Prologue
A cloaked figure walked slowly down the lane, all by himself. The sun had gone down some while ago, and it was difficult to see. He turned off the road, approaching what seems like a stretch of wilderness. The shadows hid all but his immediate surroundings.
Eventually he came to a torch-lit clearing. No one would have been able to find it if they did not know where it was; it was far off the beaten path. Circular stands surrounded the edges, and they were filled with around fifty black cloaked figures. To the left of where the man came in, there were seven chairs set up, but only six of them were filled. One lone chair faced them.
The low murmur that was reverberating around the clearing ceased as the man stepped into the clearing. He took a seat in the lone chair in the center, while one of the men in the seven chairs stood up to address the gathering.
“Let the assembly convene. We have been called here today to judge the conduct and actions of Stephen Tamera, one of our own. He has been charged with illegal involvement with a mortal.” The murmur began again, the cloaked crowd appalled. The speaker clapped his hands to try to bring everyone back.
“As everyone here well knows, we only mate with our own kind. That way, no one else learns our secrets and gains our abilities. Punishment for dishonoring this rule…,” he paused for a second, “is death.”
He paused to let this sink in and then began the questioning. “Stephen, did you know about this rule and that it was in place?”
For the first time since arriving, Stephen spoke, shifting in his chair, “Yes.”
The speaker looked at him sternly and said, “And did you realize that you openly disobeyed this rule?”
“Yes.”
“Do you accept the punishment put upon you whether or not you agree with it or like it?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to turn the final decision to the Council or to the assembly?”
“I would like to turn it to the assembly.”
The speaker looked slightly taken aback, but then continued on without acknowledging it. “General assembly, there are three options before you. You may rule the offender off with no punishment other than a warning. You may choose to punish him, but in a different way that would be decided by the Council. Lastly, you may mark him as fully guilty and go through with the prescribed punishment of death. You will have three minutes to think and decide.”
Those three minutes were painful. The severity of the problem hung in the air, heavy and looming. I had been many, many years since this rule had been broken; no one alive remembered it. Stephen sat silently while those in the assembly discussed, as did the Council.
The time of judgment soon came, and the speaker stood up, clapping once more to get the attention of the others. “The time to decide the fate of the offender has now come. If you support statement one, stand up.” A few liberals rose, but definitely not the majority.
“If you support statement two, stand.” Three people stood. If you support statement three, stand.” There was a loud noise as almost everyone stood.
“The verdict has been reached. Stephen Tamera, you have been sentenced to death by decapitation once the assembly has been concluded.” People slowly filed out. Stephen continued to sit and stare solemnly at the ground. When everyone had left except for the Council, the speaker stood up once again.
“Do you have any last requests?”
“No.”
One of the other Council members came up behind Stephen. He closed his eyes as the cold metal slit his throat, his last thoughts drifting to his wife and the child that was soon to be born.
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141,341 Literary Works • 674,350 Reviews
Hey Xreigon, you only received one of your Secret Santa reviews during Christmas in July, and so I'm here to give you that second review!
To my surprise, I actually found this very interesting. I'm going to be honest and say that I was a little hesitant before reading this because I'm a bad person who tends to be biased towards the fantasy genre, primarily because I can't write it myself at all. I'm terrible at it, like, really bad. As a result I do generally avoid the genre, but I'm certainly glad I read this. The idea seems very interesting with a sort of star-crossed lovers theme, and it actually reminds me of one of my favourite novels (Noughts and Crosses/Black and White by Malorie Blackman. That similarity obviously gives you some brownie points. Your writing itself is actually very good to with regards to grammar and punctuation, and the prose ran nice and smoothly overall.
While I was definitely impressed with this as a whole, I can't help feeling that I wanted it to be a bit more... dramatic. I don't feel that you go into enough detail because I felt slightly distanced throughout this prologue. I felt like I was watching all of this stuff happening, but I didn't quite feel immersed in it like I wanted to be, and so the piece lacked a bit in terms of drama. This is the kind of thing that could be greatly helped with some clever grammatical devices. For example, maybe you could use some short sentences. Don't go crazy with them, but use them to your advantage in order to build up tension, especially as the verdict is being delivered towards the end. There's bucket loads of tension potential there.
What I'm basically trying to say is that I think you should consider messing around with this a bit more. Make us readers feel more involved with whats going on in order to build up the drama. What you ultimately want to achieve here is for this prologue, especially Stephen's death, to have a big impact on us readers. We want to be frustrated at the fact he's being killed for falling in love, we want to feel sympathy for the woman and child he's leaving behind e.t.c. If you can make us feel more involved in the story, and make it more dramatic as a whole, then I can promise you that you'll achieve that.
One way I especially think you'll be able to immerse us readers into what's going on in this is if you were to describe Stephen, especially his emotions and thoughts, in more detail. So far he's a bit of a cardboard cut-out character. I don't feel like I know him at all, and so his death doesn't have much impact on me. I know this is in third person so describing his emotions isn't going to be easy, but it's definitely still possible. Just give us snippets of what he's feeling and thinking every now and then. An especially good way to portray thoughts and emotions is by describing his physical reactions. Are his palms clamming up? Is his breath heavy? Are his hands shaking? Does his lip quiver when he hears the verdict? Or does he clench his jaw to try and keep his pride? I really want to feel for Stephen, and the best way of you being able to make me do that is by bringing him to life.
I don't really have any other critiques, but there is one nit-pick kind of thing I would like to bring up. The way in which you write this prologue is overall very clean and professional sounding, and I think your dialogue is generally good. It's very official sounding, which I'm assuming is what you were going for. There was one line that bothered me a little though, which is this one:
The part I've bolded is what's bugging me a little. Maybe this is just me, but death by knife sort of sounds unprofessional. I don't feel it matches up to the rest of the dialogue anyway. Is Stephen going to be decapitated? If so, how about renaming it to death by decapitation? If he doesn't' get decapitated in the end though, you obviously wouldn't be able to do that. I still would recommend trying to come up with something different though. This isn't a major issue or anything, but I do think you should consider it.
If you have any questions or comments regarding this review, please don't hesitate to let me know. Just drop me a comment on my wall, shoot me a PM, pop up to me on chat, or just leave a reply to this review.
Keep writing,
xoxo Skins
Ooooooooh me gusta! This is looking really great so far!
A fantastic prologue indeed. Your word choice is astounding and your descriptions are wonderful. It gives us just enough information to get hooked on your story but not so much that we lose interest, because we are left wondering what these people are and what will happen to the child. Like somebody else said it was easy to follow. It had about everything a good prologue needs, good job. But are they the kind of immortal that lives forever unless killed by force (like Elves, I guess) because usually immortal means they can't die. But that'll probably be cleared up as the story goes on, so no worries.
With a writing style so great, you should give us a little more of a hook in your description. I wasn't super intrigued by it until I read the part about "not mating with mortals" and then my brain said "WAT." So yeah, gurl, give us something to catch our eye while we are perusing the new posts! Your story certainly deserves to be read. Goooood jooooob!
This is amazing. I really enjoy this small story. If you haven't read this story, and read this review, please don't. As it contains spoilers.
The things I do like:
1: The storyline was easy to follow. It's almost as if you were part of the council, trying to decide Stephen's fate.
2: The sad ending of this writing was a perfect build-up. You feel sorry for Stephen and his family, and that he broke a law and he must pay his fate. But then once you think it through after you've read the story, you try to understand if it's exactly a good or bad ending. He blatantly broke a law, and that's obvious. But he created a family with this 'mortal'.
3: The grammar was perfect, and I found absolutely no faults in it whatsoever.
The things I didn't like:
I couldn't find anything. I'm sorry, usually you're supposed to post constructive criticism, but.. I've literally found nothing to nag about. Good job!
Hello, hello! I love your story! Well, what I've read anyways.
It's truly amazing and I am having trouble finding things to point out or make changes too.
My advice is that for the first paragraph in the sentence 'He turned off the road, approaching what seems like a stretch of wilderness. ', the seems is present tense when it should be past tense.
Also for this paragraph you are missing a lovely little end quotation thing '“If you support statement two, stand.” Three people stood. If you support statement three, stand.” Right before the 'If'.
That's seriously all I can find.
Sorry I couldn't be any more help. Keep writing!