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137,630 Literary Works • 672,054 Reviews
I love the relaxed atmosphere that's created at the beginning of this chapter. You immediately see that they aren't seated around the dining room table having a formal meal: Luke's on the loveseat, Rem's sitting on the coffee table, Elijah's over at his computer. It's clear that they're very comfortable around each other. This is also demonstrated when Elijah starts picking up the plates and Rem hands him hers with nothing more than a gesture to prompt her. I'm still impressed with your attention to detail.
YES! the bird-clock! My grandma has a bird-clock! XD I love it.
Still, "sashayed" into the kitchen? This choice of words certainly matches your writing style, but as a former ballet student, I get a pretty weird image in my mind. Did you really mean that, in his tired state, he took long, sliding steps, bringing his ankles together swiftly between each step? Is that the mental image you expect most readers to get?
I like the word "mock-hungry", but I don't know what it means exactly. Also, when Rem said, "No one to protect you now, pretty-boy," I was rather disturbed and expected more explanation, but I didn't get any. I did kind of forget about it as I read further, though. I guess it means she was going to tease him mercilessly after Elijah was gone?
"Elijah smiled at himself and the ceiling..." I like that sentence a lot. I don't know why, but I like it. :3
I was surprised when it was the bookmark that was glowing!
"...before locking itself in a fit of fury..." I giggled. You know what else some of those phones do? They take a derpy photo of you and show it to the next person who gets the correct password.
When he started reading about the other planets and their peoples, I was filled with excitement, wonder, and anticipation for what will come next in the story. There's so much creativity there already, so much variety and untapped mysteries to discover.
Also, the last sentence to this chapter is the best possible last sentence. It created the perfect effect.
I'm still confused about the "last day on Earth" comment in the first chapter. Was that just some weird joke that I didn't get and overreacted to? It doesn't seem to have been referred to again, and the story's taking a completely different direction.
Wait.
Was that referring to how he thought Rem was going to kill him?
Plague. I'm so stupid.
No need to change it, then. I bet it wasn't confusing to any of your other readers.
Hello! I'm here for the big review!
I'm going to jump right into things.
I have mixed feelings about this opening paragraph. I like the first line and how it transitions us from the previous paragraph to this one. After this line, I assume that it's after dinner because he doesn't think about the library visit until after dinner. But then we go backwards in time to what he was thinking and doing after his library visit. I get that you're trying to show what he did during the day in a concise way, and I like that, but the way it's worded it makes the timeline seem jumpy.
I think you could do a stronger transition here. There's no indication of how long he's been watching his friends, but I would assume not long because they haven't done much yet. If that's true and it was a short distraction, I would think he shouldn't have a hard time remembering what he was doing.
Haha this reminds me of my college dorms/apartments
I thought this read as a bit of a mouthful. Perhaps experiment with making it two sentences? The description of the clock in one and what Elijah sees/does in another?
Understanding about what?
Huh? Is this praise reviews in the beginning of the book or things he's read online? Is it some sort of forward before the prologue? Did he skip reviews or something in the beginning and skip right to the prologue?
The bold part - I think "giving it up" would sound better.
And if his roommate is going to sleep but he wants to keep reading, why can't he move back out to the living room or something to read? Does he have to go to bed when Luke does?
I think you could write a stronger transition here, too.
Why does that complicate things? He got what he wanted. He was able to get into the device.
I'm not good with Latin either. What's his guess?
I want to make sure I understand the world here. So Elijah and company are living in the regular world as we know it (that's the realistic part of the story). But then it's kind of like urban fantasy in that there's going to be this other element (in this case sci-fi) and there are extra life forms and planets and stuff, and none of this was previously known by Elijah and company. Is that right? Or did Elijah know some about these other planets and life forms but he didn't realize there were so many and that Maven is part of it.
Is this information that was previously known by Elijah, or did he just learn this by reading the cool, techy bookmark?
I'm glad that the plot really started to get going here. The last couple of chapters were nice reading, but things were moving slowly. I thought the same was going to be true of this chapter until I got to the ending. I'm still not entirely sure what direction this is going in (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). And this is a first draft so it obviously doesn't have to be all perfectly ironed out yet
I think your characters are great. They each feel like real people with separate and unique personalities. I like the interplay between them. There are so many interesting directions you could go with subplots! And your writing is just so delightful to read. You do so many things so well!! This was easy to read, easy to follow, and was filled with lovely voice moments, descriptions, character development, and overall lovely writing. (And this is a first draft so, basically...I'm jealous. I feel like my first drafts are about one step above word vomit :p).
Let me know if you need me to elaborate on anything, have any questions, or if anything I said was confusing!
Kay here
Minor quip- ruffling his hair and sashaying makes me think of primping and preening, and that followed by dirty dishes is just a little bit of "does not compute."Characters:
Luke: Amateur cook, Elijah's "sometimes boyfriend," student. Enjoying what I've seen of him.
Elijah: Oooh, actually looking for a job. Sort of. Kind of lazy about it. Definitely a dreamer; that's even more reinforced here. Seriously, 'Lijah? Reading half the database on the aliens before wondering why Mavon has one
Mavon: Apparently an idiot about her passwords. I mean, seriously, I use the same three passwords for 99% of my stuff, and I still don't use my name for them. That's just asking for trouble. *Glares at Mavon* Seriously, though, you'd think she'd be smarter about the password for her index of a bunch of extraterrestrial species. At the moment, my theory would have to be she wanted Elijah to find it, because that was way too easy. And she's using her real name on earth, or her fake name in her password, which either way is odd.
Plot:
Looking good so far. I mean, I do think the bookmark came by too easily, but I'm enjoying the character interactions and am definitely intrigued to see how Elijah adjusts to knowing for sure humans aren't alone in the universe. And I'm hoping to see how Mavon will react when she realizes Elijah has her bookmark thing.
Other:
I love the obvious friendship between Luke, Elijah and Rem. They throw insults at each other, but it's obvious it's a family-like relationship between all of them.
I did like it, even though I have more negative points than usual
My reasoning right now for Mavon using her Earth name instead of her home name is that her home name is Kitinwe Mafanluwe, with "we" pronounced more like "pwe", and that's hard for her to transliterate
And it makes it easier for her to remember her Earth name.
As for the bookmark... eh, first draft plot points xD
Thanks for your feedback, as always!
This was really fun and entertaining. You started off very well with some humour, then ended it on a more serious note, all of it done very nicely. I'm totally into this story, but could you please tell me how he got the password right? I must have missed that.
Also, a minor oversight, in the sentence before the last you meant to say "He lay" instead of "He laid".
He guessed the password. On his end, it was pure dumb luck and the knowledge that people who do official business often have pre-ordained passwords. He noticed that there was an 8-character limit on the password, and he guessed twice and got it wrong ("OCLS" and "password"), and the third time, he made a lucky guess, being Mavon's last name and first initial.
Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks!