Reviews for Stories of The Mind: Book One

Reviews For: Stories of The Mind: Book One

A. Lone Fox 2008-03-28 ch 1,	abusevery very nice... i will admit that i didnt think a story about telling stories could work but i rather enjoyed it... i loved your use f detail...
LucienofShadow 2008-02-27 ch 1,	abuse"A sad wind carried itself through the night and into the camp. The lonely moon glowed softly behind thin clouds above." I feel like those first two sentences would flow better if you merged them together. Either 'and' or 'as' would work nicely. I would recommend removing "Pots of stew boiled above the strong fires while others had become nothing more than hot embers and ash." This isn't due to any flaw in the sentence, but merely because there are a large number of sentences with pure description, which gets tiresome fast. Also, the next sentence makes more sense if it comes right after the descriptions of the fires themselves. "They yawned and passed around tobacco pipes each taking long deft drags and blowing out the smoke with closed eyes." Comma after 'pipes.' "They shared a blanket and secret smiles." Should be 'shared blankets and...' "The night moved on and became colder and colder." I would recommend making this 'moved on to become...' as it draws a connection between the two parts of the sentence. It's colder because it's later at night. "The lodges themselves were all around in abundance." 'all around in abundance' is a little superfluous,, I would recommend cutting 'in abundance.' "They were made of thirteen long poles" technically this means that ALL of the lodges were made of ONLY thirteen poles, total. I would recommend altering it to 'they were each made of' or 'each was made of' Also, you use 'made' twice in that sentence in very short succession. Consider swapping one out for a synonym, 'constructed' for the first one, perhaps. I'm not sure if that much in depth review is at all interesting or useful to you, so I'm going to stop that now and back off to a few, more general points here and there. If you'd like me to finish the rest of the chapter in that detail, let me know and I'll see what I can do. " what with the desert to the west and the border covering the outside. And when I did get here I find that there are patrols that keep out unwanted visitors. Luckily I was able make some connections. And here I am, sitting here with the two of you.” Cut 'what.' It doesn't feel natural given the rest of of his speech. I'm not sure what you mean by 'the border covering the outside.' Border's don't generally cover anything, they encircle. And even so, I don't see how a border could stop anyone. " hallow" you mean 'hollow.' "With the first shot he didn’t miss. The second and third shots found their mark." Either you meant that he did miss, or you should say that the second and third shots 'also found their marks.' You have a tendency to over describe things. What matters here is those sitting around the fire. The rest of the world can be doing whatever they like, but I don't need to know about it. If it's nighttime, alright, it's nighttime. The stars have no particular impact on the story, so I don't really need to know about them unless one of the characters becomes engrossed. Your dialog is really quite good. -Lucien
The Sun and Shadow 2008-02-27 ch 1,	abuseA perfect beginning; I am a huge fan of stories which start out as a few, long paragraphs of pure description. It helps me get a feel for the mood and tone of the piece. You did an excellent job, describing the camp- some really good word choices. Next, the dialog between Unci, Viai, and Byoden was well done. I loved your physical descriptions of the three of them. ("His arms were bars of steel layered with scar after scar", "an old lady with tangled grey hair"- two of my favorite lines!). Excellent job with giving the reader a visual to go with the dialog. The story was a nice addition to this chapter. Again, helps to give some background information about their culture and history. I noticed a couple places where new paragraphs should have been started (especially the paragraph which begins with "The earth was ruptured with the anger of Anwi."), but other than that, the story was lovely. I also think it is clever how you took a break in the middle of the story and went back to dialog between the three main characters. It's a good technique to spark new interest in the reader. Nicely done!

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