Deleted

If I could kill this story and make sure no one ever found it, I would. For now, I'm just deleting it.

Review for chapter One:

Swords grated against stones, to be plunged into flesh at dawn.

That's an awesome sentence. Love it.

I had destroyed my widowed mother through my actions. After the death of my father, she had been fragile, and I had shattered her love and soul through my rash actions.

You might want to pick a word other than "actions" to end the second sentence, since you just used it in the sentence before. Maybe... "through my rash deeds."...?

I knew my brother, her firstborn, was the better man, and yet loved less.

I found this sentence momentarily confusing.... for a minute I thought it was saying the brother loved less (than the narrator). You might want to say "and yet was loved less" or "and yet less loved" to eliminate the confusion.

My mother looked at me coldly, pleading.

Is my definition of "coldly" off a bit? Because I think of coldly as sort of... without emotion. Which doesn't seem to go with "pleading." How does one beg coldly?

"You filthy liar, you always were begging at my mothers feet for her love, her attention."

Yikes. Poor Jaran... anyhoo, there's a typo here. Should be "mother's."

“I would easily overpower you! But I will spare you today.”

Now, you don't have to listen to this if you don't want to, because it;s kind of a personal stylistic choice, but I think dialog usually sounds about ten times more natural if you use contractions. Listen to some people talk, and you'll see that we don't really say "That is," or "Do not," unless we want to empathize the latter word. We usually say "that's," or "don't." But like I said, that may be just me.

The older man paused, a faraway look overshadowing his feature.

Typo... you mean "features."

I heard snippets of dialod from those nearby

Typo again. You mean "dialog."

The peopled in my village – my family, my friends – their faces flashed before my eyes.

Don't you just love typos? I believe you mean "people." ^_^

In front of me I saw men raise their pikes, the roughly made weapons having rust on them.

This sentence feels somewhat awkward to me... maybe "...pikes, roughly made, rusted weapons." would sound more natural.

I'll read two later tonight and edit this post then, with that review... it's a bit hectic today, I've got to run. Sorry! ^_^

EDIT: review for chapter 2:

“I wish I were dead, instead of Jaran!”

This feels a little awkward in dialog... perhaps something along the lines of "I wish it'd been me." would feel more natural.

I glanced down at my body, translucent and silver, floating next to Amara, who seemed unaware from me.

Huh? I don't really understand this sentence... perhaps you mean, "unaware of me"?

The soul rushed toward Amara by sighting her.

Once again, wierd choice of preposition. Maybe try a sentence along the lines of "The soul, spotting Amara, rushed towards her." or... I dunno. Try playing with the wording a bit to make it more clear.

“May those traitors that fought against us be cursed for their treachery.”

Well, if they're trators, obviously they're treacherous. "May those trators that fought against us be cursed" sounds fine on its own. On a completely different note, I thought you said those fighting for Galdad were possessed. Either I'm just confused, or it really isn't their fault.

Overall, this story is really good, you did a nice job of starting with interesting things and pulling us into the world. Can't wait to read more!

Thank you very much for the review, this is the rough rough draft. I need to print it out and slaughter my own paper. My friends make fun of me for having typed pages that are covered in red marks, and look like 'a pig bled on it'! hehehe

I can make alot of typos because I often don't look at the keyboard, and just stare at the page of my notebook I'm typing out, and I miss some because so many words are underlined for 'spelling errors' that are just made up. I can't add all of them to words, because my family might get very annoyed with that, lol!

Is this too big? I was hoping I'd get some more reviews? I can split it up if it would help people out. ^.^ I know it's a large section of text - about 5,500 words. Please, don't feel obligated to critique it all at once. One chapter and then the second is fine. The chapters are roughly 2,700 words or so.

Anyways, the changes zankoku_na_tenshi suggested have been made. I may change the dialog and add in some contractions, but its supposed to be more of an older story, similar to Lord of the Rings in terms of setting, but also quiet different.

Also, Elhyan is rather a nasty character, isn't he? Some of the very astute readers may have picked up already on what a hypocrite he was, but it gets worse. Fortunately, you won't have to put up with his character anymore, as it will be split into three different perspectives from now on.I really am tempted to somehow link in the story of his father and how he died, but there is no way. *sigh* For those interested, his father died nine years ago, when Elhyan was 10 and Jaran was fourteen.

Their mother had a terribly tragic childhood with abusive parents, and so she flung herself at the first man she met and moved far away from her parents. She idolized her husband, who was really a scum-bag. He was a merchant that traveled heavily, although she lived in her the city he was most often in. Her husband drank heavily and also was with alot of other women, so they were rather poor. Being a rather crafty merchant, he blamed their 'low profits' on bandits and Galdad's influence, because he was beginning to rise to power at this time. Eventually, his gambling and debts caught up with him, and he was murdered by several people. His wife was under the delusion that Galdad killed him, which is a factor for Jaran to run and fight against Galdad, but not Elhyan. Jaran wasn't treated so unfairly while the boys' father was alive.

I do think next time, you might get more reveiws if you just posted one chapter, rather than two at once, but don't worry. It often takes time to get reviewed, and this has only been up for a little more than a day... give it some time. ^_^

Well, Chapter Two is removed now. Thank you very much for your second edit. I'll be making some changes, including the ones you suggested, before reposting it a few days after Christmas. Anyways, thank you very much.'

To answer your last question, I want it placed very early in the reader's minds that not everything can be taken at face value. Yes, those that serve Galdad are possessed. No one really knows it, it's just rumors to those who don't actually serve Galdad. Elhyan is the perfect character for getting readers to realize that the facts can be wrong, because he's a huge hypocrite and can be a jerk overall. In Chapter Three, when we go to the actual time this story takes place [this is just the prologue, set about 600 years before the actual story], you'll find that Elhyan has been able to change the facts quite majorly, because most all the Endrians that served at war died, and the others ran away before they saw whatever transpired, and out of cowardice kept their mouths shut. Through three main characters and three different points of view, the reader will have to form their own opinion. All of the main characters are wrong in different ways. Some because of their pride, others because they are traitors and just bluntly rude, and others because of their limited viewpoint due to their situation.

Sorry to be so impatient, I'm really excited for reviews because after Christmas break I'm actually gonna let my friends read it. They always say I'm kinda OCD and possessive over my story. hehehe, there are some funny times associated with my notebook that I wrote this in. It's easier to share on YWS because, yes, more people may read it, but in your everyday life, you don't see them, lol!

This is kind of strange.
I can't think of much to add. The critique before me was amazing and picked out everything (that I can see, at least) and I can't exactly think of any constructive critisism. I can, however, say that this is one great piece of writing that kept me focused on the screen the entire time. They were times, when you described rusty, weapons (can't pinpoint the location...)
that sounded odd to me. But that's just my opinion. All in all, this was very good and you have an amazing vocabulary which progresses into the great detail that your story has.

No need to give me 50 points as I doubt my critique aided you very much

Nikki17

‘lo Dreami. ^_^

This final battle would seal the fate of Esrydil forever.

Good opener. It grabs the reader’s attention from the very beginning.

My heart pounded fast, fluttering fearfully.

I’m not too sure I like the alliteration here…

his face masked by shadows. His expression of concern and pity was obvious.

If his face is ‘masked by shadows’, how can the narrator see his expression?

The hardened lines of worry would lessen on her face, and a ghost of a smile was in her eyes.

Cut this comma. It’s not needed, and I think the sentence reads better without it.

You also shift momentarily into present tense. Change ‘was’ to ‘would be’ (or something similar) so that it’s in past tense.

I stood up, turning away from the fire and Jaran. Ignoring the friendly banter and jokes from the other soldiers, I entered the small makeshift tent and rolled on my side, waiting for dawn. Through the thin cloth of the tent, I watched silhouettes of others walk back and forth. Eventually I drifted asleep.

The trumpeting horn echoed through the camp, growing steadily louder. I groggily stirred, looking at the light that filtered through the flimsy tent. The pounding hoof beats resounded, sending thundering vibrations through the ground. I hurried to stand up, fastening my chain mail shirt on and I began to prepare for the battle.

Personally, I’d put something - an extra break, or some stars (***) between these two paragraphs, simply to give the illusion of time having passed.

I grimaced, not wanting to hear the stories of loss and love that each soldier had. Failed hopes and final wishes were all that remained. This was war. Regrets were soon to be silenced by death.
We marched further, and I began to see faces of our enemies. Their expressions were calm and unfeeling, all personality and soul seemed to have left their eyes.

You missed the space between these two paragraphs.

A nifty trick: if you’re using Word, and want to put a space between each of your paragraphs for posting onto the internet, simply hit CTRL+F, choose ‘Replace’, and type ^P into ‘Find What’ and ^P^P into ‘Replace With’. It’ll automatically put a space in-between each paragraph for you, saving you plenty of time.

“Twisted, they are,” the man nest to me said.

‘nest’ = ‘next’.

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

I ran into an unexpected problem when I was writing this critique - I began to really get into the story. I stopped reading critically, and just began to enjoy it. It’s rare for that happen to me, so kudos. ^_^

There are a number of things you did right. I really liked how you entwined the personal and the epic, and I liked how well you developed the character and personality of the narrator in so little time.

This was, in short, a good read. PM me when you put Chapter Two back online, and I’ll be sure to give that a review too.

-- Sureal

Chapter Two is now up!

Here's the link to those interested! ^.^

topic23809.html

Okay so this was an interesting chapter but I think there's quite a bit that's unnecessary. I think you gave too much of the character's background so that the tone ended up being quite reflective on past events. What you could do is create a prologue with the memory of saying goodbye to the mother and sister or perhaps the father's death? Something to establish his past family and then go straight to the conversation with his brother and cut out some of the direct thoughts on what sort of person the character is. After all, you should be able to show the reader that he's not honorable and such through the actions - how he speaks with his brother, his cowardice when faced with fighting etc.

Also, I think you should add more description to this. You currently have some rather nice character and battle description but I think it's lacking in scenery description. Are they fighting across an open field? Meadow? Wooded area? How was their military camp laid out? Sentries? Had they been there long - were they all in tents or had they also built trenches and wooden watch towers? Then think about what era this is set in. You mentioned lord of the rings, old era in one of your comments so try to show that. Speech is one method but there's also clothing. How do their uniforms look? I'll give you a clue - plated armour and chain mail. Big, heavy armour that's in full view and huge kite shields. The mention of pikes was good. Add axes and maces too perhaps.

Also, here's a few small specific suggestions -

My friends had whispered of glory and honor – and gold. [The dash doesn't really work here. Maybe a semi colon or even better, have 'and gold' as a separate sentence.']

As my brother froze, I realized bitterly it was my entire fault. [I think 'my fault entirely' would sound better.]

The hardened lines of worry would lessen on her face and a ghost of a smile [s]was in[/s] would light her eyes.

My comrades and I disassembled [s]out[/s] our tents, then began to march forward.

Officers upon horses threaded through the [s]unorganized[/s] disorganized lines, calling out orders.

“Twisted, they are,” the man [s]nest[/s] next to me said.

There was no excitement, nor was [s]their[/s] there fear.

Kalhn grabbed my [s]soldier[/s] shoulder.

An arc of arrows rose up [s]and[/s] to meet them, streaking through the air.

__________________________
Overall, I think it's a good start and it has potential for an excellent plot to be developed but I felt that you needed to concentrate on the main character's thoughts les. Especially if he's going to die. Hope this helps a little,

Heather xx