Looking for readers: sample chapter

[Glisterspeck]

Hi! I'm looking for someone to read the first 12 chapters (25,000 words) of an epic fantasy novel I've been working on for quite a while. (My first posts here, a couple years back, I think, were posted when I started.)

Anyway, here's the first chapter. I'd like critiques of any kind on this. If anyone is interested to read more, I'll gladly send it to them, but I'm hesitant to post more in a public forum.

The story is about the siege of a goblin city, the population of which has fallen under the influence of a powerful wizard.

CHAPTER 1

Eggs, thought Unkel. Eggs wizard wants. Let wizard find eggs if wizard wants eggs. Not Unkel's job. Unkel is lantern keeper. Unkel's begetter, lantern keeper. His begetter's begetter, lantern keeper. Since the fall of Gernreg we are lantern keepers. Let wizard find eggs if wizard wants eggs.

With a clawed foot wedged between two stones, Unkel clung to a wall high above an alley stair. He wrinkled his tattooed snout, sniffed at the night air. The air smelled of summer, a brief season in the valley of the gern. The air smelled of brine, as it always did in Gernrik, the city of the gern. Unkel could smell the ruined city, the damp stones and rotting bricks. He could smell his own stench, a blend of moldy flesh, putrid dirt, and sour brine. And he could smell the dimbird's nest behind him, across the alley, below the ledge of an abandoned warehouse.

Dimbird never hurt wizard, thought Unkel, not dimbird. Why wizard take dimbird's eggs? Dimbird just do what dimbirds do: make egg, make little dimbird, protect egg, protect little dimbird.

Unkel pushed against the toehold. His hand closed over a granite block higher up the wall. The block wobbled beneath his claws, began to scrape from its setting. Loose mortar fell over Unkel's shoulder and scattered against slate stairs far below. Stone dust, whipped by the howling wind, stung the raw, new hide of Unkel's left forearm.

The clawed hand pulled at the toppling block. Unkel threw himself upward. The stone slid free and plummeted beneath Unkel, toward a burly two-hide gern who watched Unkel from the stair. Unkel's clawed foot found the hole left by the block, and he kicked against the wall, sprung backwards, twisted.

Below, the two-hide gern lurched away from the falling stone. The two-hide, twice Unkel's size, reeled backward and stumbled over Unkel's pet nerk, Glew. Glew squealed, snorted, and chased the two-hide down the stairs.

Above them all, a dimbird shrieked.

Unkel tumbled through the air. His body spun to meet the warehouse wall. His knobbly belly slammed against crumbling plaster.

Another shriek.

The falling block crashed into the stairs. The impact split the step where the two-hide had stood to watch Unkel climb, and the sound of cracking slate boomed and echoed up and down the alley.

Unkel slid down the wall.

His claws slashed through plaster, dug for a hold between bricks. His scrawny legs thrashed at the wall. A claw caught a crack, and Unkel jerked to a stop. His suspended weight nearly yanked the claw from his finger.

Unkel screamed. The sound was screeched anguish, unmixed agony, an answer to the dimbird's shriek.

Shaken by the near fall, Unkel hung, trembling, against the wall. His sunken chest heaved as he panted for air. The molted hide he had bound to his forearm fell loose and dangled from his elbow. The wind flapped the molted hide's hand just above Unkel's drooping head. Below, Unkel's pet nerk lumbered back up the alley stair. Unkel could not see the two-hide.

Glew chased him into the Jaws of Ekablek, thought Unkel, and he smiled. The little, gray gern then gathered his strength and scrambled up the warehouse wall, onto the roof. Above him, beating frail wings against the moon, flailing against gusting winds, the dimbird shrieked again.

"You too little, dimbird," said Unkel. "Nothing to do but scream. Wizard wants eggs. Wizard sends me for eggs."

 

[ctg]

Eggs, thought Unkel. Eggs wizard wants. Let wizard find eggs if wizard wants eggs. Not Unkel's job. Unkel is lantern keeper. Unkel's begetter, lantern keeper. His begetter's begetter, lantern keeper. Since the fall of Gernreg we are lantern keepers. Let wizard find eggs if wizard wants eggs.

Use italics to emphasize your words, but also use action narrative in conjunction to give readers a bit more of detail, so that they know where you see Unkel being.

BTW. Love the character voice. It's spot on.

With a clawed foot wedged between two stones, Unkel clung to a wall high above an alley stair. He wrinkled his tattooed snout, sniffed at the night air. The air smelled of summer, a brief season in the valley of the gern. The air smelled of brine, as it always did in Gernrik, the city of the gern. Unkel could smell the ruined city, the damp stones and rotting bricks. He could smell his own stench, a blend of moldy flesh, putrid dirt, and sour brine. And he could smell the dimbird's nest behind him, across the alley, below the ledge of an abandoned warehouse.

There's a lot of repetition in the para. I would like to see you removing some of it and thinking clearly what needs to be said and what the reader can imagine.

Dimbird never hurt wizard, thought Unkel, not dimbird. Why wizard take dimbird's eggs? Dimbird just do what dimbirds do: make egg, make little dimbird, protect egg, protect little dimbird.

Instead of making him think, maybe you could make him to mutter, could you? In that way the reader starts to fall into your character.

Unkel pushed against the toehold. His hand closed over a granite block higher up the wall. The block wobbled beneath his claws, began to scrape from its setting. Loose mortar fell over Unkel's shoulder and scattered against slate stairs far below. Stone dust, whipped by the howling wind, stung the raw, new hide of Unkel's left forearm.

The clawed hand pulled at the toppling block. Unkel threw himself upward. The stone slid free and plummeted beneath Unkel, toward a burly two-hide gern who watched Unkel from the stair. Unkel's clawed foot found the hole left by the block, and he kicked against the wall, sprung backwards, twisted.

The second para needs either the heavy editing or a easy rewrite. I would go for latter and move the POV closer to the character than where it stands at the moment. Do you think you could do that?

Below, the two-hide gern lurched away from the falling stone. The two-hide, twice Unkel's size, reeled backward and stumbled over Unkel's pet nerk, Glew. Glew squealed, snorted, and chased the two-hide down the stairs.

Above them all, a dimbird shrieked.

Unkel tumbled through the air. His body spun to meet the warehouse wall. His knobbly belly slammed against crumbling plaster.

Another shriek.

Unkel slid down the wall.

His claws slashed through plaster, dug for a hold between bricks. His scrawny legs thrashed at the wall. A claw caught a crack, and Unkel jerked to a stop. His suspended weight nearly yanked the claw from his finger.

Unkel screamed. The sound was screeched anguish, unmixed agony, an answer to the dimbird's shriek.

Shaken by the near fall, Unkel hung, trembling, against the wall. His sunken chest heaved as he panted for air. The molted hide he had bound to his forearm fell loose and dangled from his elbow. The wind flapped the molted hide's hand just above Unkel's drooping head. Below, Unkel's pet nerk lumbered back up the alley stair. Unkel could not see the two-hide.

This is a bit problematic, you use omniscient POV to tell us the details that are not necessary for the story itself. At least not in this point. Instead you should use Unkel's POV to narrate this bit. Take us into his head, please.

 

[J-WO]

I'm with ctg on this; the character voice is great.

 

[Glisterspeck]

Thanks for the feedback.

I originally started in first person to get as close as possible to the character, but I've ended up with four POV characters, so I've backed out into 2nd person. I want to be as in the head as possible, like Ender in Ender's Game, so I was hoping to avoid italicizing thoughts because I plan to have tons of internal monologue (Again, like Ender's Game).

Also, I'm dumping right into story with no real defining of the world; I was afraid I was going too far with this, so I added in the bit about smells in the first part. Seems like it was better off the first time round. Faster paced, anyway.

Let me know if you're interested in reading more. The first four chapters briefly introduce the POVs, and none are longer than 1,300 words. All together, they're 4,000 words.

 

[Belador]

I didn't mind being dumped in with no defining of the world, and I liked the character's voice too. Nicely paced action and use of language as well. A few things stood out at me:

in Gernrik, the city of the gern

Not sure the last part of this is in keeping with the POV; seems a bit stuck on. Also:

He could smell his own stench, a blend of moldy flesh, putrid dirt, and sour brine.

Wouldn't you get used to your own smell, if that was how you always smelled? Not sure it would be something that would stand out to you, unless you smelled different to usual.

The clawed hand pulled at the toppling block.

I think this would be better as 'His clawed hand'.

unmixed agony

Not sure about this phrase; what does it mean?

 

[fkatona]

Sorry, I'm soooo behind on the crits I promised other people! Buts, I'll keep you in mind in case I have a sudden motivation. Perhaps winter break...

I loved this one! Unkel is very entertaining. And I too want to know why these wizards want the gosh-darn eggs!

My only comment is that you get a little 'this happened then this happened'. You can probably cut out most of the scramble up the roof, and it wouldn't change the story or the feel at all.

Keep it up!

 

[Glisterspeck]

Hey all!

I'd kinda fallen away from this story, partly because of some feedback from other readers, but mostly because of a sort of analysis paralysis. I have four books going at once now, all having stemmed from the practice of taking a quick break to write a short story. Then, each short story became a world and an epic novel. Ugh.

I've decided to scope down to two of the books and just bounce back and forth between them. This book, The Siege of Gernrik, is one of them, so I thought I'd put up the second chapter in hopes of snaring some readers who read in genre (unfortunately, the folks I have reading are too close to trust or not genre readers).

Anyway, here's the second chapter, which introduces the second POV character.

CHAPTER 2

The green honey tea, viscous and bitter, coated Myra's throat. Only in its stickiness did it resemble honey. Its metallic tang first caused Myra to retch, but the flavor soon numbed her lips and deadened her tongue. Her whole body seemed to float, untouched by the ark built around her couch, untouched by the couch. She floated above the fleece coverings and embroidered pillows that covered the couch, above everything, apart from everything. She floated in blackness, unknowable, unknown.

The executor who had prepared the tea before Myra left the capital had told her never to drink so deeply, but the itching had grown unbearable, and she could not sleep. Her belly itched, and her palms itched, and the soles of her feet itched. The executor had told her not to scratch, to drink the honey tea instead. So she had.

The numbness that had deadened Myra's body crept into her mind, yet she was aware of a sensation far away, inside her belly. She knew it was the Ove, turning and kicking, but it felt somehow different or somehow the same. The same awe that had swept over her in the convent when she had first felt that now familiar flutter overcame her again, an inexpressible wonder that another living thing lived inside her, was part of her, shared her breath, her blood.

"The Ove speaks," she whispered, her voice strained. With an unsteady hand, she reached for the wall of the ark to call for an executor so that the Ove might be heard by one capable of understanding. But the wall fell away. Each of the ark's carved walls fell away. The gilded panels and silk roof were whisked into a funnel of wind that circled the couch, an eerily silent blur of wind.

Myra blinked against the bright sky. It had been six months since she had seen the full light of day. For six months, she had been cloistered inside her ark. But it is not day, thought Myra. It is night. We are camped for the night near the head of the Great Salt Road. The Ove has taken me somewhere. Where? The Ove wants to be heard. Where is the executor who would hear the Holy Ove? Where has the Ove taken me?

Myra looked beyond the whirling funnel and saw ice-bound mountaintops vanish into clouds that weighed heavily upon the bright, still sky. Somehow, she knew she hovered near the peaks of the Celestial Pillars, the Twin Lords of all mountains and the home of Brackmeer, the demon city.

Suddenly the whirling funnel stilled, and the circling walls fell. Myra pulled herself to her knees and watched the walls plummet toward Brackmeer, far below. The couch beneath her floated down after the walls, like a leaf carried on the wind, though Myra felt no wind against her flesh. She could not feel her flesh, bare and shivering beneath her fingers. She could not feel her fingers. She looked from the city below to the Celestial Pillars, and she saw both at once, as though there were no limit to her vision and she could see what lay before her, above her, below her, and even behind her, all in one great, sweeping view.

A river of ice, as broad as any river in all the valleys of the cordillera, split the Twin Lords. The river plunged down between the shrouded peaks, through a chasm that zigzagged from pillar to pillar to descend on Brackmeer like a streak of blinding, frozen lightning. Only a jagged spur, the headwall beneath which Brackmeer huddled, kept the river from crushing the city under its flow. The city's many terraces, each a tangle of alleys and tumbledown buildings, were carved from the face of the headwall, deeply undercutting the spur.

The couch drifted down toward the city. Myra felt faint, disoriented by her boundless sight. The city lays before me, she thought, as though to convince herself. All around, the craggy shoulders of the valley. Below, the black waters of a lake. In her boundless sight, the crags seemed to move slowly around the valley and blur against the distant mountains. Even the mountains, the great and constant mountains, seemed to quiver before her eyes. Myra closed her eyes against the vision, but she could still see.

She saw the walls of the ark splinter against a monumental stairway of slate steps, a black, meandering scar that the city bore from terrace to terrace, then threw over the lower wall and down a steep ramp of scree, into the waters of the black lake. She saw a fort constructed of makeshift rafts and boats, lashed together, boasting many siege engines. She saw a hail of burning pitch flung over the wall. She saw smoke billowing up from Brackmeer. She began to rock slowly on her knees, her eyes squeezed shut.

She saw men charge up the wide steps, through the Gate of the Moon, and into the fire. Myra clutched her belly with trembling arms. It is Medavea's will, came a thought. Dark places, ruled by demons formed from the Naught. They must be destroyed. They must be forgotten. Myra rocked forward, to the very edge of the couch. She opened her eyes and stared down into the rising smoke. I am not strong enough to do this, she thought.

The smoke stung her eyes. She felt the Ove move inside her, kick and turn. Her flesh tingled beneath her fingers. She heard a song. A mournful voice offered a lament for Gernrik, the name the demon folk used for their city. Myra's all-seeing vision was fading; she had to look toward the chasm above the headwall to find the singer. A gern-demon, barely distinguishable in the shadow of the pillars, stood on a treacherous path that climbed alongside the ice river. The Heavenly Ladder of the Hayomite pilgrims, thought Myra. A heathen superstition. And the gern-demon that climbs it, soon to be a heathen superstition.

Exhausted, Myra toppled over and fell toward the smoke. The smoke enveloped her, and she could not see. It thickened, filled her nostrils, and she could not breathe. The smoke whipped ashes against her bare flesh, causing her to itch. She coughed and kicked and flailed her arms as she fell through the dense smoke, now thick with ashes. Through the blackness she saw a darker form, and she braced herself to meet the steps, thrashing her arms in defiance.

Her arms swept aside a thick fleece, and her fists pounded against the ark's walls.

"What is it, Om Ovelyn?" The voice was calm, but its timbre hinted at a dormant power, a strength beyond that of normal men. It was the voice of a Tuskul brother, the empire's elite warriors and the personal guardians of the Ovelyne. It was the voice of Hurekine, the captain of Myra's guardians, the only voice, besides those of the executors, permitted to address her directly. Myra's hand raised her veil to cover her face even though she remained hidden inside the ark, cloistered and holy, unknowable, unknown.

"The Ove has spoken, captain. I, I tried to call for an executor, but I... I must speak to an executor, captain. I must deliver the vision so that it may be interpreted."

Myra's fingers played nervously over a heavy pearl that dangled from the hem of her veil. She waited, in the blackness, for Hurekine to speak. At last, he did.

"The high executor has trekked through the night to prepare your way, Om Ovelyn. We will follow before dawn. By midday, we will reach the camp. There, the Ove's message can be interpreted by the Grand Executor himself, Lord Gom oc Deoc. He waits for you on the shores of Lake Brackmeer."

###

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Hi, Glisterspeck,

I'm afraid there have been some changes to the rules since you last visited here, and we now require a certain level of involvement with the Critiques section and/or the Chronicles community before asking for critiques.

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/527567-please-read-before-posting-rules-and-guidelines-for.html

So, unfortunately, I have to close this thread. Why not visit some of the others and contribute your ideas and suggestions? I'm sure that the other aspiring writers here would benefit from you insights.

When the moderating team feels that you have made a sufficient contribution, this thread can be reopened.