Heya.
Badabing, badaboom, got another review for you.
Rana gaped as she stared down at the man, suddenly recognizing him. His voice, his obviously rehearsed line, his cocky swagger — he was the thief from the night before.
Oh! Snap! What!
“I won’t stand for this!” Father bellowed.
“Well, evidently not, I see,” the man answered, smirking.
Your characters have such great witty remarks and I love every single one of them.
“You’re barely managing to cower properly. I don’t imagine you’d ever manage to stand against us.”
I will say that the last sentence here feels a little unnecessary, though. Like it's trying to make sure that we got the joke. It reads perfectly without this-- the comedic timing and everything is just great-- so I'd recommend removing that last bit, but it's up to you!
Rana didn’t know how to respond. If it was in any other situation, she’d champion this man as a hero — one of the only men she’d met who didn’t fear Father’s rage. It was refreshing to hear him deliver well-deserved insults.
But she still wasn’t sure if he’d take it too far. As much as she and Father argued, as much as she hated him sometimes, he was still her father and she had an obligation to keep him from being skewered with a sword.
I don't see the need for the paragraph break here? I think they'd work fine as a single paragraph. I guess you may have worried about it looking chunky? But it wouldn't be too big. Most of your paragraphs tend to be about the length of these individuals, and it can get dull reading through a bunch of similar length paragraphs. Making this a single larger one could benefit your flow, and there's really nothing to call for the separation, as the subject and perspective don't change any. It's very much the same idea/thought broken unnecessarily.
“W-what do you want?” Father sniveled.
This stuttering and sniveling feels uncharacteristic of Father, especially with all his bellowing just beforehand. Nothing much has happened to dampen his rage and make him realize this is so dangerous, unless the insult really hurt him that badly, lel. I mean, there's swords on him, but they have been since the start and he's been pretty much his same old self.
Rana was almost happy to see them go, welcoming the disposal of all of the ghastly gifts from the monster.
Second “of” can probably be omitted, and I think you might want to specify Synakrein by name here. “The monster, Synakrein”? It feels a little off, and I know what you mean by “the monster” but since he hasn't been mentioned for a little while, I feel it may be a good idea. Not sure, though. Just a suggestion!!
“I’ll consider them that much dearer,” the man answered condescendingly.
Maybe add a “then”, either at the start or end of this man's dialogue? It's a little sudden as it is, and almost like he's not really listening well enough to answer properly(?) and I think “then” could soften that. While I think this is a good thing to add, I also figure ruffians wouldn't have impeccable language and grammar, so other places could probably be edited to be a bit rougher and whatnot. This, though, is less gruff-rough-ruffian speech and more “oh, that doesn't sound entirely like the same conversation, almost”?
She tightened her grip on the sword and got her foot between herself and the carriage.
I'd specify that it's her sword, instead of just saying “the sword” as the last sword mentioned was the bandit's, and while it's obvious she isn't now holding his sword, it's always good to specify this sort of thing when you've just mentioned a different entity within the same vein of things, if that makes sense.
followed by a thrust towards his abdomen and a final blow towards his right oblique as his balance was off from the thrust.
You might consider making this “as his balance was thrown off from the thrust”, for the sake of a smooth flow.
Oh, snap, fight scene!
As with the start of this novel, you're really good at these sparring scenes and keeping the action going. We aren't left to descriptions for so long that they get dull, but you give us enough to understand what's going on. It's swift and paced nicely and is always exciting. I'm hoping there's some more sword fights as the story goes on.
He stood so close she could hear his heavy breathing from their fight and see the individual hairs in his eyebrows as they knit together in in a scowl.
You've got a double “in” here.
She wished she would’ve stayed in the carriage, like she was told.
Comma is unnecessary and can be removed without messing up what you mean to convey.
“Sir is it, now?” the man scoffed.
I think a comma after “sir” would be appropriate. You might also put single quotation marks around that bit? (“'Sir', is it, now?”) but that may not be needed.
Also, I'll point out real quick that Rana's father has been incredibly silent throughout this sparring. I figured he'd have a lot to say, shouting at her or exclaiming his shock and disappointment that she would even dare to touch a sword. I guess having that during the sparring scene would've slowed it down a bit, but now it feels like he's just sitting there silently, watching this exchange, and it doesn't really feel like how he'd react.
She hesitated a moment, wondering how knowledgeable she should sound about swordsmanship. She decided to err towards the side of ignorance.
For what purpose is she feigning ignorance? She just assaulted the man before her own father, and displayed more prowess than he'd ever expect from her, I'm sure, even though she did lose and didn't manage to land much of a hit. Now that I say all that, I suppose she could think there's still something to salvage there, though.
I'm not so sure about “case-thingy”, though. Would one have to be educated in swords and swordsmanship to know it's called a sheathe/scabbard?
She couldn’t quite tell whether he wanted an answer or for her to keep quiet. “Mm?”
The “Mm?” feels odd. Rana isn't sure if he wants her to speak or not, but then he goes and indicates that he expects an answer immediately after. It's weird, almost contradictory to the flow of things in a way(?) and I think one of the two could do with being removed. I'm leaning towards deleting the “Mm?” but it's up to you how you go about this--
(Where's Father? Still no word from him. His prolonged silence is getting more and more unnerving to my sense of the scene.)
“There, now, that’s better. Subdued like a proper little lady,” the man said, patronizingly. Rana’s eyes snapped back towards his face, clenching her teeth as anger coursed through her body again. She was fed up with men and their chauvinistic nonsense. “Good job, sweetie.”
I think “Good job, sweetie.” should be moved to just beyond the original dialogue tag here, then you could drop “Rana's eyes snapped back [...]” to a new line, otherwise it has the potential to cause some confusion as to who's talking.
“Ah-ah, sweetheart. I wouldn’t if I was you.”
Grammatically, this should be “were you”, but I feel that you're maybe going for that improper-English ruffian speech that I mentioned earlier in this review, so it's good as it is for that purpose.
The man turned back to face Rana and gestured a silent command to his men.
Maybe replace “Rana” with “the ring”, as she's probably mostly obscured by the ring of men around her now?
Also, oh man, there's Father! He was incredibly quiet. I was starting to think I'd missed something and that Rana had attacked Robin Hood around the opposite side of the carriage. Father's reaction is a little disappointing. He doesn't have anything to say about what just unfolded before him, and his expression doesn't even show a hint of how he might be feeling about Rana's ambush with the sword. It's both uncharacteristic and makes the scene wobbly. It's hard to stay immersed here, when he isn't reacting at all, much less not reacting the way I'd expected him to.
A moment later a skinny boy who looked like he wasn’t much older than Jaerek stepped forward and handed her his sword.
If you go with the previous beat's point of replacing “Rana” with “the ring”, then you might replace “her” with “Rana”, here, and then also specify whether the boy was part of the ring or if he squeezed through to get to her. I figure the ring is still intact, unless I misread something? And I also figure the boy wasn't a part of it, as the men making up the ring were described as “burly”.
“You are. Fight to the death — I’ll let whoever wins the match walk away. That’ll save me from having to kill the both of you.”
This feels... matter-of-fact? I'm not sure if that's the word. The way he says it doesn't hold a lot of weight and feels more like an on-the-spot decision, which it may very well be, but it gives this vibe of him changing his mind around a lot. Not sure if that makes sense.
I am interested to see if they do fight, and how that goes-- *reads on*
She threw her sword on the ground, then crossed her arms as she glared at him.
The man lifted his eyebrows challengingly. “You think that’s a good move?”
No, Rana! Very bad move. You should at least keep the sword in hand when you're surrounded by all these bandits and disobeying their leader.
Rana suddenly started to feel that it wasn’t, in fact, a good idea. She almost wished she would’ve just gone through with his stupid plan and let Father win.
Lot of mind-changing this chapter. It gives an uneven vibe and makes me unsure of whether you know what you want your characters actually doing? They go with one thing, but then go “oh oops this was a bad idea”, then “oh but nah it was okay actually”, and then back to the bad idea mindset and it seems to keep cycling that way.
It didn’t matter what he did. She would never again let someone force her into needless violence.
Here's another example of the above note, immediately after the quote from that one. She's flip-flopped back to this “no, actually, I'm doing good” mindset, which starkly contrasts her previous “oh man I should've fought” thoughts.
“Because your choice is fight your father and have a pretty good chance of winning and walking out of this unscathed, or to come back to camp me and the boys for a bit of fun.”
“Choice” should be swapped out for “options” because “your choice [list of options]” sounds as though she's already picked one out, when she hasn't yet. If you were to keep “choice”, it should be pluralized, since there's multiple to choose from.
Also, “is” should be “are to”. “Your options are to fight your father […], or come back to camp [...]” Though, this fella is a ruffian and we're trying to avoid super accurate grammar. I think this part is alright for him, though? I'm not sure how you want this character to play out, but he could be a more educated ruffian.
Oh, and you're missing a “with” after “camp”.
I'm also now wondering why the original bandit, who climbed into the carriage, had let Rana be. Were those his orders? Was it his own decision? I mean, yeah, attacking the leader would ruin whatever immunity they had decided to give her, but Robin Hood here doesn't seem to even consider giving her another chance at just sitting aside and letting them deal with things. That may not be in his character, but it could be a good idea to consider, if he were the one to originally call for her to be left alone. It makes his decisions more consistent and concrete, unlike the wavy, erratic type of decisions everyone seems to be making this chapter.
And done with that!
Father's just shown himself to be a million times worse than before and he's irredeemable to me!
Anyway, some quick content notes-- Your pacing was good, especially in the fight scene. Things flowed naturally and we got through this chapter without a hitch in the flow.
My main issue with this whole thing, though, are the characters. For once it's the characters, oh no. They just didn't behave very naturally, and their thoughts were all flip-flopping. Father went from enraged and arrogant to sniveling and silent. Almost every one of Rana's thoughts were contradicted by following thoughts. I already touched on her flip-flopping and Robin Hood's flip-flopping most recently.
The highlight of this chapter was definitely the sparring scene, though. You're great at those and I can't wait to read more of them. For now, I fear for Rana's safety and hope another twist gets her out of this jam before anything more terrible happens.
I hope this review wasn't too harsh, and I look forward to further chapters!
- Hatt
PLEASE tag me when you post more!!!
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