Hannah --
You know, I'm not sure I've ever critiqued something of yours, dollface. But regardless, I'd say it was high time that I did so and repay a little bit of the crit debt I've accumulated.
Anyway, I enjoyed this. I enjoyed it for the language and the imagery you incorperated into the flesh of the prose. As Lin said, this was a very poetic piece -- just my kind of medicine. You are obviously extremely talented at descriptive writing. Your grasp of the english language and all of its intracacies is apparent.
I found it a little hard to get into. Your sentences at the beginning are a little long-winded and tortuous. You also hit us right away with the elevated vocabulary level. I caught myself a couple times skipping around some of the fatter, more verbose chunks. Consider looking through this piece and finding sentences that are too wordy, or that have too many extra words which could be removed. The problem could also be my early morning dullness.
As it stands, this piece is somewhat confusing. I'm sure it was your intention, but you kind of avoided talking about the two people Rum was in the catacombs with. I'd like to know a little bit more about these people. A little bit. Keep me in the know, but don't dump too much info on me. Think about mentioning one of these people by their name later on in the story, just so I have a clue as to who's talking. I'm sure you're not going to be continuing this piece, and so you've got to take a step back and let it stand on its own. I'm aware that this is probably about a character during the 1460s, during the seige of Harlech, but I'm not so sure about its significance. Its only purpose seems to be to describe the strange and possibly otherworldly qualities of these catacombs. It seems as if this piece was only written as an exercise in flash description; not something I'm opposed to necessarily (I'm sure it was really fun to write), but it is something I'm obliged to point out.
She failed to discern whether the voice issued from Leah or Gwenyth
This is an example of wordiness. KISS. It's a lot easier to say, "She didn't know who was talking." or "She didn't know whether Leah or Gwenyth was speaking." Something like that.
with as much care as a child would will their paper boat to safety on a swollen spring-stream
Love this. But it needs cleaning. I'd get rid of the word "spring" at least. I'd also possibly just keep it at "like a child would float a paper boat on a stream".
(as the face of a pond would after a rock broke the surface with a plunk!)
I like this a lot, too. But it feels to be a bit much. Avoid using parathensis in prose as a rule, unless for a very good reason. And using it as a slot to place another metaphor is not a good reason. Murder your darlings. I'd cut this.
Anyway, great job!
-Kylan
Points: 27175
Reviews: 387
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