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This is a serious group, very friendly, with people trying to help people.  Welcome!

Congrats!!!

Isn't it great that we're talking about these characters as if they are real?  One of the highest compliments you can pay a writer.

I'll check it out.  I know that Ayn Rand took 10 years to write Atlas Shrugged (not counting the complete, detailed, almost line by line outline she began with).  Rex Stout could crank out a Nero Wolf story in a weekend.

You're playing with a trope, and thus you have to be careful.  If Hugh doesn't end up a bad guy, you will have a whole lot of 'splaining to do.  Maybe not as much as the screen writers of GOT will have if in the next season.  But it will still be uncomfortable.  I think the only twist about Hugh that would not make for a complete mess (perhaps a salvageable one) is--is he a drug dealer or MI6?  Or maybe, he's a woman trapped in a man's body.  He can be made good, but in an anti-hero sort of way is what I'm getting at.

And we are all waiting, with baited breath, for the happy ending.  (Which again could be twisty. Hugh, being a CIA agent on the trail of Norm's Big Shiny Thing, refuses to let her go with him, but, after resuming her ballet career, Sarah finds that Sergey is ex-KGB, and he and Hugh meet a kindly old man, who, after getting tired of playing host to dead people, starts an international anti-terrorist group)...No?

I imply that the Western Tribes don't really cotton to sorcery, so I'll explain it.  Dragons may be jealous of horses (they both provide elfins with rides), but no hostility as far as I know (I'll ask Rhiannon the next time she narrates to me.)  But maybe Yttrbr mother had a bad experience with one. lol

I agree with this.  "Even heros have the right to bleed."  And this is so realistic to the problems young women face in our world.  Noe everyone is as supportive of young women's ambitions as Bill Clinton is.  "You want to be President, dear?  Let me go first, so you can learn from my mistakes." lol

Charles:  I disagree that you need a narrative as a prologue to what is happening in a fantasy or science fiction, unless you define the genres in such a way as, indeed, you have to have such a narration. You say that genres that don't need such an introduction aren't really outside of human experience.  OK, fine, but then we begin to asked questions like--is it really fantasy or SF?  I'm not sure what the point of that is, unless you're dealing with an editor who only publishes such things, and has a specific definition in mind ("Can't have robots.  We already have robots.  So it's not science fiction.")  I think the best of the F/SF genre does take human experience and puts it in a new context.  I feel a little defensive here, but I really don't care what my stories are called.  Indeed, the first turns on jealousy, intrigue, and reactions to betrayal and coming down in the world.  If that means it's not fantasy, that's fine.  I deliberately limit the technology (with a few exceptions like anti-gravity) to which will most likely be achieved by the end of this century.  Thus, "warp drive" isn't science fiction by your definition.  The magic is limited to the Mabinogion, for the most part, but employes other tropes, like Gypsy curses.  The gypsy in Stephen King's Thinner is similarly modelled:  a curse to nakedness is parallel to a curse to thinness. Involuntary nudity is a kind of disability, which isn't beyond human experience.  A fight for the throne, a civil war, and neo-colonial style imperialism isn't either. 

I agree with Fred Miller's definition of science fiction vs. fantasy.  SF is in an orderly universe, governed by understandable natural laws.  Fantasy isn't.  It is a squishier context, but a world where there is sorcery, one has to be careful not to run afoul of witches, mind manipulation, and one that has medieval knights, castles, and context surely counts.  If not, then I'm content with calling it "adventure," "historical romance," or just WTF (which is why I contemplate self-publication).  But I've read stories labeled "fantasy" by conventional publishers (like Tor) that take place in 1st person or limited 3rd person). 

Star Trek wasn't a critical or popular success because the critics and the sponsoring network hadn't done proper democraphics.  The year NBC canceled it, they did run such a demographic analysis, and although ST: TOS didn't have the 30% of the viewing audience they were looking for, the engineers, professionals, and college graduates who watched it bought an awful lot of really big ticket items.  So they lost money when they canceled it.  Kirk, to my memory, never explained what the Federation was, who Klingons were, or went iinto warp drive, teleportation beams that defied Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (hence, why TNG introduced the notion, again w/o explanation, of "Heisenberg Compensators" (they figured those engineers, et. al. would know the contest and why transporter beams are more magic than technology).  Kirk just did things like say, "None of us realized that each was perceiving a different woman," which raised the question--how did he know it to put it in his log?  It was clearly an artificial device, and grated. I think an introduction risks the same thing.  Or an omniscient point of view that over-explains.  Tolkein, in the Hobbit, takes it for granted a hobbit would live in a hole in the ground--albeit, as mentioned, a really nice one.  No--"because of the economics of Middle Earth, the problem of scarcity was solved by a patronage system that put hobbits in holes in the ground."

Anyway, back to helping Akhere, I would advise him *not* to have a long introduction, to sprinkle explanations through the dialogue in a natural way.  He wondered whether there should be rings around the planet, to clue the reader into it's not being our world.  I told him one character could say, "ooh, the rings are beautiful tonight."  (Substitute for 'the moon.')  Heinlein, in Starship Troopers, had a Lt. Colonel run the Ethics class to point out some of the ways the world came into existence.  No introduction.  We're thrown into the middle of the Terran Army fighting an alien species.  We don't even know, until a flashback, how the war happened.  The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, another example.  Double Star.  Not as easy in fantasy, I concede, but the use of mythological traditions (like the Mabinogeon) help. 

Or you can go the Gormenghast way, and have 100 pages of intro before anything happens.

Don:  I share your concern with the addition of a mystery character.  Why I waited until one of the last chapters to do it.  I'm not committed to it.  Might take it out.  All the snippits you speak of are there, but from the MC's point of view. Like in the last chapter you read, where Rhiannon wonders about the shadowy figure possibly involved in an arson and memory erasure.  (btw, I took your suggestion and had her thoughts about it revealed during dialogue.)  I had the same qualms when I wrote a prologue from the mystery character's POV, and it confused a couple of new readers.  And the mystery character reveals enough at the end of the 2nd book that I will continue to debate the inclusion of the chapter until it's time to post it. 

It would be challenging to write a whole chapter  from the mystery character's POV, but Reginald Hill does it and effectively, so it can be done.  (Although indeed, by the time it is revealed, you think, 'Oh, it's her, is it?  I thought so.'  But that's the problem with any mystery story.)

For a novice writer, I suggest shadow plotting.  You write from the mystery character's POV but off stage, and FYEO.  The snippets come in when the mystery guy intersects with the MC.  But here, be careful, as you need to balance that, as a kind of clue giving, with the reveal.

Akhere, if you aren't thoroughly confused by now, you were not paying attention. lol

Name/wip:  rhiannon.  wip:  Rhiannon the Nude:  Jeb & Rhia's love story & The Fight for New Fairy.  (I actually am working on 4 to 5 novels under the working rubric of 'Rhiannon the Nude,' and may start a 5th or 6th.)

Favorite genre:  to write, fantasy.  To read, mysteries. 

First character I ever wrote?  John Drake, special agent and interdimentional traveler.  MO?  Wise ass and super competent.  Actually, now that I think about it first character in a novel I wrote was Dawn (AKA Morgan le fey).  Never published.  Probably for good reason. 
Second character:  Rhiannon Oset.  MO:  naivety and derring-do.

The advantage of 1st person is that it associates you in.  You can have multiple 1st persons, just make sure you don't make James Patterson's mistake, when he does that, and have them all sound alike.  Each POV will be limited, and that will be challengings in terms of the action lines.  You may have to do shadow plotting in the 3rd person, to have the antagonists or challenges move along, only to be encountered by the characters without this authorial knowledge.

My book Jeb & Rhia is written from alternating 1st persons, although I end up having a chapter in 3rd person, because of the difficulties.

Your book is well written, (does need organization), and really expresses your advantage in writing YA.  You are one.  Right now, in regard to POV, I'd use my Great Aunt Maude's advise:  "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Hi Jeanne: 

Welcome back.  Last February, I came back after a long absence, was pleasantly surprised at the quality and friendliness of the crowd that congregates here.  I'm sure you will too.  I look forward to reading & reviewing your posts.