Here to review!
Oh, this is fascinating! The prologue itself was good enough, but the opening section was very static and descriptive. It might have been better if you kept the descriptions localised, in the room, and not gone outside. Then you could start to change elements of the interior—Rueben yawns, a pen falls off his desk, something in that line.
Spelling and grammar:
Jasko Rueben had fallen asleep while researching a magical artifact that a customer had quested for earlier. His head sunk into his desk, many ancient books lay open with pages full of sigils and long forgotten languages around him.
Keep the tenses in line. "His head had sunk into his desk," would be a better choice.
She tumbled to the floor and was vigorously dragged back towards the man. Her nails dug into the wooden floor splintering her skin causing her to clench her teeth, but she couldn’t hold grip. The man laughed in amusement as the girl rolled onto her back and clawed at the smoke, to find it wouldn’t come off. She was then lifted into the air, her arms flailing about.
"Vigorously" seems unnecessary, and somewhat out of place. Maybe, if you want to use an adverb at all, use "violently". You are missing several commas in the next sentence, and 'splintering' is used incorrectly. I would also suggest breaking it up to change the sentence structure. Here:
"Her nails dug into the wooden floor, clenching her teeth in pain. Splinters penetrated her skin, but she couldn’t keep her grip."
The 'in amusement' is superfluous seeing as he is already laughing. The 'then' is also unnecessary.
“I keep you alive Jasko.”
I don't know if this was deliberate, but if not, I would suggest "I'll keep you alive, Jasko."
You have several of these sort of mistakes in your piece.
General:
Nice action, not too heavy in information dumps, with fascinating characters and already a moving plot. But beware of your long, winding sentences. Try to keep to at most two conjunctions in a sentence. Remember that short sentences convey action and motion better, but you need to have a balance between long and short sentences.
Be careful with commas. Some places in your sentences need them and they don't have any. Others would do better with a full stop than the current comma. Others don't need anything at all. Just look out for them!
Well done.
Keep the ink flowing!
barefootrunner
Points: 22897
Reviews: 304
Donate