Reviews for The Father of Lights: An Alternative History

Reviews For: The Father of Lights: An Alternative History - Reviews: Page 1 of 4

The Crazy Talk Kid 2008-02-20 ch 63,	abuseapplause Very well done! I'd give it an 7.5 out of 10 for an overall work. Just my opinion but it could have used a bit more direct action and I'm upset that you didn't go more into the destruction of the Entity. Still, your tech is awesome and your plot is original. Correct me if I am wrong, but this universe uses alchemy correct? If so, maybe for the follow up some of Napoleons minions could be Homunculi. Just a thought. Kdh.
The Crazy Talk Kid 2008-02-19 ch 58,	abuse"The Marquis' plan had been deceptive, twisted, cowardly, and fundamentally French in all respects." Rotflol! That's awesome! Your tech is so cool and it gets better. I do have one question though, what's to stop the Entity from messing with the Mu tech that Bantay is using? Kdh.
The Crazy Talk Kid 2008-02-10 ch 36,	abuseWell that can't be good. I must say that you have a very... unique talent to make twisted evil even more twisted and evil. That's a valuable talent. If you already have this forgive me, I think it would be cool to give your Mu culture the ability to use pots as recording devices. Kdh.
The Crazy Talk Kid 2008-02-05 ch 10,	abuseI saw you know of turtle ships though you didn't mention the spikes. They have potential. You do a very good job of showing the different points of view. Though a little wordy at times it's very immersive. Kdh.
The Crazy Talk Kid 2008-02-04 ch 4,	abuseNothing about the Art of War? ^-^ I must say that I'm enjoying this story immensely and I like your mix of Thaumatology, science, and strange creatures. It works rather well together. I noticed some spelling errors but other than that it was good. I'm not great with grammar though. Kdh.
Aerodotus 2007-11-11 ch 63,	abuseA wonderful end, and it seems only appropriate to the rest of the story, bringing in the Corsican. A sequel in this universe during the Napoleonic Wars would be fascinating, as this was. Good job!
Haku 2007-10-13 ch 58,	abuseTwo words: oh shit! I'm loving the level of elevation in this story. Just when you think it can't get any worse, the enemy yanks the carpet out from under the protagonists' feet and they're screwed even further. And you also have a very believable villain i.e. one who uses the powers and weapons at their disposal at the right time, rather than waiting until some later point simply because it's "more fun".
dreamshell 2007-10-08 ch 57,	abuseCross-shaped ab-dead explosives = Awesome. Pure, unadulterated awesome. Yay! Fallen space cadaver! Heh. Shen seems like something of a sociopath. Which rocks, of course. And damn. They get attacked before finishing up? That wouldn't be fun at all. XD --dreamshell--
Skulled 2007-09-22 ch 52, anon.	abuseTalk about one odd history.
Aerodotus 2007-09-13 ch 49,	abuseThe Sadist and British teaming up and reanimating all the long-dead things in orbit doesn't bode well at all for the Prussians and Incans.
Aerodotus 2007-09-02 ch 47,	abuseInteresting, a bit of a cliffhanger in Chapter 46. Otherwise though, all this that you've introduced about there being prior intelligent races, and this "Entity" manipulating the Abrahamic religions throughout history, very, very interesting. Particularly the vision you mentioned of a Middle Eastern carpenter hearing a voice... Overall, very interesting.
Lccorp2 2007-08-25 ch 3,	abuseHarr. Not too bad, I suppose. However, a few points I'd like you to take note of: -Make conversation interesting to read. Many purely informational conversations are not. Nor are too many of those hesitating, circular conversations. Nor is a conversation where one character is witty and bantering and the others just gape at her in awe (even when the remarks aren’t particularly clever). This is a place where characterization has to come first. Can you safely infodump through the mouth of the character, because he or she actually talks like that? Will he or she still have that personality when the author’s need to infodump fades? Or will (as happens far too often) the character undergo a complete personality change to become a spunky, happy, informal friend? If so, then you are relying too much on the dialogue providing information and not enough on it sounding like actual speech. Find some other way to infodump, or even better, not at all. If you’re using the omniscient narrator’s voice anyway, lack of contractions and words like “argent” belong there. If you have a stuffy character, be sure to keep him stuffy when the moment is past. The same thing applies to formal scenes. It’s all right for a character on his best behavior to sound puffed-up when he’s being presented to the King. Outside the room, he should revert to his normal informality. Don’t make your characters oscillate back and forth between them without reason. Make the characters equal conversational partners. What I don’t see very often is dialogue where both partners are of equal intelligence and able to trade barbs, jokes, or clever sayings with impunity. Many authors are up to the challenge of writing one such character, so I don’t think it’s a lack of wit. It’s more of an identification with that character and the feeling that no one should be able to match him or her. Try giving him or her one match, though. It won’t be the end of the world. Other ways to make the conversation equal: One character tries to annoy the other; the other keeps his temper and changes the subject. One character is witty, clever, or dramatic, but the other holds power over her (such as being her captor). Both characters are equally angry, despondent, or [insert emotional adjective]. One character keeps asking questions and being skeptical; the other has to respond. The characters are being open with each other after a long time of keeping silent. All kinds of ways to do it, and most of them are far more interesting than the witty banterer or wise lecturer dispensing her knowledge to the masses. It's amazing how much dialogue varies. Unless the author is a tin-ear writer or writing for the first time, I can usually see all kinds of levels in a story: believable, easy dialogue; words I can accept under the circumstances; and dialogue that would never make sense in a thousand years. That's all, I suppose, although I'd rather have SEEN the events that were ebing discussed in action, and this is pretty much an infodump. Reasonable effort, and coming from me that's a compliment.
Lord of the Trees 2007-08-24 ch 42,	abuseHey what's been happening in the Middle East?
Lccorp2 2007-08-23 ch 2,	abuseHarr. Ah, alternative history. Haven't seen many of those around in the fantasy genre, save perhaps the Teimaire series and "Girl Genius", but we'll see. Before I say anything, though, please be reminded that I am not telepathic. I cannot peer into your mind and read off explanations about potential problems that pop up in the prose itself. Until said problems are explained in the prose, it is a problem, and only when I've been satisfied will I retract my statements. In short, I've explained the Duck Rule: "If it looks like a duck, smells like a duck, feels like a duck, acts like a duck, think like a duck and so forth, for all intents and purposes it is a duck, while it might be a swan." Now that we've gotten that over with... Good thing you kept the prologue short. While there's plenty of "short" suspense, there aren't any characters to the reader to latch on to and it can get boring really, really quickly. -If this is historical fiction, readers are still going to be expecting at least some of their real-world knowledge to apply. For instance, Blackbeard lived from 1680-1718, while ironclads didn't appear until the late 19th century. As in all fantasy, you're allowed to make up the rules of your world. However, you're not allowed to vomit things onto the page and expect readers to lap it up-less if you're using something that isn't unique and altogether new to your world, and much, much less when writing historical fiction. If diamonds are proliferate in your world, this should be known before someone denounces a sack of diamonds as valueless and leaves the readers scratching their heads in puzzlement. If John Edward Teach was born later, or ironclads were invented earlier- and remember, by their very existence, mean that all the prequisites needed in their building and operation MUST be present. A simple Ironclad belies knowledge in metallurgy, mining, physics, and the like, it suggests an extensive coal-mining industry for fuel, and so forth. Explanations don't have to be long or blatant, they can easily be subtly inserted into action or dialogue. -Which brings me to the next point. In the first chapter, we're treated to a personal history of both Tommy and Teach. No no no. First off, you're breaking off any reader suspense you got from the prologue. The reader is now interested in the children whom they are escorting, and in the NOW. You snap the flow by not only inserting a flashback, but after that dumping the histories of two people, who as yet the reader does not know their exact connection to the children they're interested in, right smack dab into the middle. Goodbye, flow and logical progression of ideas. Introduce a character by sketching him or her in. Don’t sling a tidal wave of paint into the reader’s face. I can and have suffered through long, long paragraphs of character introduction before, emphasizing not only what the character looks like and some of the ways she thinks but where she lives, how many siblings she has, what her greatest dream is, what clothes she likes to wear, what’s her favorite music, what’s her favorite color, and on and on and AARGH (an exaggaration in your case, but you get my point). This kind of paragraph isn’t unusual for 700-page fantasy books, leading me to wonder: a) When the authors have 700 pages, why do they need to dump everything about the character into these paragraphs? b) Is the book only 700 pages long because of paragraphs like these? c) How am I ever going to remember all of this? d) Is all this information actually relevant? (Hint: no). e) Why is the writer telling me everything like I am a ninny, instead of using a mixture of telling and showing? I think one reason fantasy characters so often seem to stay frozen and static is because the author dumps everything about them at the beginning of a story, or the first time they’re introduced, and then doesn’t leave the reader anything to discover. Revelations about how the character behaves when angry, how she laughs, what she really wants out of life, are all laid out on the table. There are no interesting little trips to sideboards to find out more. What details are essential? That depends on what you want out of the character. If you’re most interested in showing how this minor character shuffles around hiding a guilty secret, you might want to start out by introducing the way he moves, or the way he starts when someone says his name. Then the more suspicious behavior can be added on later. An example of this is Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. At the start of the first book in the series, Storm Front, nothing too much is divulged about Harry Dresden in the opening pages- we know he's a wizard-for-hire in Chicago, and a few more details about the entities about him, and that's that. As the story progresses and readers have actually gained reasons to be interested in Harry's past and to be cheering for him, we get hints that Something Bad has happened to him in the past- and by the middle, when we know something about what really happened to Harry, the reader actually CARES about what Harry has gone through. He doesn't dump it like you have about Teach, too- he works it into dialogue and action so it can serve other purposes like characterization and plot progression than just telling the reader this and that. Harr.
Shadowhound 2007-08-21 ch 1,	abuseInteresting. Reminds me of the Bartimaus Trilogy in that England is supported by sorcerers, but otherwise seems different. I am a bit curious as to what Blackbeard has to do with this, though. Shadowhound

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