This is an experiment in POV, so if it's not too much to ask, I'd like honest opinions on that as well as how it ties in with the story.
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They were kept in the old slave forts. Mickey and Greyson didn't mind so much that it wasn't a real fort, but everyone else was pissed. But Mickey wasn't surprise; everyone else was always pissed, and she never really got why. So maybe They were cradle robbers in the literal, non-Lax way, and maybe They could never show love but so what?
Who was she to complain? Her and Greyson got the best non-Concord member rooms, and were allowed to see their parents whenever they wanted. Mickey knew she was a shoe-in to become a member; she was sure that she and Greyson were Their favorite.
She grasped at Greyson's hand, his brown eyes looking down on her with laughter. "So then he was all 'Dude, back off. My music is my life.'" He threw back his head, his Adam's apple bobbing as he laughed. She forced herself to laugh with him; she was sure it would have been funnier if she knew what music was.
Greyson was trying to make her laugh at the crass, Lax jokes that he often overheard in the hall, but he knew they didn't make sense to him or Mickey. He looked at her thoughtfully, at the way the sun glinted off of her alabaster skin and bright, colorless eyes and wondered, not for the first time, why they'd been shoved together.
He'd missed being so close to her, like they'd been when they were gangly little kids. But now that she was sixteen, they could sleep in the same room if they wanted. Not that Greyson would ever ask. His mother had told him to always be polite to Mickey. She was, after all, assigned to him, and as his mother had always said 'You'll either rest in peace or rest in pieces, but if Mickey isn't happy, then none of it matters.'
Every time he had gone back home, that was the first thing out of her mouth. No 'Hello, Grey' or 'How's my boy been doing?' But he didn't expect much from her; she was a purebred Lax, and Greyson had always been taught to ignore their stupidity. Even still, he loved and missed her. He smiled at Mickey's chatter about seeing her parents and idly wondered if she was part Lax herself.
Mickey was very excited about going home and seeing her parents. She couldn't wait to hear her mother's silly Lax babble as she baked Mickey a few dozen cookies for her and Grey to share. It'd been quite a while since she'd got to go home, and she was expecting one of their traditional Lax birthday parties. Her parents had never really explained what a "party" was, but they were slightly dim-witted Laxes and often forgot that she wasn't one. As it was, she didn't think much of her mother, but she didn't think her father was a Lax at all. He never went on about things like her mother. He was straightforward, smart, and surely only a bit Lax. She had always been a daddy's girl.
It was aggravating, she thought, how everyone was looking at her. Almost as if she was a fragile, pitiful thing. She didn't know what was wrong with everyone else, but Mickey was very close to telling them all to piss off.
But if she did, they'd probably kill her. Again. Mickey knew for a fact that death was unpleasant. Not that it hurt very much, but there was so much paperwork. Mickey decided that even though she wanted them to piss off, she wouldn't tell them so.
"Hello in there," Grey said, waving his hands in front of her face. He didn't know why she was so airy lately, but he didn't like it. Mickey had always been grounded if not a little Lax; she seemed totally Lax now, and he told her as much.
Something momentarily slipped his mind. He'd forgotten that she was a little spitfire, so he was surprised when she slapped him. "Don't ever call me Lax in front of Them again." He instantly felt terrible, his stomach clenching in anxiety. He hadn't realized that They were actually in the slave fort with everyone else. Their black robes billowed as They turned toward Mickey.
"Hey, Guys. I didn't really mean that Mickey was Lax. You do know that, don't you?" He reached out and touched the black satin of Their robes. "Actually, I'm more Lax than she is."
We care nothing of your name for the humans outside of our care, They projected. Mickey was surprised to hear Them in her head, but she didn't flinch. Well-trained Children of the Concord never flinched when They spoke, and if there was one thing Mickey prided herself on, it was how well Grey had trained her.
Mickayla, it is time. Mickey's stomach fluttered with anxiety. Maybe she'd heard Them speak to her mind since she was a new-born, but something was different. She knew better than to be afraid-fear was a strictly Lax emotion- but They weren't usually so brief with her.
"Is something wrong?" she asked, making sure to keep her voice stead. "What do I have to do?"
Today you are to visit your parents. You should know as much. Is your trainer keeping you informed? Greyson was shocked; why was he being dragged back into the conversation?
"Of course she's informed. She was just babbling like a silly Lax child about her parents, and I-"
That is enough, Greyson Concord. Grey turned his head away as Mickey looked at him with envy. He never told her that he'd moved up from being a Child of Concord to actually being an official Concord member.
Mickey was livid. She'd worked her ass off to be a Concord member since she could toddle. And on top of it all, he didn't even tell her about it! If she wasn't too jealous, she probably would've congratulated him. But definitely not now or ever.
"I'm ready to go home," Mickey said, turning away from Greyson and toward Them.
Greyson watched Mickey stomp away. He didn't want her to leave like that. He didn't really want her to leave at all. It had been months since he'd left the brown, brick-walled fort, and he knew he'd only be able to leave with Mickey when she was a Concord member.
The sun beat down angrily on his pale skin, the threat of sunburn very realistic. He sighed, trying to remember the traditional Lax way that his mother had treated his nearly perpetual burns. He banged on his head in frustration and pushed his sweaty, black hair off of his forehead.
He's never known that being a Member was going to be so gruelling. Even though he'd never give up his status as a Concord member, he wished he didn't have to do what he'd done to his poor, Lax mother. Greyson knew that Mickey would have to do the same thing to both of her parents. He knew she had the strength to do it, but he was still worried about her. After all, she was a daddy's girl, and he really missed his mother.
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Canary word: Present
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125,020 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Hey there Pink! Sorry it took me a while to get around to reviewing this for you! But I’m here now!
I am happy to say that I don’t have any picky nitpicks but I do still have some stuff that I would like to point out. The biggest thing is that “Lax” is still very vague. Usually I would say that drawing out the mystery in funky terms like “Lax” would be alright but it’s really a major focus in this section which means that it deserves some explanation. Right now, you actually have a lot of questions that deserve answering including why “They” are holding these kids and all that, at least with more detail.
You’re points of view are very jumpy as well. One minute you’re talking from Mickey’s point of view and then you’re suddenly talking from Grey’s point of view. Consider focusing on one character’s point of view, especially for a story like this. If you write it from one point of view, say Mickey’s, then you can focus on her anger at Grey and use dialogue for him to explain his reasons because dialogue can be very important.
One thing to keep an eye on in the future is definitely when to give away what you give away, especially when it comes to better informing the reader as to what the Concord is, what they do, and why they picked Mickey and Grey. Is there something important about these two or do they include everyone.
Good luck with your story, Pink, and if you have any questions or if you need anything, you’re welcome to PM me or leave a post on my wall!
Hi PinkAngel! Here to review as requested. ^^
First off, I suppose that I'll go into nitpicks (In the spoiler):
Spoiler
Woah. Okay, so first of all:
The first thing that I highlighted in red has a few things wrong with it. For started, you'll noticed that I put two 'but's' in italics, which was to show that it sounded a bit repetitive when you read it. Another thing about the second 'but' is that it begins a sentence, and it doesn't sound right. Technically speaking, you shouldn't start a sentence with 'But' ever as it's not grammatically correct, but there are some instances where you can get away with it. This wasn't one of them. I'd say take out the 'but' all together, it'll read much better.
Second of all - 'surprise' needed to be 'surprised' - probably just a typo.
Third - Craddle? Did you mean cradle?
Fourth - you capitalized 'They', which you didn't need to do. Unless it has some significance, because you do it again. I won't point it out anymore, but just so you know - it probably doesn't need to be capitalized.
'Her' should be 'She'.
'At the sun'? Nothing in this sentence really made any sense to me, starting at the 'at.' (I'm assuming that it was supposed to be 'as'?) It's extremely wordy. Description is good, but you don't need to overdo it.
Typo, should be 'to', right?
You needed a semicolon after 'said', and you used an apostrophe at the beginning of the dialogue and quotation marks at the end - pick one.
First : In red - Every time is two words, not one.
Second: In red - firth? First, perhaps?
Third: In red - I'll refer to my previous comment about semicolons. Commas would work here, too. (You need a comma after 'Hello, Grey#FF0000 ">,'
Woah there turbo - you completely jumped point of views here as far as I can tell. One paragraph, we were in one character's point of view, and now we're suddenly learning about how excited Mickey is. It just doesn't fit - at all. You need to ease into her perspective somehow - this is completely detached from the rest of the story. It's too big a transition without anything between to help the reader ease into it. Also, you typo'd the second "Lax."
First: Another typo: 'muhc' should be 'much'.
Second: Yet another typo, I think... 'paperword' should be 'paperwork' with a K.
Third: ANOTHER typo: 'thought' should probably be 'though', eh?
Also, the last sentence sounded very.... amateur. I would consider rewording a little bit of it.
Okay, so this should be split up into a few paragraphs. Right as the dialogue begins - that should be separate. Or it would look better if it was, at least. Second, right AFTER the dialogue, it would look better if you split it into another paragraph. Third of all, you keep jumping POV's too quickly, but I'll get into that later.
The dialogue here really bugged me. There's something really jumpy about the way your characters act, think and speak, and it's getting more and more noticeable. The dialogue here just didn't sound... natural or realistic.
......... More jumpy point of views. I really don't like when you do that.
Stead or steady?
Okay, so this was just way too random. It doesn't have anything to do with anything, and it just doesn't fit.
Okaaay, so now that I'm done with that, I'll move onto the actual review.
First of all:
I really, really hate to say this, but I didn't enjoy this all that much. The first thing that I didn't like about it was how jumpy your writing is, which I have mentioned several times already. One minute, we're in Grey's head, the next we're in Mickey's, and then there's a completely random sentence about one of them that doesn't fit with the story - such as 'the sun beat down on his back.' It was hard to follow, irritating to follow and just plain... unattractive. On top of that, there were a lot of grammar, spelling and punctuation errors as well as tons of typos and quite a bit of unrealistic dialogue. Put that all together and you have a very hard-to-read piece of work.
Secondly, your plot... it doesn't really make that much sense so far. Don't get me wrong, vague is good, especially in Fantasy. In fact, I love vague - but this is just a little too much so. There's Lax, there's Concords, and then a girl who's being spoken to by.... ghosts? Or something? I have no idea where they really are, apparently a slave fort that's not really a real fort... and then there are a few memories and the jumpy POV's that just make it all even harder to understand and follow. And even despite the vagueness, everything is so wordy and way too over descriptive. You're describing the wrong things - you need to find a balance of some sort, and a way to ease your reader in and out of POV's. In all honesty, it would be preferable if you could just pick one character's POV and stick to it, but I've seen flipping done before - you just need to do it right.
As for the dialogue - it just didn't seem realistic, and it didn't fit where you put it. Nothing in this chapter seemed to flow together right, and I'll stop talking about that right here and now or I'll just repeat the same things over and over again.
As for characters - I don't really know much about them. So far, they both seem extremely flat and boring. You mentioned once that Mickey was a spitfire, but that was about it. Honestly, they bored me. There was nothing interesting about them - or nothing interesting that you really brought forward.
I'm not even sure what else to say about this other than that as far as I can tell, you may or may not have a decent plot going here. It needs a lot of work, though, if I'm going to be honest. (You said you wanted honesty, so.)
Sorry if this was a little harsh, but I really hope that it helped. >.<
Keep writing,
~~Ish.