I’m a little confused by this image. Are they beating their fists proudly, like gorillas or something? That seems quite out of place since they just got reprimanded by their princess... On that same note, her reprimand seems super TAME considering this dude almost tried to slap her with a piece of metal! Are these special rules of your world, though, where royalty isn’t so revered like we normally think? Seems like something needs to be clarified.
The wide arc of soldiers shifted with a rumbling clank of metal, slapping their armored chests with steel-clad fists. She appraised them all, watching as they sat like stiff iron statues upon well-bred warhorses.
Reader, gamer, enthusiastic applicant for whatever cybernetic limb-replacement program you have in m...
Odan Marki. Is this correct? It’s hard to introduce a character by two names so close together. An idea for how to fix this: you can tell the readers what Saran already knows when she FIRST sees Lord Marki lift his helmet up (a few paragraphs above). Just say "This was Lord Odan Marki, the non-believer, the naysayer, the bane of anything Saran ever tried to do..." (Of course, maybe leave off those details, but you know what I mean. - then we’d have both names.)
I think you’re doing a good job of showing action, but maybe in trying to be as quick as possible, you’ve lost a little of the visual detail. Like, I’m not so sure what this looks like. Are these ’barbs’ part of his gauntlet/armor? Is he swinging a flail at her? A spiked mace? If it’s a fist, then, I got thrown off by the verb ’rattled’ - just a little inconsistency is making it hard to see what’s going on. Still, I can at least SEE that this Marki guy wants her dead. Good conflict here.
Marki’s bony fist wrapped in pointed metal barbs swinging for her skull. It rattled through the air
I like this very, very much. Look... Stories about time travel are complicated, because understanding time travel is complicated, because in the real world there’s no such thing! So, of course, writing about this stuff is HARD. But right here, you’ve established a very important RULE for how it will work in your book. Dead come back to life, so in a sense, souls are tied to time. I’m interested to see where this leads.
The dead felt at their wounds in panic, and finding none, looked to the red-haired woman sick upon the earth.
This is an incredible opening, Kaytalin... It’s got a mass of visual appeal / imagery, but it also makes a really, really important point. I can tell there’s a purpose buried under the layer of words, like soil. There’s a story buried in HERE. And then you deliver the ’Not usually’ below, and it’s like the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Something is UP with this.
