On Fri, 28 Feb 2003, Bjorn Christianson wrote:

John Biles writes:

Oddly, I've spent the last week or two staring glumly at my
WoT books, trying to decide if I dare read them all again so
I can figure out what's going on in Book 10.  So I'll
pretend that reading this fic is like studying.  Yeah.

dragonmount.com has a good guide to 'Where everyone was, as of the end of
book nine'.

Personally, I find this paragraph a little too heavy with
the ellipses.  The first two, at least, could easily be
replaced with comma.  In fact, the whole prologue is a bit
ellipsis-intensive for my taste, though that's admittedly
stylistic.

You may cry when I tell you that I reduced the number of ellipses in this
draft.

 > 	The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving
 > memories that become legend.  Legend fades to myth, and
 > even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it
 > birth comes again.  In one Age, called the Third Age by
 > some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a young man
 > was getting a beating.  It was not his first beating.  It
 > would not be his last.  The beating was not a beginning.
 > There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning
 > of the Wheel of Time.  But it was a beginning.

Heh.

One of my favorite bits.

 >      At that very moment, the doors of the inn opened up.
 > Two unfamilar figures and a familar one charged out.
 > Ukyou was in the lead, with a worried look on her face.
 > She was followed by an impressive tall fellow, and by a
 > woman as short as Happousai, walking with a staff twice
 > her size.  The tall fellow was handsome in a stern way,
 > with steel grey eyes, a long brown moustache, and long
 > dark brown hair that ran down to his shoulders.  He wore
 > brown leather with metal studs, and had an impressive
 > looking sword strapped to his belt.  A small golden crane
 > clasp held in place two corners of the blue cloak draped
 > over his shoulders.  On his right hand was a simple
 > silver ring.  His companion was dressed in a loose blue
 > dress of silk and lace.  She was tall and elegant,
 > matching her companion for height, with long green hair
 > flowing down her back, and an expensive looking golden
 > and silver hairpiece atop her head.  She strode along
 > with a walking stick firmly clasped in her right hand,
 > though she didn't seem to really need it.

You give two, contradictory descriptions of Eleanor's height
(first one in the third sentence.)  I'm guessing that
Eleanor/Moiraine was originally Cologne?  I've started

Yes.  I will fix this.  She was originally Cologne.

 >      The little group turned and headed into the inn.
 > Inside, pleasant smells drifted out of the kitchen, along
 > with the sounds of frenzied activity.  Master Al'vere and
 > several members of the Village council were busily
 > planning the Bel Tine celebration and trading stories of
 > Bel Tines past.  At another table, Genma was wolfing down
 > food as fast as it could be brought to him.

You've used "Al'Vere" up until this point.

Doooh!

 >      Kurz looked at him.  "That's what your father said
 > about lagmen, too.  Or whatever that black cloaked fellow
 > was."

Previously, you've been capitalizing "Lagman."

Doh.  Thankfully, this is easy to fix with search and replace.

 >      Ukyou laughed.  "A Lagman?  Was it here to buy wool
 > for uniforms for its Fanboy friends?  Perhaps it wanted
 > to hire Cenn Buie to thatch its roof?  Or Willy Shatner
 > to sing for it?"

Heh.  Truly a sign of evil, that.

o/~ Hey, hey, Mr. Tambourine Man o/~

General impressions:  Good story so far, with the potential
to be really great.  The little changes you've introduced so
far from the basic WoT story can clearly grow into something
much bigger, and I'm interested to see where you take them
(Ranma's curse, being the obvious one).  The fusions you've
chosen vary from very appropriate (Setsuna/Moiraine) to
ludicrously amusing (Miltonbradliena?  Definitely inspired).

There will be some definite changes down the line :)

I'm much happier with some of my character choices this time around, as
I'm drawing on a larger pool of characters, though that has the flip-side
flaw of meaning some are more obscure.

My biggest complaint is that the prose feels a little
unpolished at this point -- lots of little typos and such,
and there are a few places where the writing style isn't up
to your usual par.  Having started reading the other
chapters, it seems like this is the only one with this sort
of problem.

This chapter has the largest amount of surviving material from the
original ta'veren 1/2, so I suspect that's a factor.



             .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'