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125,005 Literary Works • 672,798 Reviews
Hiya, ChieRynn! Happy Review Day! Just dropping in for a quick critique and my fiftieth review of RevMo. I'm afraid I haven't read any of the previous chapters for this, but I hope I can still be helpful. I'm just going to make small comments as I read and then round off with some overall thoughts. Let's go!
Small Comments
For me, this isn't the best way to start the chapter. It doesn't grab my attention that much, because you're just reeling off details about the castle layout and not really relating it to the story in any way. Personally, I'd cut this and start the chapter in Aria's room, but if you want to keep it I'd at least suggest you trim it down.
This line confused me - I had to read it several times before I got what you were saying, which is partly due to the comma splice. I don't think you need to reiterate that she was asleep, and you could go for a more to-the-point sentence structure - something like 'Aria heard no warning.' It's easier to understand and simple sentences often pack more of a punch anyway.
It's kind of weird to say it came from nowhere and then to say it came from the outer side of her room. The first bit in bold could be deleted, I think.
I'm surprised she hadn't already figured that out. If there are guards everywhere and loud noises and banging, it isn't exactly a big step to think they're being attacked. There's not really any other explanation.
Overall Thoughts
Mostly, I think this was a successful chapter. You find your groove in the second half; the dialogue is naturalistic and engaging, and there's inherent excitement in reading about a siege. You plant little bits of intrigue in regards to the identity of the army and how they managed to make it into the city undetected, which also works well. I'm not fully convinced by your characters yet, though it's obviously still early days. Even though Aria is the main character in this passage, she also feels pretty passive - mostly she's just ferried around and directed by other people, and she tends to spend her time listening to others rather than contributing to the conversation. It's not necessarily unrealistic, given that she may not know that much about battle tactics, but it means she's a slightly less interesting perspective to view the story from. I want her actions and decisions to weigh on the narrative in some way. Still, it is early days. As long as she becomes more active soon, I'm not too worried.
I did find it surprising that the guards didn't take more action to protect Aria and Tristen, given that they're the prince and princess. Even if they're confident the walls will hold, the attack seems to be random and thus difficult to predict, so you'd think they'd take Aria and Tristen to the innermost place and assign people to protect them, just to be on the safe side. It seemed too slapdash for Orrick to just tell Aria to get dressed and keep her dagger on her.
Your description is generally decent, but I don't feel like you fully captured the chaos of the scene. You do pay attention to what Aria can see and hear, but I don't think you delve enough into what she can feel - you've got scope to talk about the ground shuddering under the impact of the bounders, or the guards bumping into her shoulders as she pushes her way through the crowd, searching for Tristen. The tactile is so important in description, so don't overlook it.
Do I have anything else to add? I think that about covers it. I agree with SpiritedWolfe that this feels rather like a first chapter, which I suppose is good from my perspective. It's a little slow to start and some of your prose has a slightly stage-directions vibe (Aria went there, then there, then did this, then this) which means it doesn't have the dramatic pace it needs, but it picks up a lot in the second half and starts to get really interesting as they discuss what they know about the attack. Overall, I enjoyed it, and I'd be interested to read more.
Keep writing!
~Pan
Hey there! Happy Review Day ~ Let's get right into it.
So I really liked this part. I thought it was very well written and it kept me engaged throughout. I have a tendency to be a pretty distracted reader, but I was legitimately interested in what was occurring and what may happen to these characters. Each of the paragraphs had a really nice flow and they connected well to one another, so great job on that!
I also felt like you had really solid descriptions. This definitely enhanced the flow of the piece as I was mentioning before, but it was really easy for me to picture the lay out of the setting, what the characters looked like (or at least enough to not be left wondering) and just generally picturing the scene as it played out. As well, this helped with my engagement since it really felt like I was there with the characters, witnessing this stressful event play out.
That being said, I think the first few paragraphs simply describing the lay out of the castle are unnecessary and, quite frankly, boring. It feels like an info dump that doesn't apply much to the rest of the chapter since we don't use much of that information later on. Even if we didn't know that the children of the monarchs lived on the second floors, we'd be able to assume so since Aria was running up and down stairs in order to get to and from her room. It didn't add anything and it made it difficult to get into the piece, even if I was engaged once I initially became engaged (if that makes sense).
Also, this reads a lot like a first chapter to me. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it might help you put into perspective if there is anything actually necessary in the first few parts that couldn't be moved. However, I do understand that having some kind of background and set up to introduce the characters before this event would absolutely help in ramping up the stakes, but I believe that if you just started it at this scene, the story (most likely) wouldn't be too worse off.
Regardless, I would be interested in reading more and I may even revisit the old parts.
Happy writing ~
- Wolfe