Sadness! I hate it when the well of inspiration runs dry... And life sure doesn't give us much room for the pleasure of writing, does it? Ah well... Maybe one day you'll take it up again. We can hope!

-I.I.

That was so sad! I almost came close to crying for him.

Great chapter.

I'm intrigued to see what happens next.

~Twilight Starr~

Well worded and dramatic intro.

Good job!

~Twilight Starr~

This chapter has further captured my interest. I'm anxious to find out what Dekon's going to do now that Besany is dead. Where's he going to go? Update soon, you two! Great job!

-I.I.

hey, sorry for not being to drop a review sooner than you might have anticipated. i totally forgot to add you to my author alert list... silly me.

anyway i only found this one. "the crick wound its way". i think you meant "creek" here.

as for the entire chapter it was still following the conventions of a royalty-to-peasant-and-back-to-royalty storyline: namely, the destruction of the village/hovel where the royalty in hiding had shut himself from the world. this was used a lot of times before, but i guess i need to give you credit because this was well-written and Dekon's character really comes across, including his anger at the world and even at God. this in itself is a good way to develop his character--anger is always good in literature, as long as you can pull it off in a nice way.

once again i must laud elisefey's superb writing skills that brought to life the world where you set this tale in. i salute you both.

update soon, because i'd like to see how Silverantha's doing. XD

~DD

Harr.

T'alnoth of the Gold Flight:

-Play? Well, perhaps...but...shouldn't chores be much more likely? Low-tech fantasy worlds don't have the conveniences we have, and things like cooking, cleaning, sweeping, herding animals and miscellenious household chores were often done by children, simply because they didn't require much in the way of strength or specialized skill. There would be much less time in a peasant family for children to play, definitely not enough for HOURS of making an army of stick-men. In a noble or wealthy merchant's family, perhaps, but NOT here.

-"Creek", not "crick." The spellcheck is NOT your friend.

-God? Crosses? Church? Presuambly, this isn't earth, why would there be christianity? On Earth, there were circumstances and social stances that probably helped such a monotheistic religion spread, are those exactly the same in your work? And even so, why would it be exactly the same as christianity, with all the same bells and whistles? Unless you're writing alternate reality, it's not acceptable.

...

...

*facepalms*

-Typical. Earliest mark of a stupid, incompetent villain-killing everyone except for the protagonist and razing the village, which gives said protagonist plenty of excuses to wangst, swear so-called revenge, sneakily step around the thorny issues of having to leave everything he's ever known and his loved ones.

And of course, the villain manages to kill everyone except the Destined Hero. Never mind that something more subtle wouldn't be better, but no...having to raze everyone in sight and screaming at the reader how horribly EVIL the villain is...

Harr.

T'alnoth of the Gold Flight:

Please. While it's probably too late, you're put me off right from the very start-the royalty-as-peasants plotline is one of the most common, cliched, and horribly done ones I've seen done in the fantasy genre. It might we okay if it's done well, but it's NOT done well 99.9% of the time.

We'll see. but to quote Limyaael:

"Don’t use royal blood as an “explanation” for a supposedly low-born hero. It’s not clever, it’s overblown, and it has really nasty implications. Satisfied?

No?

This is one of those points where the number of authors using the convention has influenced readers of the books. It’s not clever, now, to hint that your “orphan” hero is really of royal blood, and so destined to save the world and rule the kingdom. It’s appeared in so many places that the subtlest clues the author plants often won’t make reader suspicion go away. (Also, most times, authors think they’re being subtle when they aren’t… but I digress). If you want to use it mainly as a cool plot twist, you should be aware that that time has really passed.

It’s also another place where authors approach royalty **-backwards. Instead of showing why everyone fears and honors and is in awe of royalty—or, hell, elevating the peasant hero to the heights and showing how dizzied he is by his change in status—they expect readers to embrace royal blood as the final proof that he’s ready for the throne. Once again, it’s a sacrifice of an interesting person to the specialness virus, and writers make it even worse by trying to make the announcement of the hero’s royal blood dramatic. For sheer percentage of fantasy scenes that turn into purple-prose-filled melodrama, these have to be the kings.

Finally, the nasty implications bit. So your hero has struggled through blood and sweat, has defeated his enemies, has inspired his allies, has done many good deeds, has defeated the Dark Lord…but, of course, he can’t possibly be fit to rule unless his ancestors ** the right people. Never mind that it doesn’t make any sense, since the hero’s immediate background and upbringing are usually completely peasanty, and he can’t be a “natural” king any more than his identically-raised neighbor would be. Never mind that it might have been centuries since that oh-so-special **, or his ancestors might have been people whom no one would have trusted with the throne, or that he is a perfectly fine character without this extra, clumsily added trait. Never mind that the final, really nasty analysis is that he’s not a hero because of what he does or believes; he’s a hero because of who he was born, something he didn’t choose and can’t change. What a wonderful implication!

Now you know why I have the urge to shred books containing that plotline."

-"Silverantha, the girl twin, looked almost identical to her mother, with the same sweet, honey-blond hair and eyes a shimmering, shifting array of gray, green and blue. Her twin brother, Dekon, favored their father, with his raven black hair and cornflower blue eyes."

Stock descriptions, especially the last part. Do we really NEED to know the appearance of the twins?

Oddly coloured hair and eyes...well on the way to Mary Sue-ness.

On a side note, a little tidbit that is related to this...

"Sacrifice pride to survival. If the distinctive sign of your persecuted group is that they all have red hair, I will expect head-shaving, hair-dying, magical illusions, wigs, and so on. I will not expect your red-haired mages to continue being red-haired out of some silly-** pride. Any distinctive group that was intent on enduring hundreds of years' worth of hate would have to sacrifice pride to survival, or they would be wiped out within a few generations. And again, good riddance.

I've read too many fantasies where the heroine keeps some identifying marker out of sentimental value, even though the bad guys are searching people for such a marker hither and yon. I can accept that someone would want to keep such a trinket; I can't accept that someone who knows that she must survive in order to accomplish her mission keeps it stubbornly, in spite of the danger of being found and killed. Again, the usual authorial solution is to make the bad guys stupid. They don't search her for whatever contrived reason (usually the heroine flirting with them and discouraging them that way), and she waltzes through flowers while maintaining the stupid sentimentality.

The Evil Overlord List is right. Any Dark Lord worth his salt would start searching for people with markings of gulls on their bodies if they knew that their opponents had that marking, and the heroes would be suicidally stupid not to cover them up, no matter how proud they were of their heritage."

Sending them away won't do them any good if they stupidly refuse to cover up that streak which makes them oh-so-speshul. (Personally, I believe people who write humans with oddly-coloured hair need to lay off the amine.)

Harr.

Ah, a collaborated effort. It's very, very good. Praise to you for coming up with this plotline, etc. (claps) I look forward to watching it develop. Hope you and elisefey can update soon!

-I.I.

elisefey introduced me to this story earlier, and so i made it a point to prioritize this story over all other reviews i'll make today.

i was talking to her while reading it, so i've told her some things that needed work on. you can just ask her (or i figure she'd be the one to tell you LOL).

as for the story itself it's a political fantasy drama, and somehow, us readers can't get enough of it. while the plot is not entirely original (i've read about four or five different stories with this same theme), this is by far the most dramatic piece i've ever come across. i don't know if it's just the superb writing style, but i want to believe that it was because of the ruthlessness of the King and the bitter parting of the twins. so although most of the time political power plays in fantasy tend to be just boring except for the Machiavellian scheming and villainous cackling, this one has a very emotional mood as the politics take a backseat, while the bond between the twins and the future in store for them were the foreground.

i don't have to say anything on the excellent wordplay here, because i'd probably sound like a gushing fanboy. so i thought i'd just make an opinion on what the story is all about.

so that's it, and i hope that there would be more of this coming soon!

~DD

Wow, I am quite enjoying this. You are a very talented author! One question though, in the page break, you switched from first person to third person POV. Was this intended? I think it was, but I am just wondering.

I think this is a very original premise, and I am quite looking forward to the next chapter. Great job.