Reviews for Vigil by the Sea - FictionPress.com

Reviews For: Vigil by the Sea

Fractured Illusion 2007-07-13 ch 1,	abuseWow! I must say I really adored the language you chose to write in for this story. It fit very well, and added some sort of elegance. Your metaphores were also well played and her final choice was much interesting. A good, quality read! But why was it since 2005 that you wrote a story?
Holy Smokes 2006-09-05 ch 1, anon.	abuseHOLY SMOKES! I absolutely LOVED that story! I am amazed at your talent and the extent of your writing skills!
Dust Cloud 2006-08-18 ch 1,	abusesob more sobbing My god, this was so...yes, it was SAD. sob But at the same time moving. But now I'm depressed for life, thanks. TST
Fiore Chnudth 2006-08-16 ch 1,	abuseThis was a strange piece of work, I think. Not strange meaning bad or of low quality, but meaning odd and not what you usually see. I shall talk not of the story, which seems to be a short story much like a fable. I shall talk of the langauge. It is very far from what you usually sees. Its more unique with its use of words and composition. As it right now stands alone I'm a bit ambiguous about it. For it is odd. But when thinking of it as a dream or a fable, it grows in quality. If this was the seventeenth chapter (to blow things out of proportion) of a story, I would have been given much appraise for it. If is was a dream I would be even more impressed. But I don't quite know what it is, so I'm mainly a bit confused about what to think. But I must praise you for being original. KH KHL
Shadow Gryphon 2006-04-11 ch 1,	abuseThis was cool. Very enjoyable, and a refreshing change from peasant-becomes-queen. But at one point you call Fiovar Finovar, might want to fix that. It was a great ending, too. Fits with her love for the sea.
M.L. Burt 2006-02-14 ch 1,	abuseWow. This is really honkin' good. The description is amazing, but doesn't make it nigh-impossible to read. And I have a really hard time (generally) reading description-heavy stuff. The dialogue is nice, but it doesn't sound like something you'd hear people actually say (of course, I don't know much about how people spoke back in the time-frame, so it might just be my own lack of experience talking). The ending was also really nice, and really surprising, since there had been nothing like that mentioned in the story (Except her desire to dive into the sea). The sudden turn into extreme fantasy-stuff (transformations, magic, etc.) was really cool. This was a great story :)
crushingsky 2005-12-13 ch 1,	abuseI like a story that plays with symbolism, allegory,and ye olde english, but reviewing one is like walking a minefield. Some or all of this review may seem too presumptuous so take what is useful to you and discard the rest. The soul of this story lies like something pale and bloated just beneath the surface of a dark lake. It could be a dead body. It could be a monster. It could be some old ladie's bloomers. I'm tempted to say this is really a story about a daughter's estrangement from her father but that would be doing it an injustice. You use symbolism to effectively blur the line between fantasy and reality. You left the story open for each individual's interpretation. Great Job. However, there are problems. There are different schools of thought in writing. One will say that the narrative should be clear and immediately understandable to the reader, another will say that each sentence should be chewed over and the reader should recast their internal narrator as demanded. Whatever school this story belongs to, there were many things that made reading it a needlessly trying experience. Her mother, who had been deflowered and then abandoned by the king.Not a complete sentence. Can work for certain narrative styles if used correctly but in this instance it sits conspicuously alone in a sea of completed sentences. She did not understand, and told him of the shining armor and gleaming sword, ""sentence is ambiguous until dialogue, then reader must reframe the entire sentence in their mind before continuing. Consider replacing 'him' with 'he'. It was a winter-year, and though there were things that flourished during this time of cold and snow and ice, women and men who wore crowns were not amongst them that year.*'of cold and snow and ice' makes the exclusion of 'women and men' from 'flourished during this time' unwieldy. The particle is necessary for the tone of your story but 'that year' is superfluous. Everything here can be conveyed much more smoothly if arranged into two simple sentences. It was a time of change, this freezing time.(Cue timpani! BOM BOM BOM!) This sentence restates the essence of the previous paragraph and tries to maintain weight by the fact that it sits alone. The stark simplicity might work though if 'time' and 'cold and snow and ice' had not already been played. Rewrite the previous paragraph so this line has dramatic effect or ditch it completely. These are only examples and not an exhaustive list. Additionaly, Fiovar's pivotal vigil at the sea could benefit from being written with a bit more symetry. I'm not pulling your leg when I say that I think I see what you are doing, I think it's wonderful, and that you have a potential masterpiece(mistresspiece, heh) here but it needs some work. I wonder if this is an early story of yours or an experiment with a new narrative style. The real power of this story seems to lie in what is unwritten. It does'nt require needlessly complex sentences to have impact. My writing has all these flaws and more so I'm not condescending you. Interestingly, the ocean is symbolic of the subconscious, the universal mind, and semen among other things. Sorry, my mind goes in strange directions.

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