Contest October-November 2020 Reading Thread

BRILLIANT!!!

 

I say nothing

 

Story 4 - Message Begins

TECHNICAL: As already mentioned (I think by @Y'ttar Scaletail), there is such a breadth of styles in this competition that it really made choosing difficult. This is a great example of this. The format of a transcribed interview is a fantastic idea. I think the details are very well done in terms of the sounds noted on the recording and the descriptions by the trooper. Some of the parts that in a normal storyline I would have expected explained more were perfectly acceptable to me here as this the imperfect recollections of a shell-shocked trooper.

Kudos for the author as the style is a great one and technically I liked it a lot.

There were a couple of jarring points. The inquisitor referring to the person as "Mr Dalvaro" jarred me a little, but only because of my knowledge of the inquisition in other fan-made and official stories (they tend to depersonalize the individual and refer to them as "trooper" or similar wording).

Overall a great technical layout.

PERSONAL: Again, even just purely from the technical point of view, this was a great story. I liked the format of the interview, the shaken guardsman being interrogated, the impassionate Inquisitor. Great stuff.

The fight between gun wielding troopers and the Lizardmen was accurate, I feel. But somehow the story lost me when the Skink Priest managed to scare off the exploratory force. Nobody trying to shoot the skink didn't seem real to me. The Slann taking out the ship was great, but I didn't understand that the trooper saw into his mind. I thought maybe that there was a warning imprinted on his brain (and thus the story's title) but it seemed his mind was fractured and broken. The second half of the story seemed a little disconnected from the first part in my opinion.

These are my "critical points". As I said, I thought the story was smartly delivered technically and was great overall.

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I'll get going on the next reviews as soon as I can.

 

I thought more like the third story has the @Lizards of Renown's feel to it

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Was my review a bluff? A double bluff? A TRIPLE bluff?

 

Feels more like PP's style to me.

 

Story 5 - The Path to Salvation

Spoiler: My review (DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE STORY!)

TECHNICAL: Again, great idea for a story and good execution. The descriptions I would give 50/50 as they were great in some places and very thin in others. I'm not sure what the change was as it seemed to flit back and forth at points. As a reader, I found this a little jarring in terms of being able to just be "immersed" in the story and follow along, which is unfortunate as the idea for the story was top-class. Very 6th Sense!

The only other thing I would say technically was the spirit was apparently only imagining that he was moving blocks, but then was able to strike and kill one of the warmbloods, which seemed a little inconsistent.

PERSONAL: Genuinely, this story would have been my favourite if I had been able to fully immerse in it. Aside from what I consider technical points above, it was a great idea for a story. I loved the Kroxigor's spirit working on to make amends for what he felt was killing his brothers, that he continued to "defend" (read "haunt") the spot to protect his brothers. I think the best bit was when he viewed his own burial stone and then his image of what he was creating wavered and then solidified again.

Fantastic entry!

 

Story 6 - Letters of the Sea

First off, kudos to whoever wrote this one. It is my favourite and definitely moved me emotionally.

TECHNICAL:

No major errors which jumped out at me. Meaning that there was no part of the delivery that brought me out of the immersion of reading the story. On re-reading the piece, I would say the only things were how the lizard could read Reikspiel (or whatever the human language was) is a little unreal. Otherwise, fantastic descriptions and delivery.

PERSONAL:

It was a funny one to read. At first I thought that the lack of action or drama would bore me, but I found myself drawn into the tale of the man sailing to Lustria to find his fortune and having this dashed on the rocks juxtaposed with the innocent lizard finding fragments of the tale and the ship, which ultimately were also destroyed just like the man's dreams. Very, very poetic and beautiful.

This was a Story of Renown.

 

This also was my favorite. I thought that the lack of dialog made the letters and story-line even more dramatic and emotional.

Grrr, Imrahil

 

Story 7 - We all belong somewhere

TECHNICAL:

The story starts with good descriptions of the prison environment with enough data to give good imagery of this. The descriptions of the first two prisoners (Skaven and Orc) were good and definitely gave me the idea of caged wild things and I felt this was an accurate description. I was jarred out of the story line by hearing that the Dwarf captive was (at times) growling noise of approval. This did not match with the environment and made it seem like he wasn't too unhappy with being imprisoned.

I felt a little jarred by the Skink's calm acceptance of his imprisoned state. He seemed quite resolved to his situation with very little apathy or anxiety which didn't match my idea of how a skittish Skink would react to captivity.

I would suggest to the author to really put himself/herself in the shoes of the captives and what their mindset would be. How do you think this character would feel after months and months of captivity? Despondent? Maybe apathetic? Possibly even suicidal, looking for a way to end it all so that the torture would no longer have to be endured. I feel this was done well with the first two prisoners as just with a couple of lines I felt it put it across well.

All of this is obviously my opinion and I am restating this as such. A survey of one is not much of a survey and I am not a professional writer, editor or publicist so ignore me freely unless the critique above seems to help improve your story writing.

PERSONAL:

Mainly, I think that there was a missing event in the story. The questioning was fine, but it made the story feel like one half of a short story to me. Possibly an escape could have been attempted? Or the revelation that the Skink was actually calm because he was there intentionally so that the Slann could carry out tests and questions on the High Elf through the Skink as a Vassal (revealing that the Skink is actually a Skink Priest relaying all information back to the Slann). Something. It felt a little incomplete to me.

(See above statement and feel free to file the above paragraph as arrogant, nonsense-talk, verbal diarrhea! )

 

Story 8 - The Mind of a Huagerdon

TECHNICAL:

Very little for me to say here apart from the fact that the writing style definitely fit the story. It was descriptions of the world as viewed through a very simple, limited lizard and how he interpreted things happening around him. Good job.

PERSONAL:

It was a cute story. I think if anything, I would have liked there to be more drama. I like the idea that there are canine-lizards (see my thread on this here) which live with the lizard men.

 

Story 9 - The Savage Beast

TECHNICAL:

Good use of descriptions here. It definitely gave me the idea of what was happening in each part. I would say that there were points where I felt things were missing (descriptions or part of the story) such as when the Scar Veteran arrives and at the end when he pledges to the Skink. It seemed like the author ran out of space on the story content as this one seems quite long. The action sequences I thought were very well described, so overall a very good effort!

PERSONAL:

I liked the story as I am a great fan of comedy. I didn't like the somewhat obvious stupid name references (Chillax, Kno'it'awl, It'chit, Kar'vup) and this made it seem a bit childish. The main body of the story was good, but then the ending felt very rushed. Possibly, the story should have been re-written to take out part of the beginning and then flesh out the end. I'm not sure.

 

@Paradoxical Pacifism

All done now matey!

@Y'ttar Scaletail and @thedarkfourth ... The ball is in your court now to finish your reviews! I'm off the hook!

 

I also nominate the following for the "ice-box voting and review challenge"

@Aginor
@Carnikang
@ChapterAquila92
@Erta Wanderer
@Tk'ya'pyk
@airjamy
@Nazqua
@Papalugy
@pendrake
@Sudsinabucket
@little-myth

These are all people that I started following at one point or another as I thought they posted interesting things, good viewpoints or had a fresh viewpoint about things.

Please bring this to the contest!

 

Send me a link I'll see if I can go over everything tonight

 

Done!

Anyone else picking up the gauntlet?

 

I'm unfortunately unable to contribute due to work - I'm at sea for the next couple of weeks.

I'm honoured by the nomination though.

 

@Lizards of Renown

I'm sure if you looked hard enough, you could find someone on Lustria-Online you haven't poked on this thread yet...You know the old saying. If you flag 100 forumites, one of them will write a short story review.