So here I am to finally leave you a review of the story as a whole, based on the draft on FictionPress. I read it all over the last twenty-four hours and took notes on my thoughts, so here we go. I apologize in advance, because this will be long and you may not like it.
Well, first let's say something good, which is: I don't know what kind of editing you did between FP and here, but frankly I think the complete draft on FP did a bit better job explaining things, like right at the opening. I could be misjudging that because, due to our several chats about the book, I know more about the story than I did when I read the first chapter here. But it seems like you let a little more information about the world slip out, in less awkward ways than in ch. 1 of this version (when Thoth and Natsumi have a long conversation about the origin of imps for no apparent reason).
I think the primary problem right now is that there doesn't seem to be much of an overarching plot. Or, like, the plot is having trouble focusing on one main plot. At first it seems to be this journey that Natsumi is going on with Jackson, but then it seems to be their romance (which I do not ship at all, but more on that later), but then there's a sort of climax that comes out of nowhere (the thing with Thoth), but it's resolved too quickly and then N actually doesn't suffer any sort of lasting trouble over it and happily runs around with her paramour.
This is probably just because you wrote this for NaNoWriMo. I don't know if you did any planning prior to NaNo for this, but even though I usually write without doing an outline or anything, I find it easier to keep on-track in November if I have a plan to follow. Anyway, I'd say that's the first thing that needs attention. It's fine if you want all of these things in the story, but one of them needs to be the obvious main plot while the others are relegated to subplots. Plus, there needs to be more gradual building-up overtime of the plot point involving Thoth's untimely demise. We don't even find out how it occurred or what happened to the land afterward or anything, because N goes from being in extreme pain and grieving to running around joyfully with J, THE END. So, just something to think about there.
On the note of plot points...the romance. I. Do. Not. Ship. This. At. All. Not at all. I want this ship to sink, very badly. I think romance has never made me so uncomfortable before, and the reason is that N is originally presented as a young girl. An imp, yes, but she reads like a little girl. Not only at the beginning, but throughout the whole story. And J is a supernatural being like her, so it's fine if their actual ages in years are very different--but she reads like a little girl, and he reads as much, much older. So it was so ridiculously uncomfortable for me, reading it--even thinking about it right now makes me feel uneasy. And any time they kissed, or any time N was all focused on J's chest or muscles or, YE GODS, when she said "you have sex organs," dear God. No. Just no.
I liked them as friends, and I'm all in favor of friendships between adorable little girls who bring out the softer side of their older male companions who become surrogate father figures. Love that. And a lot of their non-romancey dialogue was good/amusing/fun.
And it's not even that I'm against the idea of a romance between them in the first place, but if you want to pursue that plot point then I think it needs some serious revision. I don't know, maybe you'll post the whole thing here and I'll be the only one who feels horribly skin-crawly about it. But my suggestions would be to 1) bring N's age up a little--not her actual age, just make her seem more like a naive young woman than an out-and-out child--and 2) give a more definite sense of age for J and maybe tone his age down a little bit. I think if they seemed more compatible age-wise--I mean, I'm not even against huge age-gap couples, although if it gets upward of twenty years (in humans) it starts to bother me a little, but it's more about the fact that N doesn't read like an adult at all. She reads like a little girl, and that makes a romance that's anything more than a sweet little bit of puppy love with a little boy kind of creepy. It might also help if J didn't call her "little imp" and "little one" all the time, which is the sort of thing a much older, more fatherly figure would say rather than a romantic interest.
Hopefully I did not just poop all over your favorite aspect of the story or something by saying that, but it just made me super uneasy.
Two main problems with wording:
1. Character description. I love adjectives and adverbs, okay. But there are sooooooo many of them in your story, and I still have virtually no idea of what N looks like, except that she has red eyes, which mostly got pounded into my head when she got captured by humans and had to keep them from realizing that she wasn't human (which was pointless since they'd captured her because they realized she wasn't human). J is also fuzzy to me, but I think that's mostly because he kept transforming from one look to another in his human form, so I couldn't keep his appearance straight. I'd suggest cutting down heavily on the adjectives and adverbs, see where you can fit in a short paragraph--even just a couple sentences--of character description near the beginning, rather than cramming several adjectives in front of each mention of N and hoping we'll remember them. Either that or let it go and don't describe her imp form at all. Commit to a description or break things off.
2. While it's true that the FP version is better at explanations, it still left me with a lot of questions at the end, things you brought up in the beginning that I, a trusting reader, thought would be answered as we continued but instead left me hanging. I understand that N, for example, already knows about residents and gifteds and how imps are nothing more than ghosts to nonresidents, but the reader doesn't know and it gets confusing. Example from ch. 1:
She couldn't follow him. He was already aware of her and this was the first warning sign. He would never lose his awareness of her, so she could never be secret around him.
First warning sign of what? Why will he never lose his awareness? Why does she need to be secret around him, or around anyone other than humans, for that matter? Wtf is a gifted? We don't need massive infodumps, but taking this just a little further would help. For example:
She couldn't follow him. He was already aware of her and this was the first warning sign of __________. She could never be secret around him the way she would have to be if she wanted to __________.
There's something to be said for giving readers questions to hold their interest, but this feels too deliberate and is immensely frustrating. Also, keep in mind that if you don't explain things in the prose and N refuses to tell J in dialogue, she is subsequently refusing to tell readers, i.e. in this example from ch. 2:
Her skirt fluffed around her waist and came back duller hues of orange and red. Green speckled the trim with small specks of yellow.
Then J says, "What? Why did you just, whatever?" but N says she's not telling him, and I never found out what the heckles just happened. Similarly, an example from ch. 7:
A memory of Thoth sprung forth in her mind
but you never tell us what it is--this is the perfect sort of opportunity to fill in some of the blanks for us. Again, we don't need a long explanation, but one line to tell us what the memory was would be helpful.
There's one other sort of overarching thing that bothered me, but it was not exactly overarching because it applies to the humans who capture N, which happens, what, about halfway through or so?
I don't understand the humans at all or any of their actions. Which, I understand the story is from an imp's POV and I understand she's prejudiced because of her and Thoth's history with humans, but. It doesn't seem like I'm not understanding them because of her viewpoint coloring their actions, her misinterpretation of intended kindnesses or anything. But, like. Okay. So the humans who were around when N got attacked by that dog, and the humans who took J's money in the desert, they didn't give her a second glance.
But then that group of hunters nabs her--and okay, as you know, I don't have a clear idea of what her imp form looks like, but it seems fairly human except for the red eyes, right? She basically looks like a little girl, but these guys just grab her and toss her on a horse and then lock her up and mistreat her and stuff because "humans don't walk around in the desert without shoes." Weak sauce, dudes. You're going to kidnap and physically hurt a little girl--even an odd-looking one--without question or second thought because she's wandering the desert alone without shoes? "You're not human and we're going to either kill you or sell you on the black market" is literally your gut reaction? Not, "oh, a little girl lost and alone in the desert, are you hungry, maybe we should clean you up, what happened to your family"?
And there is never a single point where any one of them sympathizes with her, thinks the others are overreacting, tries to give her some food and kindness, nothing. Like I said, even from her POV--she could misinterpret some intended kindness, maybe assumes any food they offer is poisoned or any kindness they offer is a trick, but I didn't even see anything that she could've misinterpreted. It was all black-and-white, all-humans-are-utter-monsters. I didn't have a particular connection with N after the opening, especially once she started crying all the time beginning in about ch. 3 (seriously, go back and mark a tally every time she gets teary-eyed, because it happens a lot), but I literally did not even care about any of the humans even a little bit. Which I consider bizarre because I am human. But I didn't see an ounce of humanity in any of them, and that bothered me, because even a human who actually is a complete monster in the eyes of history--Hitler, for example--had aspects and moments that were still human (which makes it all the more disturbing, because you realize that anybody could become that monster).
I'm not saying she needs to buddy up to them or revise her opinion of them or any of that, but I would at least like to see a bit more personality from one of them.
Wtf do you mean by "his/her eyes thinned"? You use that phrase a lot, but I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean "his/her eyes narrowed"? Also, you confused "passed" and "past" a lot. I'm pretty sure that every single time I saw the word "passed," it was supposed to be "past," although I'd have to do a purely nitpicky read-through to make sure, and that kind of review isn't super helpful at this point in the revisions. One more nitpick: at some point in ch. 6, J called N "dear" unironically and it was weird.
Things that were well-done:
N's connection to the land, always. It personified and characterized the land a little as well as her character, which was nice, and it was well-done. It showed us that she was connected without a massive infodump, yet we were left with no question about the fact that a connection existed.
N's naivety clear and in no doubt, plus I like her reaction to J calling her "green."
N's weakness as she gets further from her lands and becoming more and more human...except in ch. 4 when she just gets hungrier instead of actually weaker, and then in ch. 8 when she suddenly goes from weak and weepy to casually busting herself out? Prior to that it was good though.
J's early dialogue. Once we hit the romance it got weird, but prior to that it was good. And even then it was good, just not when it related to romance because. Supreme Discomfort.
Explanation of imps fits better in FP version, ch. 5 when N explains it to J than in ch. 1 of YWS version where N and Thoth discuss it.
"But I needed that!"--best reaction ever to puking up your food. My diaphragm contorted in hilarity. That line was gold.
N's reaction to wooden buildings works really well with what we know about her connection to land/nature/trees.
That is all I have for you after my complete read-through. I know it's long and gave you a lot to work on
Blue
P.S. No idea what this means for my adopting of this novel since I have actually finished it despite the fact you're not done posting it here.
Points: 91980
Reviews: 1737
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