Hello again!
Now that all of that boring socializing is out of the way.
Socializing is never boring if you do it right I don't think you need this line. It minimizes everything you did in the last chapter as boring or unimportant, and it's neither of those things.
A comfortable loose shirt, a nice pair of pants, and a ribbon to tie my annoyingly long hair back.
This is a fragment, you need a subject and verb.
Swords were everywhere in my own world, I don’t think people were actually using them much, but if you wanted to learn how to use them, you could. Magic on the other hand, magic is another beast entirely. World bending powers at your command, science can give that, but there is a point when you have to rely on others to improve something. Magic becomes more powerful just by trying harder!
Good inner monologue here!
I focus on the book. A incredibly thick volume far bigger and more sturdy than any book I had ever seen in my own world, not because the modern world couldn’t do it, but there was a art in this binding. Like the writers words were secondary to the sheer style that contained it all. I couldn’t help but marvel at the careful etching and detailing of the title. Something as bland as ‘An introduction to gravity’ became poetic under the artist that bound this book.
I keep forgetting to mention this. You write really nice descriptions! I love the style that you bring to this paragraph and how you're able to use poetic language without it becoming overboard or purple in order to give us a rich picture of what she's seeing and experiencing.
A simple summary of how magic is categorized.
A mage just needs to understand the language and rules enough do what they want.
I'm not going to quote the whole chunk, but I'm talking about what happens between this first line and this last line. I think this is tricky. You need to explain how the magic in this world works, and for readers that are really into magic I'm sure they've been waiting for something like this. But, in order for it not to feel tell-y or like an info-dump, you also have to write it in a way that's engaging. For me (and again this could easily be a personal problem because I don't read much fantasy) it felt too tell-y and info-dumpy and I didn't retain much. A few ideas to spice it up: Show Mist reading and then do a new paragraph and tab in with italics or something and literally show the text that Mist is reading so it feels like we're reading the book with Mist. Have Mist learn some of this background knowledge through someone rather than through a book so we can have a fun, engaging conversation about it. Since this magic information is true for all forms of magic (right?) it won't matter who teaches it to her, and then she can keep reading and learn more specific things about gravity magic.
“Doth the heavens meadow hath beseeched the great abyss that is nigh, standing on the precipice of weight and air, light and heavy, one divine the sights of the blind.” I mutter, beside that jumbled non-sense was theory on what the book was says, along with a guide for the theory, but given how often the assumed meaning conflicted with what my mental translation was telling me. I couldn’t help but grumble.
This is much better. I feel like I'm reading it with her and I can stumble along the words and feel her frustration alongside her.
I skip around until I find the first spell, ‘air hammer’ as the book calls it. “Divine up a name, call upon thy knowledge, and break up the force that is yours. The weight of the world under the wind that shifts.”
I totally get her desire to just skip to the good stuff especially when the text is so challenging I feel like without understanding that first stuff though she's going to struggle with the spells.
Which I quickly try, using the traditional straining that I see in just about every movie, which leads to nothing.
Can you show him quickly trying? What does it look like to try to use his mana besides straining? What exactly does he do? Stand and throw his hands in the air? Shut his eyes and hope for the best?
Quill appeared shortly after, but I don’t really care about him.
Why not? This attitude is going to make me not care about him too, so be careful with the word choice
For someone that doesn't normally read fantasy, I thought this was a really interesting chapter! I don't quite understand all of the intricacies of how the mana works and how the magic works, but I think that's more of a personal problem. I thought you did a really nice job with her inner dialogue when she started to experiment with the magic. I loved that you showed her thought process throughout that experience because it helped me understand what she was doing and why. It also helped me visualize exactly what she was doing.
I was a little surprised that she was able to figure out the magic so quickly. I get that the plot needs to move and you don't want to spend half the book waiting on Mist to figure out magic, but a lot of things seem to come easy for Mist and lots of things are working out for her so far. I feel like this is setting us up for Mist being super special and having some super special mission or something, but be careful not to make everything come too easy for her. She's going to need some big bumps and challenges in order to keep it realistic.
But overall, I think this is one of your stronger chapters and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next! I'm going to take another brief break and get caught up on a few other stories, but then I'll be back if you want me! And in the meantime, let me know if you have any questions/if you'd like feedback about something I didn't mention!
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Reviews: 1162
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