Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for language.
"She's seen the bait, sir." The words roused him from the report he was reading to look up at Jenner with sharp eyes.
He tilted his head at her thoughtfully. "Good. Keep a watch on her, and after a couple of days, increase it. She needs to be nervous."
Jenner nodded before narrowing her eyes at the report in his hands. "Are the mines giving trouble again, sir?"
His glare caught her in its sights for a second before he sighed. "We've had to put down another one. It's a waste of fucking resources, and it takes too long for us to get the slaves to work again." Flicking the pack of pages onto the desk, he tipped his chair back. "We're no getting anything from any of the creatures we interrogate either. They talk of a revolution and prefer to bite their own tongues than say any more. And I get to go and give his Royal Majesty a report on how well we're failing to stop slaves from killing humans when we have everything they don't."
"We'll solve the situation, sir. It's just a matter of time." Her words were empty to him, meaningless. He dismissed her with a flick of his hand.
Rising out of the chair, he clambered onto the sofa and fell into a light sleep, his consciousness barely sinking out of sight. Yet still he dreamed.
He had the creature on her knees. He wasn't sure when, but she had been chained to the wall and beaten. The throbbing across his knuckles told him that the bruises and the cuts across her face were of his making and he approved of that. He would be the one to make her suffer.
"Tell me who's controlling this."
"You're not controlling anyone." The voice slipped through her lips as little more than a broken whisper. He'd made her scream at some point. "You're a sad little boy who can't control a thing."
And suddenly it wasn't the beastling from the bookstore, but a cub. A cub in a dress and a large hat covering her ears. A cub that didn't seem one. It sported a smarmy smile like it had been born with it, and it stood over him. He was he one on the ground.
"Rich kid wanna fight? Rich kid's never had to work. Never had to beg. Can you grovel, human? Can you grovel and I'll let you go?"
Jamin sat up with a start. He hadn't dreamt of that cub in a long time. It had almost disappeared from his memories. But not completely; no, never completely. She was the one who'd made him like this, any way. He gave a fond half-smile at the memory, then rubbed his forehead. The report on the so-called revolution in the mines still needed reading, and there were other royal commands to look at, then set aside. Then there was the beastling. He'd had fun planning how to wear her down, and this was only the start. He could already feel the tension growing.
***
"You're telling me that your soldiers can't contain a couple hundred of these animals?" The man behind the ornate desk demanded. Barely visible grey hairs peppered his dark blonde hair and creases lined his face, but his presence still demanded attention.
"Your Majesty, the beastlings outnumber the soldiers ten to one. We had little reason to believe that they would be overpowered when they had firearms, bu-"
"No excuses, Jamin. You find a solution, and you find it soon, or your so called elites can find a new place to fester. Commoners in the formal guard, and next we'll be having beastlings as footsoldiers."
Jamin ground his teeth at the disdain-ridden tone of the monarch. "I've already started to set a solution in place, as I informed your Majesty, but it'll take a while."
"Six months." Jamin nodded slowly.
"That should be enough, sire."
"Leave." As Jamin turned to leave, the monarch cut in again. "I was thinking you should get married sometime soon. Though your bastard childrn won't be worth much to the throne, it's always good to have heirs. What about that woman who works for you? She's clearly there just for you o fuck her."
"I have more morals than you in that area, father." The word was thrown across the room, more insult than endearment. "And I refuse to marry some poor woman you chose for me. Jenner is more competant at her job than most men."
The tension seemed to fill the room and hold the two men immobile, glaring at each other. "Watch your words, boy," the older man growled. "You only have that postition because you begged for it. I can just as easily have you in the mines with the creatures."
"You could just as easliy lose the control you have over your people thanks to my so-called elites." Jamin stalked from the room, barely breathing from the anger constricting his chest.
End of chapter
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138,068 Literary Works • 672,071 Reviews
Specifics
I think the use of 'flicking' here undermines the strength of your dialogue. He sounds angry so describe his actions in an angry way as well - let us feel the frustration coming off of him. Maybe he slams the pages onto the deck and throws his chair back? Or if you want his actions to contrast with his dialogue and show an outward calm then perhaps he slides the pages and rocks his chair back but something which sounds measured rather than careless like flicking.1.
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3. I think you need to describe Jasmin's emotions here before you have him respond. It will add weight to his next line of dialogue.
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Overall
I think we need more of the dream/ flashback Jamin has to help us understand what he fears or how he feels. Does the dream excite him a little perhaps, even when the other female cub is dominating him or does he truly feel terror and nothing else? At the moment I don't hate Jamin and it feels like I should. He's a bit too thuggish for me currently to feel anything for him other than a mild dislike but perhaps because at the moment he seems no different to Linna. I don't love or hate either of them - Linna is cruel to her own kind while Jamin is cruel to a species he sees as being beneath him and who have clearly caused him pain in the past. If anything, this new revelation means I understand Jamin better than I do Linna. I would probably react in much the same way, more likely to try and defend those like me against a group/ species who were cruel to me when I was young, whether they had their reasons or not.
I do like that there could be a balanced view to this and the circular nature of the abuse, plus the additional abuse coming from Jamin's father. We have almost a Javert situation here (the character from les miserables who is the villain but who from his perspective is doing the right thing). However, Jamin either needs to be more hate-able or Linna more likeable before this will work. I need to want Jamin dead, even if he was a man I might support if it wasn't Linna he was after.
I hope that helps and feel free to ask me any questions you might have. Also, describe more! I have very little idea of what room they are in during the second scene.
~Heather
Hey Xilla,
Omg thank heavens you've given us some really strong background regarding Jamin because I was desperate for it, as you've no doubt gathered from my other reviews! It's solid work and I always appreciate when dreams turn into memories, I like how strong he's made her in his head. Though mind that he doesn't say one of those awful "We're more alike than you think" kinds of things. They're cliched and uninteresting as language points. That said, Jamin is totally unstable or on his way to being unstable so maybe he's allowed to be cliched on the angry ranty front.
This works as a strong, informative chapter. I like that we're building on Jamin's background (I still want to call him The Man!) and that it's a strong one with realistic ties to his memories and to his actions. It's strong character building and you're not moving too too quickly for us so I'm into it. The meeting with his father seems a little awkward - wouldn't there be some other officials in the room? How does he really get away with being so rude? That might need some more explaining further along.
Why don't they just take her? Is it because he wants to wear her down and chase her, or is it because she'll be more pliable once she's had it rough for a while? I don't know, that bit confuses me a little bit now that we're progressing along, he has more than enough opportunity to just take her.
As always, thanks for posting and I'm looking forward to the next one.
<3
Hey Aux. So I'm going to review what you currently have of this novel all in one go here.
So right off the bat, I'm going to tell you that I think this has potential to be pretty engaging, but from what I've read, it seems as though you don't really understand the seriousness of your novel. Your protagonist acts and does things which are pretty illogical given the situation she's in. As a result, it's hard to take this novel seriously in some places.
Your protagonist, Linna is hard to related to and understand. She has such a self pitying personality and a lack of common sense that it's frustrating to read. Let me explain. So in your world, you have really dark and serious things happening. You have:
-Genocide (shown in her flash back, where she and everyone else were being taken to some concentration camp (I think?) and her saying in one chapter that she doesn't want to die.
-Slavery (Beastlings working in the mine)
-Oppression(Beastlings working in the mine)
-Discrimination and race superiority
Given the gravity of the situation she's in, don't you think she should make far more effort to be discrete? She's already been caught before and escaped, so don't you think that she should be working in a place far away from the enemy in some place that they wouldn't think about looking? But no, she's working in some spacious and nice looking bookshop, and nowhere in the novel does it state that she is working in some place far from the enemy.
I would buy her situation instead if she was working in some run down book shop in back water town, or some black smith. Like come on, in the region of the world that she's in, people are still actively hunting her kind down, and it doesn't seem like it's going to stop anytime soon. I would think that she would be constantly vigilant, but to me, she seems so off with the fairies if she cares more about reading new books than survival and staying hidden.
I get that one might want to work to at least have some semblance of a normal life, but I'm not getting the idea that her life is totally messed up given how little attempt she makes to stay off the grid and to stay vigilant.
More big flaws I would like to point out in the first two chapters. What actually is the difference between the cub that the woman has on a leash and her? They both seem to be sentient, so the cub on the leash could of told the woman that the girl in the bookshop is a beastling too. So shouldn't she have started planning for an escape right there and then instead of breaking down, then returning to work like nothing has happened?
A more important question I want to ask is what are the physical differences between a human and a beastling? I only get that the ears is one thing, but is that it? Humans hating the beastlings just because of their ears? I'm just not convinced that she can greatly reduce the chances of being identified as a beastling just from simply wearing a hat.
Following on from that question, I don't get why the humans hate the beastling so much as to go as far as to commit genocide and oppression. Did the beastlings did some wrong to the humans in the past? Is it because of how alien and animal like they are that humans believe they have superiority over them?
I get the feeling that there is some scapegoating going on by the Emperor in this society, like how Hitler hated the Jews. This said Emperor blamed all their troubles on the beastlings and declare humans to be the Master race. That seems to be the idea I'm getting here, but I'm not certain. You also have your protagonist wishing that she was born a human instead of a beastling, but beyond caving to the criticisms of the society, why else does she think that? Perhaps you can explore that theme a bit more in the first two chapters so I have a better idea of what's going on and why the protagonist is thinking in such a self-pitying way.
Lastly, why is Jamin so fascinated in her such that he enjoys the idea of toying with her misery? I just don't get why he gets so fixated in hunting down his own kind, and I don't want to think "for the thrill of the hunt" as an answer because it's such a lackluster reason given how much of the chapters were focused on him.
It's not like Linna is that fascinating anyways. It's only out of sheer luck and convenience of the plot that she has been able to survive for that long. She doesn't understand the gravity of the situation she's in at all, and would much rather cry and fantasize about books than remain vigilant be cunning about how to survive and avoid detecting while still having some semblance of a normal life.
So yea, I think for this story to improve, you have to consider the seriousness of your themes more and think more about how said character would behave in such a society. Think more in terms of something like WW2 with the whole Nazis hunting Jews down sort of ordeal, where everyday is hell, and you are struggling just to survive and have some semblance of a normal life.
Hope this helped.