Wow, this story is really something out of the box, and it's not often that a fat character is a main character of the story. I will make sure to look forward to more chapters.

Well Hiptobbi Square, I think it's safe to say (looks around for evil ninjas just incase)that you have started an amazing story. It is very fresh, and different. I am getting a bit bored of the repeated main characters over and over again, Gulliam is very different from them, and though it is sometimes hard to bare with him, I enjoy that. The story is very interesting too. Do they want to eat those boys? If that was all, they didn't need them to stay for 15 years, you can be fattened up quite easily for even only one year. I'm interested in what exactly the deamnon's purpose is.

Now, for something you can fix. Peara seems to me a bit strange. Kind of like a character with what seems to me as a strangely real but fake personality. I don't know how to explain it, she was fine in the begging, but after becoming crazy worried about Gullium in chapter 7 I can't seem to accept her as a real character. Kind, and nice to him is ok, but so much? I don't know why I feel this way...Paera unlike Gullian seems like an overused character, don't make her so nice.

I feel quite sorry for Paera's brother. He cannot speak his mind around her for fear that it would hurt the girl. He is very kind to her and loves her very much.

I am amazed that you haven't updated such a fantastic story for two years! Please, please update soon.

Review for chapter four. I just noticed that you hadn’t updated since 2007! Cue the horror.

REVIEW

I didn’t like this chapter very much, although I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because of the reappearance of the girl. She’s borderline clichéd at the moment, and she just doesn’t seem to fit in with everyone / everything else.

[‘Nope, nerfin’ doin’, blubby,’ said the man, and thrust it back into Guilliam’s hands. ‘Solid gold, says ’ee, pah! What a larf! Oi bin dealin’ wit’cher koind since Oi was moinus eight, by ’eck!’

‘What – I – I can’t understand you,’ said Guilliam, slowly and condescendingly. ‘What are you trying to say, are you saying I can have one of these, is that what –?’]

I love this exchange! Leave it to Guilliam to look down on someone because HE can’t understand their accent and didn’t even bother trying to. Besides what it says about Guilliam, this exchange is funny.

[Then there was the bang of a chair being thrown aside, and the father, looking irate, grabbed Guilliam by the scruff of the neck and marched him to the door, where he was tossed, not to the ground, but straight into the waiting arms of Mr Carroway.]

Mr. C’s so awesome, he can materialize out of thin air! But, seriously, where did he come from? And if he had been waiting, how had he knowing that Guilliam would walk into that specific house?

[Guilliam fell onto his bottom in the middle of the road and gazed up, astonished like everyone else, watching as Carroway landed heavily on the roof of the building in front of him.]

Mr. C is so cool~! Not someone I’d want to meet on the street, but very, very cool nonetheless.

[This isn’t over, chunky!]

[chunky] doesn’t seem like an insult that would fit into the time that this story is taking place in.

GRAMMAR REVIEW

1. [spicy and mild; the magnificent, unmistakable smell of baking and frying and boiling coming from nearby.]

2. [his eyebrows; distorting his already rugged countenance and making him look inhuman, grotesque, and absolutely terrifying.]

After the semi-colon, there isn’t a conjunctive adverb or an independent clause, which a semi-colon can only be use to separate unless it’s used in a sentence with a list of clauses, rather than single words and or phrases. You could either change what comes after the semi-colon into a sentence and add a conjunctive adverb, or change the semi-colon to a colon.

1. [‘Let me have one of these, you stupid little man, can’t you see I’m starving?’]

2. [– and you run away from me, you don’t have the right!]

3. [You have no rights, because you’re not a person, you’re an investment;]

4. [You’ll wish you’d stayed on that ship, boy, you’ll wish you’d met your end…]

Two independent clauses separated only by a comma alert! Replace the comma with a semi-colon, em dash, conjunction, or some other ending punctuation mark.

[‘Ho-ho, you are in deep shfip now, child, make no mistake’ said Carroway in a shaky,]

Comma after [mistake] to separate the quote from the narration.

[‘But I have seen something,’ she said slowly, setting her buckets of milk down, ‘I can’t just pretend I haven’t.’]

You need to add a conjunction or ‘so’ inside the quotes to show that the two parts of it are part of one single sentence, once the narration is taken out. Otherwise, you’ll have something like a run-on sentence, excluding the narration.

1. [‘You’ll see a whole lot more if you don’t turn tail and run!’ he barked, ‘Right now!’]

2. [‘You there!’ shouted one of the guards, pointing a finger at Carroway, ‘Unhand that large boy immediately!’]

[‘Right now!’] is an entirely separate sentence from [‘You’ll see…and run!’], so there shouldn’t be a comma after [barked] because that’s saying that the two aren’t separate, but could be part of one single sentence if you take out the narration. Second excerpt follows the same.

CONCLUSION

Mr. C has definitely caught my interest. It just seems very odd that something / someone like him could exist without there being even rumors of it. Besides, dragons are normal! Right? So why would one man jumping twenty feet high or so be NOT normal? It’s just a strange contrast.

Thank you for writing. Again, it was definitely a pleasure reading.

- Tetue

This is long overdue. Review for chapter 3.

REVIEW

The escape! And it’s only the third chapter! I admit, I have no idea where this story is going, if you’re not going to take the usual lost-kid-finds-way-home route. It’s refreshing, but frustrating all the same. I really want to know what the point of kidnapping a bunch of children is, and what’s going to happen to Guilliam. Anyways. Onto business:

[‘– over on the plateau; number four, if memory serves. Name’s Chorton, as if it matters, they’re all “piggy” to me –’ (dull laughter from the twins) ‘– and don’t forget the gold. Got it there, have you? Good, off we go.’]

That they’re all ‘piggy’ to Carroway doesn’t surprise. That Mr. C would, for some reason that serves some unseen purpose, tell the twins that does. If they’ve been working together, Mr. C and the twins, for a while now, the twins should’ve caught on that Mr. C calls all the little boys and or girls ‘piggy’. It would then make Mr. C’s [they’re all “piggy” to me] seem rather redundant.

[‘D’you, er – d’you wanna go first?’ asked Lumpwick, turning to Guilliam with a nervous half-smile. Guilliam simply stared at him, looking blankly incredulous. ‘Righ’,’ said Lumpwick, miserably. ‘Righ’, off I go, then.’]

Lumpwick is cute. I’m surprised he hasn’t shoved Guilliam off the ship, yet, but that’s more character development in one sentence than the previous chapter, so I should probably say that I’m surprised by him, rather than by his actions. He’s by far braver than Guilliam, while still retaining his childishness and there’s hints of his fear of not getting the approval of someone else that makes him so like a kid. Whether or not the hints have a basis in reality is another matter.

Knowing what happens to him in the next chapter, I really don’t like you, but that’s a good thing. You’ve made me like Lumpwick, who’s only a secondary character.

[Guilliam’s resolve was waning]

I’m glad you didn’t decide to make Guilliam suddenly brave and whatnot. He’s fine changing at the pace that he is, so this part of the chapter was made of pure win.

[Vaguely, it dawned on Guilliam that she was the first young girl he had ever seen in his life. It was unusual to see a feminine face without liver spots or lip hair for a change. And this girl, he realised, was quite pretty, though the effect was diminished somewhat by her clothes.]

How would Guilliam know that the girl was ‘pretty’ if the girl is the first one he’s ever seen? In fact, if such gross negligence on his aunt’s end to socialize him had been a part of his life up until now, why does he even associate ‘pretty’ with ‘girl’?

[Having taken all of this into account, he guessed her to be a scullery maid, like the one Auntie employed back home, and his attitude hardened at once.]

This screamed instant contradiction to me, before I realized that the scullery maid could be older than ‘girl’. Just saying.

GRAMMAR REVIEW

1. [And don’t so much as think to call for help while I’m gone, either, we’re anchored too far from anyone who’d give a damn.’]

2. [‘I need you to stay here and talk to yourself so they think I’m still inside when they get back, can you do that?’]

3. [‘No you can’t, you’re bloody useless,’ said Guilliam]

4. [‘Shut up, Lumpwick, I don’t need your help!’]

5. [The lock’s broken now, it wouldn’t be hard …]

6. [‘Yeah, good idea, w-we should prolly find a hidey space or somefink –’]

7. [Really, I’m sorry, that was – that was unkind.]

After ‘either’, you have another clause with its own subject and verb ([we’re anchored]), so that would make the excerpt a run-on sentence. In excerpts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, there’s the same mistake. Either use a semi-colon or an ending punctuation mark to separate the two independent clauses, or use an actual conjunction.

1. [‘Escaping,’ said Guilliam, grunting, ‘you stay there.’]

2. [‘I can’t see th’ light anymore,’ he said, looking anxiously around, ‘I can’t see anyfing at all.’]

Unless [‘Escaping’] and [‘you stay there.’] can work as parts of one single sentence, when you take out the narration in-between (which it can’t), there should be an ending punctuation mark after [grunting] and the [you] should be capitalized. Same for excerpt #2.

[‘No you can’t, you’re bloody useless,’ said Guilliam]

Separate the [No] from the rest of the sentence. The [No] is answering something else, as opposed to specifying the quantity of something that follows after it, like ‘no apples here’ or ‘no spaghetti left’.

[‘Oh, you think so, do you?’ he sneered, ‘Well, it's good to know I won't look out of place.’]

[he sneered] belongs to the first quotation. Ergo, there shouldn’t be a comma connecting [he sneered] to the second, unless the second quotation is a part of the first as one single sentence.

CONCLUSION

Like I implied earlier, I’m more than a little curious about the plot and Guilliam’s life or what would count as one. You haven’t given enough away to hint at anything other than the dreadful business someone’s made of fattening children up and kidnapping them unawares; I can’t decide if that’s a good thing, or not. On the one hand, it could seem as though you’ve nothing more of a plot than that. On the other, I could just be missing some vital clue.

Thank you for writing~ It was definitely a pleasure reading.
- Tetue

Let me first say that Guilliam is a very cool name.
Your characters are so very colorful. It was fun watching Auntie change so drastically at the end. One thing I'd like to point out is the slang and dialect; you use enough to make a point, but not too much to be hard to read. Good job.
You have a very eloquent, descriptive writing style, which is good for the most part good, but be careful not to let it get too dry. The second paragraph was a little hard to read through.
As for the plot, I definently want to read more. It's like a fantasy twist on a riches-to-rags story.

Review for chapter two.
- Tetue

REVIEW

My favorite scenes were (a) the scene wherein Guilliam thought that he had no one left who’d even cared that he was missing, and that he felt ‘strangely’ dispirited by it, and (b) the scene wherein Mr Carroway threatened Guilliam if he didn’t shut up.

The first because it’s sad that Guilliam, however selfish he may have been, really was lonely and no matter how much he might have disliked his aunt, he’d actually depended on her to be there for him. And now she wasn’t. And he didn’t even realize that she had meant something, until she was gone. I’m somewhat glad that he hadn’t been close to his aunt, but at the same time, that makes me pity him more, because eventually Guilliam will have to realize that he has no idea how to interact with people.

The second because Guilliam’s finally growing up, if only by increments that he doesn’t even notice and won’t even notice if he’d looked, because I don’t think he’d know what to look for. He’s such a child and such a spoiled one, and that’s been his entire life until up to this point. His shock at Mr Carroway’s reaction made me really want to strangle his aunt for him. I blame her entirely for Guilliam’s naivety, and I hate that he’s going to be the one who will have to suffer the consequences while she gets a bloody sack of gold for all her effort.

Characters: Lumpwick seems to serve as nothing more than a source of information. Most of what he says is information provided for Guilliam and the readers, and I don’t know how he’d be so helpful to Guilliam by telling Guilliam that they were at the ocean after Guilliam had been a right bastard to him, so it makes Lumpwick seem more like he’s just a source of information. At the same time, I could interpret that as Lumpwick being kind just because he is. He did attempt to start conversations with Guilliam, but that’s a bit overshadowed by everything else in the chapter that it’s easy to miss.

GRAMMAR REVIEW

[‘What are you talking about?’ said Guilliam, ‘What pudding?’]

The same mistake as in chapter one. ‘What pudding?’ isn’t a direct continuation of ‘What are you talking about?’ because ‘What are you talking about?’ was ended by a question mark. The comma implies direct continuation.

[‘Yeah, it is,’ said Guilliam, frowning, ‘how’d youknow?’]

‘Yeah, it is.’ is one sentence. There’s a subject and a verb. ‘How’d you know?’ is another, with a subject and a verb. They’re not connected by conjunctions, or semi-colons, or colons, and the second part of the quote is not a direct continuation of the first because of that. The comma after ‘frowning’ should have been a period, and the ‘h’ in ‘how’d’ should’ve been capitalized.

[‘Take a look around you, boyo,’ said Carroway with a roguish laugh, and beckoned with one black glove for Guilliam to observe his surroundings, ‘we’re in the world.’]

Same mistake and reason as above.

[‘Take me back,’ he shouted, and stomped his foot for effect, ‘I want to go back!’]

Note: Be careful about keeping sentences separate so that they don’t become run-on sentences inside quotations that are interrupted by narration. The narration doesn’t serve as a conjunction; it also doesn’t serve as a punctuation mark.

CONCLUSION

I love Guilliam to bits and pieces. He’s adorable. He wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t been kidnapped and practically forced to grow up by circumstances, but he was, so he is.

This whole business of kidnapping children unawares is interesting. I really want to know if there was any specific reason Guilliam and Lumpwick were chosen, besides both having no parents to take care of them. Why go through so much trouble to take Guilliam away from his parents, and why go through all the trouble to scrounge around enough gold to pay off his aunt for, er, ‘fattening him up’?

Also, you have good pacing for the character development and plot. It doesn’t feel as if you’re rushing things at all, but it doesn’t feel as if you’re moving too slowly either.

I always review any chapter that I’ve read, so this one’s rather overdue as I’d gotten to chapter three already and hadn’t even started on it until I was finished with chapter four. My apologies. The review’s separated into three sections: general overview (‘review’), grammar overview (creatively titled ‘grammar review’), and a conclusion (otherwise known as ‘conclusion’). This review is, by the way, ONLY for chapter one. I’ll get to the others sooner or later.

Thank you for writing. It was a pleasure reading.
- Tetue

REVIEW

“The Zoots Family Heirloom” is definitely the best first chapter of a fantasy story I’ve read on Fiction Press, if only because it seems utterly devoid of so many fantasy archetypes that I wondered for a moment if it was even fantasy. Then I read about the flying rowboat, the dragon, and the sack of money pay-off at the end for a fat, useless little boy, and I had to laugh.

It’s rare to read something on Fiction Press that focuses on the plot and the characters rather than the world they live in. Those stories that do focus on the plot and the characters usually ignore the fantasy elements of the world until a few or several chapters in, which makes those elements slightly difficult to accept as an integral part of the world. You managed to give enough information about Guilliam’s world and do it in such a way that they’re practically normal that I couldn’t believe that I had thought of anything else but fantasy.

Side-note I: The scene wherein Guilliam dismisses the dragon in favor of something else was amazing. My second favorite scene had to be Zoots’s entrance into the story, but it’s second only because the word ‘magically’ had been used to describe it. ‘Magically’ brought to mind mages and warlocks, crazy complicated spells, et al, rather than normalcy. On second thought, magically seems to be the basis for normal of Guilliam’s world, or at least the chips in it.

As for the characters:

For all that Guilliam is a fat tub of good-for-nothing lard, useless for anything but petty spying and whining, he’s so real. If I was as fat as Guilliam, I know I wouldn’t want to waddle off anywhere for any reason whatsoever, although I AM as lazy as he is. If I had a telescope of my own to spy on my neighbors, I would do so without any hesitation. Anyway, the point is, I could definitely identify with Guilliam, as a fifteen year old kid. But then again, I’m hardly that much older.

Your other characters, however, have a more fantasy-ish quality to them. I can’t identify with them at all. It seems as though they only reason they’re there is to continue the story and although all characters should have the inherent purpose of continuing the story, Zoots and Lady Wartrude and Mr Carroway are so bloody obvious about it. Zoots is archetypically eccentric, Lady Wartrude is archetypically selfish and shrewd, and Mr Carroway is archetypically villainy. They made Guilliam seem more real, but at the same time, I disliked them all in favor of Guilliam.

My only grievance:

[Have you ever seen a finer boy than Guilliam Wartrude?]

You used ‘you’ in what would’ve otherwise been a third-person narrative. The atmosphere that it set up was one of someone telling someone else a story, but since you didn’t use ‘you’ again, or any other variation thereof, the ’you’ at the beginning became superfluous. Rather unnecessary-seeming, and all that. The atmosphere it set up was barely maintained as the narrative restricted itself to Guilliam’s perspective, then widened slightly again with Mr Carroway’s appearance. Point: the narrative wasn’t as smooth as it could be.

GRAMMAR REVIEW

I’m American. I’ve been told that Americans just have to do it differently from the rest of the world, because we’re bloody conceited like that. ;3 So feel free to ignore me if the grammar mistakes I caught and will point out below aren’t really mistakes in this ‘rest of the world’ thing.

1. [‘Guilliam, darling,’ she simpered, sweeping in from the kitchen and pinching his flabby cheek rather roughly, ‘why not switch off that old thing and take a turn around the garden, hm?’]

2. [‘Have fun, poopsie!’ she called after him, ‘and remember: if you start to sweat, lie down in the shade and count to a thousand!’]

3. [‘Good day!’ cried Zoots, ‘Good day, good day, the best of days, wot-wot!’]

Of all three excerpts, the first one is absolutely correct, as far as I can tell. It’s just present for comparison.

In excerpts two and three, you have a quote, a verb, then a subject. Since that verb is ‘cried’ and therefore directly connected to the quote before it, the quote, verb, and subject make a completely sentence. In excerpt three, you even started the next quote with a capital letter, although it wasn’t a proper noun. The comma after ‘him’ (in the second excerpt) and ‘Zoots’ (in the third excerpt) should not be present.

You have a complete sentence in both cases, and you’d ended the first quote in both excerpts with ending punctuation marks (a ‘!’ after ‘poopsie’ and one after ‘day’), so the second quote in both excerpts are not direct continuations. Commas in quotations should only be used in the quotations themselves, or to denote a direct continuation of a quote after it had been interrupted by narration. Ergo:

3. ‘Good day!’ cried Zoots. ‘Good day, good day, the best of days, wot-wot!’ (In which a comma isn’t used.)

OR

‘Good day,’ cried Zoots, ‘good day, good day, best of days, wow-wot!’ (In which one is used, and used to separate what has now become merely two parts of one sentence in a quote that’s been interrupted by narration.)

There are several more instances when you do use your commas correctly, but many more where you do not. It’s odd.

Besides this, I hadn’t caught anything else.

CONCLUSION

You have an enjoyable mix of fantasy and reality in your writing style that doesn’t overshadow the fact that your story’s still very much a fantasy story. You have a realistic character in Guilliam, but not necessarily in your other characters. And you don’t make obvious grammatical errors.

Beautiful story. all the best.

Really? Really? I think I'm going to cry. You have utterly killed my soul. Do you feel like a jerk? Probably not but you should. Any sign of life would be good. I need something. I have absolutely fallen in love with your story and perhaps a little with you from reading your "bio"(although there wasn't really anything about you). Now you have forced me to... I don't even know. I'm at a complete loss for words. Are you out there writing books and getting them published? If you are then tell me! I'll buy them! GOD! I need stories like this. I need your incredible worlds! Just something!

It is really quite a shame that such a (quite literally) delectable story has been so unthoughtfully betrayed.

Pity there aren't more people with a quarter of your brain on FP.

Oh, I loved this. Very professional writing, a distinct English accent, and a plot which is not dull for a moment! I'm eagerly awaiting the next part!

It's sad to see that you haven't updated in almost a year...a real pity since Guilliam is really growing on me!

I wish there was a way people as talented as you could make it to be bestsellers. All the New York Times cares about is how young you are to be a literary genius and how much Tolkien you've absorbed.

Your writing is almost reminescent of Terry Pratchett's fantasy satires, or even (a little more subtly) of Voltaire. Yeah, he's a little older, sure, but Voltaire can hold his own in the world of modern literature, just as you can.

Ohmygosh. I love Guilliam. I'll be honest, the only reason I started reading this was because the summary said the main character was fat, which sounded ridiculously refreshing. I expected to hate him, but Lord he's hilarious. I swear.