Rebirth: One:-Rogues and Archers

Some of you may be aware that there is a prologue to this chapter, but it isn't at all necessary to understand this chapter. So if you have the time to review, you don't need to worry about reading the prologue. Oh, and this is only the first-half of the first chapter.


Chapter One: Rogues and Archers

Esione

The night air was warm, carrying the scent of spring and summer fruits on it. Esione checked her scimitars in their sheath again, their hilts glinted slightly in the moonlight. She looked to the dark sky, and then at the vast expanse of the plain. The grass was pale silver in the half-light and rustled slightly in the breeze. Somewhere far off she could hear Spirits singing, and further off still she could hear the sigh of more Spirits beginning their return to the Spirit World. They descended from the sky in pairs of two and more. Their ever-changing colours lit up the sky, their ever-changing forms were the stars of the night. And then they came down and disappeared, and the singing stopped. She was alone.

“You are never alone, Esione,” Aya’s voice came to her. “But you must undertake this quest. Fifteen years I’ve trained you and now it is time to enter the Living World again.”

Esione nodded to herself. Of course, this was why she had been called there. This was why Aya had asked her to pack her things the night before, what little she had in the Spirit World anyway. Two pairs of ragged clothes and her scimitars. She had not thought to bring Loras.

A bird dropped from the sky and turned into a rat as it hit a bare patch of earth at her feet; when the dust cleared the rat was a black dog. Loras. He barked and another bird fell from the sky, turning into the shape of a woman. Into Aya.

“Go well and peace be with you, child,” she said to her in the Universal Language. “Loras will follow you,” and here she gestured to the dog, “but he will not do more than protect you.”

“I understand, Aya. Thank you.” She ran her fingers through the thick hair on the animal’s head, a thin smile on her lips. She had imagined he would need to be left behind.

“Find the Hunter first, and then find the Warrior with the Pathfinder. They are always together; the latter will show you the way to the Caster.

“But before even that, seek out Lord Akolin, Baron of Averis. He is gravely ill; dying, in fact. His eldest son, Sandan, will inherit the title. He is young, impressionable; it will be a good time to make an ally of him.”

“Will I find the Hunter in Averis?”

“Possibly, child. If he is indeed there, you of all people will know.”

Esione nodded once again. She would have memorized her mentor’s face that she wouldn’t forget her, but in the way of Spirits, Aya’s features were ever changing. One moment she was a dark-skinned woman, and then a light-skinned boy; she was a small child with curly black hair and a young girl with hair as fine as sand. Esione had always wished her body would change in that way, but it would not. Not when she was such a halfling, both Human and Spirit.

“What happens if I fail, Aya?” Esione asked. “If I don’t find them?”

“You will Esione. The Prophecy is very clear on that, you will find the others. But if any one of you dies, then all of you shall die. On that the Prophecy is clear also.”

“Will I return here someday?”

“Perhaps, child. If you still live.”



Moving between the two worlds, she saw those things that could exist in neither. Human-like beings bearing wings, flying in an underground sky. Golden mice playing trumpets on mountain summits, singing to their queen. A dead man walking on the Sun. She wondered if her mind was still sound.

She arrived on the bank of a great river, and for a moment its roar deafened her. She could barely see in the daylight; it took some time for her eyes to adjust.

It was so different in the Living World. The sun was high, but there was no moon beside it like her home. The air was not full of sweet smells and the talk of a hundred spirits. And worst of all, there was no singing. Just silence and the wind.

Something moved beside her and she recognized the shaggy mass of Loras. She stroked his head and moved away from the water, pulling her cloak around her against the cold and hiding her twin scimitars. Despite her discomfort, it was not at all her first time in the Living World and so she knew very well that only the nobility were meant to carry such weapons.

“This is the Trenuit River,” she said to Loras, recognising the great body of water from previous visits. “The Hunter…he lives in Averis. Depending on which side of the bank we are, the village is two to three weeks walk from here. A long distance indeed.”

Loras barked, racing ahead. In the light of the sun his black coat was almost brown, blending in with the dirt path by the river. Brown, like the distant horse-drawn cart heading their way.

“But perhaps,” she said aloud as it drew nearer and she saw the lone merchant, as she put a hand on the hilt of one scimitar, “perhaps it won’t be so long.”



Rono

“Again, little brother.”

Rono retrieved his longsword from across the room, where it had fallen after his disarming by Juronon. He moved slowly, for his leg muscles were sore and ached with the movement of their sparring. It didn’t help that his supposedly light armour now felt heavy in weight.

“You know, Juro,” he said in jest, “you must have the wrong brother. Isn’t it Sandan you need to kill to inherit Father’s title?”

Juro laughed. “Does our practice tire you so, Rono? Perhaps you should be fighting with Laine. But in consideration, in fair health or not our sister would best you.”

The two of them exchanged a look; Laine’s well-being was not a subject often touched upon. Indeed, Laine herself was not often spoken of. Her presence was a blight on the family name, or so Rono had been told many a time by his father.

He changed the subject. “With a sword, maybe. But not with a bow and arrow, Juro.”

“That is a different matter altogether, Rono. Now stop wasting away this afternoon and fight me!”

Juro was quick; in the blink of a second he was before Rono, bringing his sword round in a feint before quickly twisting his wrist to make a stab at his brother’s chest. Rono only just blocked the blow, forcing Juro’s sword back with his own. He moved back, creating space between he and Juro. He looked about quickly, but there was nothing he could use as a distraction; the stone length of the practice hall was empty.

Juro rushed him again. “Defend yourself, brother!”

Rono was more ready for him this time, he side-stepped his sibling and swung his sword at him. But he had put all his weight and force in the swing, not grasping the hilt properly. The sword flew from his sweaty fingers, and as it hit the stone with a loud clatter Juro brought his sword to Rono’s throat.

“And so quickly, you are dead.” The elder boy sighed. “I attacked you foolishly to give you a chance to win our spar, and still you fail. I always told Father too much archery practice wasn’t good for you. See what it’s done to your swordsmanship?”

Rono wiped the sweat from his brow. “Does it matter so? At least you and Sandan are swordsmen, that should be good
enough for our Father.”

“It’s not for Father that we train, Rono. The threat of war is real; the Sifrin Empire means to conquer the nation of Eruna. We won’t let that happen.”

“How does that affect my training?”

“Don’t be a fool,” Juro said, slapping him on the head. “The House of Akolin will be called to battle; the both of us will fight in the front lines when either Sandan—or Father if he still lives then—leads our House into battle. Besides,” he said, sheathing his sword as the door opened to reveal a servant, “most nobles are swordsmen. No one will want an archer as a husband.”

“Juro!”

His brother raised a hand to silence him, and then turned to the servant, who gave a quick bow.

“Sorry to bother you, my Lords,” he said, “but your Father calls the both of you to his chamber. He and your brother are waiting.”

Juro nodded in dismissal, and the servant man left.

“We’d best head to the Father’s chamber-room, Rono,” he said. “If he has summoned us while in his state, than he must have something important to let us know.”

Rono nodded solemnly, and retrieving and sheathing his sword he followed his brother out of the room. They hadn’t yet finished their training, but it was not the physical exertion he’d so far undergone that made him break out in a cold sweat now.

This looks like a promising first draft. You seem to have a very good handle on what the plot is going to be, who the characters are, and what is going to happen. You also display some good grammar skills; which is particularly good because I can understand what is going on without having to squint. So you have the fundamentals down, all that you need to learn at this point is how to present the story.

Take the prophecy for instance. Writers love prophecies; they even have them in the bible. What's really cool about them is that the character doesn't really have to work for anything. All he has to do is fulfill the basic requirements (e.g they have a pure heart, are born under the sign of the scorpion, and have good dental hygiene) and people will follow them; no matter how crazy it actually sounds.

The bad thing about prophecies is that they can be too specific. The one you use pretty much says this: "If someone in your party dies, you fail; but if they don't die, then you'll succeed." It becomes obvious to the reader that of course the heroine will succeed; because we have come to expect happy endings. What would be the point of writing anything else?

Unfortunately, when a story becomes predictable, it also becomes boring. The reader becomes impatient "Yes yes, when are you going to fulfill your destiny and restore order to the world?" It's more annoying than someone saying what's going to happen in a movie theater.

So, if you're going to use a prophecy, you might want to try some of these things:

1. Don't make the prophecy obvious. If the prophecy says "This one person is going to save the world" then the reader will say "Okay, I don't need to read to the end." A good prophecy isn't understood until it is carried out; that way it leaves the reader and the character guessing.

For instance: "Before you pass the lake of wrath, please make sure to take a bath." It is obvious what the character will have to do; but why? No one should know what is meant by the line, until he takes a bath. Then a sea monster shows up and offers the hero safe passage in exchange for a bar of soap. The mystery would be gone if the prophecy said instead "When you pass the lake of wrath, a sea creature will give you safe passage in exchange for a bar of soap."

2. Make the prophecy difficult. There is nothing difficult with a prophecy that goes "Kill the evil guy; or be killed." In contrast, a prophecy that goes "you must sacrifice one of your friends before you can kill the evil guy" is much more complicated. The longer his friends survive, the longer the evil villain is able to run unchecked across the countryside.

When possible, use the prophecy to add conflict to your story.

3. Always leave room for doubt. Perhaps the prophecy says "The hero will come from a distant land," but our hero has never left his home country. So, it looks like he isn't the one the prophecy is speaking about. However, later in the story, when he returns home from exile in a distant land, then that part is fulfilled. But you can't tell people that it's going to be like that.

Part of the fun of prophecies is to see them fulfilled, rather than to see the end result.

So; you're a good writer; but you need to start developing your storytelling skills. A writer can show a finished puzzle; a storyteller can show the pieces of the puzzle being put together. Being a storyteller is different than being an essayist (which is what most schools want these days) and both require plenty of practice to get really good at.

That said, I think you can pull it off; with some extra practice.

Hi, Tiger! Thanks for the review. Sorry I haven't gotten to this before now--life has been rather hectic for me these past few days. ^_~

I'm not going to do any nit-picks because they're not much fun (to write or read) and besides, you don't really need them. For the most part, your grammar is clean and your wording is smooth. There are a few places where you have run-on sentences because you have commas rather than periods, but it's not a huge deal--grammar schmammar, I say. Let's get onto the good stuff!

Firstly, I'd like to compliment you on your style. You have a very poetic way with words that gives a very clear, concrete image while also being vague enough to not get bogged down in details and leave a lot up to the reader. I seem to remember that in my review of the Prologue, I was on you about your sentences being too choppy. Well, either you were really paying attention to that when you wrote this chapter, or you've just improved a lot--because if I had to chose a thousand adjectives to describe the narrative style here, "choppy" wouldn't even come to mind. Each sentence flows nicely into the next, but they also read well one-by-one. The voice is slightly old-fashioned without being pretentious, and your word choices are both eloquent and accessible. Well done!

That said, there is, of course, lots to improve upon here. Firstly, there's the whole prophecy issue. I'm going to try not to dwell on this too much since Griffin has already given you lots to think about on the topic, but there are a few things I'd like to add to what he has said. Basically, prophecies are a very convenient plot device. They allow for a character (usually young and, to some degree, unsuspecting) to go off on some adventure, to accomplish some task, to prove themself, to make sacrifices--and, in the end, fulfill their fate. Within the rubric of a prophecy, you can easily fit in conflict, self-doubt, triumphs, personality improvement, tests of character... lots of good stuff. But, at the same time, it feels like a tool. The word "prophecy" has, unless you use it very, very cleverly, some connotations of cheapness and predictably and cliché, just because it is so easy to throw in a prophecy to make a novel sound deep and mythological and important. Now, I don't want to tell you to change your novel. In fact, I'm sure there are plenty of really innovative ways of using the idea of prophecy for your benefit. I think I mentioned this book in me review of the Prologue, but I still highly recommend N.K. Jemisin's novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. It's a very strange novel, and not necessarily my favorite piece of literature on the planet, but she has some truly original ideas in it. And her use of the prophecy is very, very cool.

Basically, I don't think you should get rid of the prophecy. That would be terribly mean of me to tell you you should scrap the core idea of the novel! No, you needn't get rid of it--I just think you have to introduce it a little more subtly. Griffin talked a lot about this, so I'm not going to bore you by rambling on about it myself--instead, I'm going to use it as an example of another point I'd like to make about your writing. I call it the "you know, Bob..."

"You know, Bob..." is what I like to call an info-dump through dialogue. I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about. You want to keep the info-dumps in the narrative to an absolute minimum (because info-dumps are bad! They devour innocent children in their sleep! To write one is to sin the worst sin there is!) so instead you put the information you want to dump in the dialogue. Having a character say it makes it not an info-dump, right? Wrong. The reason I call it the "you know, Bob..." is fairly straight forward. Say there's a narrative with two characters. It doesn't matter what it says, exactly, so I'll just make up an example of what one of the characters says:

Spoiler

"You know, Bob, we're just two men in a rusty old Jeep. We've got big beards and dirty overalls and neither of us went to school. We grew up together in the same small town and until you told me yesterday about what you did, I thought we'd die here together too. But now we've got these stolen goods in the trunk of the car, and we're heading down the Interstate and I don't even know when either of us will see our wives and children again!"

Okay. That was clearly an info-dump. And the fact that it was inside quotation marks doesn't redeem it at all. There's nothing wrong with info-dumps, really, as long as they're handled correctly--and trying to cover them up by having a character say them is not handling them very well. ^_~ So I suggest first thinking about whether you really need the info-dump. Does the reader really need to be told this, or is it something they will find out later on? If they really do need to be told it right now, then by all means tell them! You can even tell it through dialogue, if you like, but not solely through dialogue. Make sure the conversation is realistic. For example, in the "you know, Bob..." example I gave, there would be no reason for the speaker to say all those things to Bob since both of them already knew it all--the only reason he was saying it was to let the reader know what's going on. But in real life, there is no reader. You do this quite a few places in this chapter, so I want you to watch out for it. The whole conversation in the beginning is rather "you know, Bob..."ish, since it seems like Esione would already know most, if not all, of what Aya is telling her. The conversation between Juro and Rono is a little more ellegantly done, but still rather "you know, Bob..."ish, since you use it to tell that Rono is an archer, not a swordsman and that Juro doesn't admire that, and that he thinks Rono will never marry, etc.. Personally, I think Rono and Esione are going to meet, but that's besides the point. :)

Another part that I found a little awkward was the end of Esione's section. The appearance of the horse-drawn carriage just feels too... convenient. She'd only just gotten there! Of course, you might be about to make the carriage just ride right past her in the next chapter, but still--I feel like the pacing was a little odd. Maybe make more time elapse before the carriage comes? Or maybe not. Just an idea. Also, since she's putting her hand on her scimitar--I've got to wonder: is she going to kill the merchant and steal his horse/carriage? O.o That would me an interesting turn of events, certainly.

Anyhow, I think I better stop before I ramble the night away. All in all, I think this is a really interesting start for a novel! It's certainly got potential, and you seem to have a lot of ideas about plot, character, and premise that are very clear and well-defined. I really have to agree with Griffinkeeper here--you have what you're writing down pat, but you've got to work on how you write it. Which is to be expected, considering this is a first draft. ^_~

Obviously, let me know an=bout any questions or whatevaa. :) I hope this helps!

a

Hello, hello, cC is here to review.

Loved the opening. I like abstract scenes in general, which is why I really loved (and still love, I go back to re-read it sometimes) The Third Avenue. You're very good at writing them, and this one's no exception. The bit about the spirits singing is great, the overall feel and texture of the scene is easily imaginable and understandable. That's good.

A good amount of mystery with your characters, necessary to spark some strong interest in the beginning. Not quite enough, I would say, but that's just me. I try to start all of my works with a very, very strong sentence (the only exception I can think of right now is The Unicorn, from my works alone) so that it carries the reader through at least the next few paragraphs. The next few paragraphs will contain interesting action or interesting information, which is going to carry the reader through the chapter. The entire chapter, then, is going to be one giant injection of dopamine into the reader's spine, which will build enough momentum for the reader to get through whatever necessary infodumping I have to do in the subsequent characters. Again, you've hooked my interest with the first paragraph, but not the first sentence. I'd strengthen it. Still, I was hooked. That's good.

Everyone is keen to mention the prophecy, but I have no issue with it. Prophecies come in all shapes and sizes, and although a weirdly fulfilled prophecy is more interesting to read about and more challenging to write about, it shouldn't be the only kind of prophecy that an author is allowed to use. As far as plot tickets go, it's as acceptable as any other plot ticket. It does its job, and that's that. I mentioned this before somewhere, but this is kind of like LotR: we know (or, at least, suspect) that the heroes are going to kill Sauron at the end of it all, so as a writer you can do two things to not disappoint your reader: either shock them by making Sauron win instead, or make the journey itself interesting and fun. Tolkien went for option #2, and I'm assuming that's what you're going to do, too. But the plot needs to start somewhere, and your prophecy succeeds at starting it. That's good.

Now, my criticism. Not something others quite touched on yet, and this very much a personal opinion, so it's just something for you to keep in mind rather than follow. The criticism can be summarized in one word: cliché.

I'm a firm believer in the theory that the word "fantasy" is a code-word for "flight of imagination". Which can mean a hundred different things, of course: inventing new types of magic, interesting creatures, settings, and so on. So far I haven't seen enough of your novel to see what kind of contribution it brought to the fantasy table, but what I've read doesn't have too many innovations. The spirit world idea was interesting, but the only way it different from all sorts of Barrier-Worlds, Netherworlds, Spirit-Worlds, Other-Worlds and Underworlds of other fantasy was the spirits' singing. Then it keeps gathering up the standard fantasy tropes like a magnet. Kingdom? Check. Prophecy? Check. Brothers calling each other "brother" instead of by name? Check. Looming war? Checkaroo. I mean, there's no reason you can't have a Dutchy, or maybe a Barony, or even a Shadow-Court Deathland. Likewise, I've never heard real siblings call each other "sibling", I heard them refer to each other by their names or pet names or nicknames. The only places I've seen what you've got going are historical fiction and fantasy - and I like to be different in what I do. The bit about looming war isn't something you can change very much, but it could be done in more subtle ways. "Brother, you know how our sentries sight the shadows of Sifrin assassins every now and then..." Something like that.

Now, my own rebuttal to the above paragraph is that, of course, it's a personal opinion. In the stories I write, I try to either avoid, change, or invert whatever cliché I come upon. This doesn't mean, of course, that everyone drops their swords and uses frozen fish to fight instead, I do subscribe to some of the clichés, but still - I think it's a lot more fun to bring something fresh and new. Sub sole nihil novi est, of course (for the non-Latin-nerds: "there's nothing new under the sun"), but it doesn't hurt to at least try.

That's not to say that a super-cliché fantasy story won't do well. Just look at Dragon Age (okay, it's not a story, but my point is still valid). It's got every fantasy trope you can think of, and yet, it's very good. That's because every other aspect of it is polished to undeath. Sure, you could go that route, but people will only read you in that case if you're really, really good at telling a story. You might be just that - but I know I'm not, so I stick to what I think of innovations in the genre.

I liked this excerpt. It shows your writing abilities off well (though I didn't really talk about them much -- at this point, me saying "Tigersprite's style is really good" should be followed up with "Also, the sky is really blue" and "Air is really necessary for survival"). The improvement I'd like to see in all your works is a strong opening sentence. I'd also REALLY like to see something new; but, as I said, that's up to you. Whatever path you choose, best of luck to you on your novel!

Your servant,
cC