which makes them quite creepy.

As she grew, she learnt. Amora had been tuitioned in her early school years, but her lessons had only gone as far as primary school, after that she had been left to herself. She was a normal thirteen year old.
Her hair was brown and slightly curled, it hadn't been cut in years. She wore raggedy jeans, a cloth that had been discovered recently and an airy top of the make Languoz. It had been given to her as a birthday gift, and had survived nearly a year now.
She was thinking about her mother as she strolled down the wide passage of humbugs*. From a door to her right the sharp sounds of something being snapped accompanied by a multitude of yells of outrage rang into the hall. Resisting the urge to take a look, Amora started the ascent to the kitchens.°
Arriving at last by the big set of doors connecting the rest of the college to the cuisine, she bent double, resting her hands on her knees and gasping for breath.
Around her spread the wide opens of comfort hallways. It was her favourite place for willing the time away when she was bored, or sad, or had something to think about.
Amora knocked on the door and waited. And waited. And waited. Finally she opened the doors and stepped-

The roads from Laìssir are very dangerous, but for the determined and stronghearted they can hold no obstacles. Crim is definitely not.They are twisted and warped, shaped by the fleeing of time. The paths are often very deep, but they level out after awhile. If you get that far. Brave men and women have made the cross to the outer world only by use of their determined hearts, their wits, and a great big dollop of luck which they forgot to mention in the hymn.

-stepped

Making his way up the road, his backpack strapped over his back, his exterior pointed toward the sloooooooowly dissappearing Gates, Crim wondered where he was going. Away obviously. But where to? Geography wasn`t a known subject in Laìssir. The religion of the mighty metropolis was thus: §1.4 […] there is no civilisation outside our walls […] merely wilderness and its ape - men live there.
§3.5 […] the mighty fish gave only our people the gift of sofistication […] any other life form nearing intelligence is not worthy of this land […] is destined to death.
And according with nearly every other religion :
§6.7 Thou shalt have no other God (… not relevant jet, but good to know)

So that was why this city had no geography lessons. No other relevant place existed.

* unimportant inventions
° the top floor is called comfort hallways, it is here that the towels, food and other comfort thingys are made, half the hallway is made up of the kitchens

-4-

-stepped

Crim squinted indo the sky. He was sure he had seen a spark of colour up there. The heavens were an indistinguishable blue-greyish green with a tint of purple orange. They were extremely dark, like they swallowed all light, but also very uncomfortable to look at, as if they were sucking at your eyeballs. The kind of unnerving that made you absolutely unnerved to look at them, and totally unnerved to look away.

-stepped and saw... everything...

and then spiralled

down









down









down







down


Thank you so much.

P.S.: do you have any web-adresses which can give you tipps on colourful writing?
heres one that I've found helpful so far:
www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php

thanks
~sheepy

Hey Shoo!

I kind of like what you've got going here (I haven't read much by Pratchett but this seems like him, is he an influence?) but there is some iffyness.

i. there isn't much action here to hook the reader. It gives the reader a good description of the setting, but... there's no action. It's just, "Oh, look at this. Isn't that nice? Moving on..." and the reader gets a bland feeling from that.

I get how you're trying to imply that this scholar's town is sort of remote and not very well known, but you take a long time to get there. About 60% of the writing flies by... and we have a character. Try to zoom in from a closer point. (Although, personally, I do like the "galaxies colliding" bit. Try it somewhere else and I bet it'll work beautifully)

ii. This may be your general style, but you do tend to meander about your universe, but just tighten it up a little bit. I mean, you get to the point about how the guy called Crim is smart, but then we're informed that he's smart because he ate rats and how rats are smart, too.

iii. Just a few other things...
Your grammar slips occasionally, but it's nothing that a quick proofread couldn't deal with. Around the third paragraph, the spacing looks funky. I can't tell if it's the automatic YWS spacer or your own kind of jazz, but double-check just to make sure, yes?
Also, if you're using numbers in a story, write out the numbers one through a hundred. Beyond that it's personal preference, but that simply aids in the flow of the story.

I am also a little confused as to what this entails? Is it a prologue, a chapter, or a stand-alone... thing?

In any case, give me a PM if you update or would like another critique from me.

~Sumi

Alright. I'm horrible at grammar, so I'm going to skip just to reviewing.

I love you description of the Universe, but it felt overly complicated and dense. When I started reading, I couldn't really understand what you were trying to say because it was so overly detailed. Try "thinning" it out, maybe dropping some of the vocabulary.

Another thing: the way you write is fabulous, but here,

"In order to establish continuity with later events it is important to follow the path of one extremely panicky boy of around 14 to 15 years who has lost all his worldly possessions to the fire and is now seeking to leave this burning city by means of many passageways connecting cellars and important hidey holes."

I felt kind of like I was in some tour."In order to establish continuity with later events"? Try taking out all the fancy stuff and just say "Somewhere in this mystery of space, we see an extremely panicky boy..." or something similar.

Oh, and just one more thing. Your title, Stagworld, well, it's a bit like "Disneyland" Its a bit to obvious and revealing. You're apparently very good at names (I loved Laíssir and Kerreth. Great names.), so try something a bit more mystical. I can't help but think of "Ponyworld" and other names like that when I see "Stagworld"

Alright, besides being very rough, I just wanted to say that I think you have a great story building up. A homeless boy called Crim and a mother who dies within an hour of birthing her daughter? Its got a touch of creepy-ness (Sorry. That isn't a word.) and mystery, with the promise of a very different world in store. Keep at it!

I'd agree with Sumi, it sounds a lot like Pratchett or Stewart and Riddell, which is good, though, 'the fire' that you suggested that destroyed Crim's life is a bit too like Pratchett's beginning to 'Colour of Magic', and the stag is a lot like the tortoise.
The description's and techniques you use are really good, though the style you're using could start creating mixed-metaphors accidentally. If you’ve written more, look out for them.
Also, “Every world is as trivial as a sand corn in this desert which is irregular in its path yet unstoppable in its proceedings,” is a bit of a mouthful, and needs commas/semicolons, or needs to be split into smaller parts. So, you could try: “Every world is as trivial as a sand corn in this desert; which is irregular in its path, yet unstoppable in its proceedings.”
The way that the characters are introduced is unique, and very good, though, it seems slightly disorganised.
Apart from that, the names are incredible (apart from Stagworld), and the description is very good, very vivid.