Comments:

Good things:

Nice moody story and dark fairy tale feel to it

Well, written as always

Ending is nicely horrific and a fitting conclusion to a string of 
failures to communicate or think clearly.  Especially ironic since being 
a UU, Eric didn't NEED the Mermaid's heart...


Bad things:

Mongols?  Maybe Hans Christian Anderson puts the story somewhere in Asia, 
but my own impression is that Eric and his kingdom is somewhere in 
"fairyland Europe".  It would have to be on a coast, and the only coastal 
regions attacked by mongols in Europe was Poland, and they only raided 
Poland.  So this triggers my aggravated historian reflex :)

The Sanjiyan.  Too vague.  She wanders in, conveniently turns Eric into a 
UU and leaves.  This screams "Plot device, Plot Device, Plot Device".  I 
can't quite see a Sanjiyan turning someone into their UU (which I had the 
impression they could only have one of), and then just leaving them 
behind.  

Finally, even dark fairytales, people bring their destruction on 
themselves, rather than just blundering their way into it.  Eric comes to 
a bad end through a string of circumstances he largely cannot control.  
His only mistake is to leave the castle without telling Ariel what is 
going on, yet the doom he suffers is hugely disproportionate to his sin.  
Fairytales are often black and grim, yet one of their features is that 
justice is done.  Those who have suffered unmeritedly triumph, while the 
evildoers perish, often in a rather bloody and painful fashion in older, 
uncensored versions of the stories.  This story does not fit that paradigm.  
Perhaps you have chosen to consciously reject that paradigm, but then I 
would have to recommend a different style of casting the tale.  



John Walter Biles :  MA-History, Ph.D Wannabe at U. Kansas         
ranma@falcon.cc.ukans.edu      bailesu@komodo.hacks.arizona.edu  
http://www.hacks.arizona.edu/~bailesu/falcon.html 
http://www.dhp.com/~wraven/john/index.html
"It's good to kill the King."  "I still think the Saxons should have 
put a higher price on our heads.  I'm more valuable than 25 librum."
--Frequent quotes from our PENDRAGON sessions.