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Always modern writers want you to start in media res--in the middle of things.  And for a story where adventure carries the story, that makes sense.  But this isn't that kind of story.

First of all, you have a world to introduce.  Secondly, you have an ensemble that is, in the first volume, at least as important as Master Kha and maybe more so. Your current first chapters introduce the ensemble and the world quite well.

Heinlein started in media res with (if I'm not confusing stories) Starship Troopers, but that story was, in the end, about the relationship of individual and society, and the incident quickly turned in that direction.  That's not your story.

Moreover, it would not be proper, in the story logic and the logic of the characters, to pull all the students in with Master Kha and discuss the risk there.  The scenes you have fit the logic of story, situation, and characters.  You don't need to spike those with amphetamines.  Anyone who will like your story on the macro level will be drawn into those those chapters.

The chapters you need to fix are the adventure inside the containment vessel.  You need to let us see what's happening in the dark, and make it more sharply memorable.  I'm not sure whether the solution will involve shortening or lengthening the episode, or neither.

If you dive right into Alina, you have two story threads that you'll have to connect later, with no common starting point.

Is it important here to have the death by blown staff?

Now, I think you could make part about Alina poaching Kha's manpower more memorable.  Perhaps Alina could suggest that Kha's school is a school of menials, fit for the work of 'tradesmen'.  Perhaps you could sharpen the parts about Alina having the goods on everybody, and even threatening to spill some secrets of Kha's lieutenants.

And perhaps that needs to be woven in a little bit with Katerin and how Anver is trying not to be in love with her because she is Alina's lieutenant.  Heck, you could let Katerin be a brief distraction in an earlier chapter.

Rather than bring another thread in--unless there is an organic reason for it--I think you should find a way to play up the existing elements: Earthwound and the Black Staff.

Or else throw them out entirely.  But I think they are too central to your story.

Right now, Alina is more likely to kill someone than one of the necromancers--until that containment vessel is opened.  Earthwound and the violation of the containment vessels would seem to be precipitating events.  I'd prefer linking the containment vessel somehow to the Black Staff and Earthwound, at least thematically.  If you can arrange things somehow that the reader catches on before the characters, so much the better.

Do you want Alina or not?  She's a brilliant precipitating event, providing vital information and letting Anver be a hero early.  The duel with her also carries some important clues.

Now ... knowing your skill, I've no doubt that you could tell the story quite well as you've just outlined, but you'll have a lot of patching to do along the lines I've written above.

If you do want to play Strongest Start, start with the utterance of Su Cinibrae (and I'm pretty sure I've got the spelling wrong).  But then Anver's first utterance will be ruthless, and you'll have to work to convince the reader that Anver isn't really like that.

Chapters 1 and 2 are not problems.  The containment jar chapters are, perhaps because the action and the story arc tend to obscure each other.

Ah  Will fix.  Thanks.

Seven lines--my gosh, that could include a Higgledy-Piggledy

Glitchen fixed.  Chapter numbers changed to reflect reality, and to leave some room for me to work.

Huh?  What??  Oh, it's an open question.  But I prefer not to kill without story need.  Go read Gaudy Night.

I just realized that, apart from a few typos, I have a seious problem with missing italicizations.  TNBW does not cut/paste them properly, even from itself.

It might depend on the period.  Most compounds start as two words, get hyphenated, tnen lose the hyphen.

Or limit self-promotion to a single, designated thread?

The 5000 word limit question is for a subsequent chapter.  I'd like to make one chapter of two that are split artificially.  Although we could also say they are unified artifcially.  Well, it's good to know.

I'm still working on Erevain.

In one of the ADVENTure-inspired text interface games, a certain action in a certain place results in the message "Nothing happens."  If the action is repeated, the new message is "Twice as much nothing happens."

Well, I'm trying to work scenes that are based not on what happens but on what is implied, indicated, and hinted.  And I want it to feel at least a little real.

So I need to put twice as much nothing in the scenes, and keep them interesting.

Not a request, a question: Does the new site have the 5,000 word/chapter limit?

Yes, but sometimes top-of-story comment requests get forgotten.

Now there's another possibility: a field for the author's requests to reviewers, which will appear over the review buttons and at the top of the review page.