There should be--has to be--some visible connection between the volumes. And reading multiple stories should give the reader a chance at the clues.
I'll review you later chapter before midnight. Then I have some nit-and-polish on the new prospective chapter (II/78). Don't let that stop you if you want to look at it.
I'm with JTP here. Not reading previous comments may help to make fresh reviews, but when discussing or advocating policy it keeps discussions cycling around first impressions rather than developing better positions and suggestions.
I'm hoping that the reordering bug will be fixed in a day or so and I can fix the mess that is Book 1 and get to work on Erevain. In the meantime I have another prospective future Pike chapter to type up. This one has some continuity problems with the one out there now, but it's all fixable. (This one is earlier.)
When I have Erevain's episode in better shape, you can tell me how much better I'm doing.
There's not as much new skill as you think.
Some parts will have to be big rewrites. Don't worry: I'm not a slave to previous versions.
Amy, I haven't reviewed The Satchel because I have nothing to add or criticize. I do wonder, though, if you could make a book from these vignettes.
Well, if this particular Pendragon had Merlin, then your friend might be right.
So ... Great King, King, Low King?
You could also use King, Low King, Tribe's King.
In the US Navy, one of the flag (Admiral) ranks has an Upper Half and a Lower Half, to provide five peacetime grades matching the Army's five peacetime grades.
So there are four grades, High/Pendragon, Great, Middle, and Low?
So ... King and Low King? How it works depends on how often the distinction must be made in direct address.
Which raises another question: are they styled differently?
Wait, I thought that High King is the Pendragon. Or have others claimed the title?
Amy, your mistakes are tiny scuff marks. Don't bother. I fear that in trying to polish one thing, you'll gut another.
Now, Merran and Jamen have yet to meet Kirsey. Don't worry about that yet. I'm considering an inversion soon after it happens.
I've got too much to improve early on. The later stuff you say reads well avoids all my writing weaknesses.
I've been needing far too much sleep lately, so I think I've been fighting off a bug. Just what I need when the deeps of winter are two weeks early. (I also got a nasty nerve pinch affecting my left leg, result of unhappy muscles in my hip. It's getting better after a 6-day triangular course of prednisone and ten days on a mid-strength NSAID. I'm using a cane, and relearning balance with every change--in other words, about every second day.)
I'm working now on another 'later' segment. There are some continuity conflicts with the Pike-Kirsey sketch, but they are fixable. I imagined it a while ago and I'd like to get it committed to bits.
Then, if the TNBW problems get fixed, I'll put things in order and get on with Erevain.
Right now I have to get back to some SMD MLCCs. It's my first time handling them and it's not going well. They're supposed to be reflowed, but it looks like I'll have to buy some paste solder.
Well, it's nice to be useful, if only in parading my mistakes so people can see them.
Kirsey doesn't know why The Academy wants to erase history. He does know that (a) it's a bad idea generally (look at all the mistake-lessons you lose!) and (b) the Academy is full of people who make wolves look like good company.
This is an ensemble story, with a lot of threads starting.
Pengrit isn't comic relief. She's a rescue.
Kirsey and Pike are going to be two power figures, but they each have their limits. Kirsey has abilities I haven't hinted at, but he's a lousy healer, for want of practice. I'm debating having him get a lesson from Merran or even Jamen.
There is a problem if you move chapters after you have older versions. The old ones can get auto-renumbered in ways that disturb your whole sequence.
It's on Sol's fix list, and I'm hoping dearly to hear it's in this next release.
I have to have a lot more worked out before I call Book 1 finished.
I can't leave it in this state, and besides, the polishing practice (okay, grinding practice) will help me need less of it when I move forward again.
I have another sketch of a future chapter with Pike. I may put it up as I rassle with Erevain's chapters.
I'd be careful about disrupting the story with too much reveal too early. I think your big challenge is making the containment vessel episode flow freely on the way in and the way out.
As Amy notes in her last review, there's a lot to be revealed. Speaking of which, the chapter 80 under Book Two might also be interesting.
I'd suggest skipping the modifier 'Middle' except perhaps when explaining. But what about 'Low' for 'Lesser'?
I've suggested that you spend a little more time describing your physical geography. What if you introduced at the same time your political geography: who is ruling whom and what their respective ranks are? This could provide both a logic and a gestalt to help the reader follow what's going on. With that underlying your action and the character presentation that flows from your action, you might have a much stronger picture at little or no cost to the reader.
High King, King, and ??? . 'Baron' is a modern title and likely wouldn't work.
Whatever you use, you'll need to introduce it repeatedly in the early chapters of each book.
You might be able to get away with introducing the system and the ranks in each volume, and identifying a King's rank each time he comes into the story, and thereafter calling him 'King' until he drops out and returns, as though you were reminding us of a person's last name.
Putting points in a group would seem to make sense only if that group represented a closed community with its own economy, cut off from the general economy. In other words, points appear (to me) to make sense only if the wrriter is not also being charged for posting to the community-at large.
Such a group would be a closed group, and should probably be allowed subgroups, just as non-point groups are used as subgroups of the premium group.
Thus the effect of the present group structure is to exclude rather than to include. The present group structure is a mix of what's needed to create a private, separate community and what's needed to create a discussion in one corner of a public space.
The mix isn't quite right.
Or place a bank of forums outside any group.
Please keep us up to date about the versioning/reordering problem.
