Wings of the Seraph Ch3 Preview
Added 2018-03-22 17:34:07 +0000 UTCHey, guys. I just emailed out a new preview of chapters 1-3 for $2+ Patrons to tide you over until the book's release. I'm am finishing the last chapter right now.
During editing I'll be making a few continuity changes, like a finalized version of how space travel works, but otherwise everything in the preview should be mostly okay.
I'm expecting a finished version of the cover from Reinbach today, so I'll be sure and post it. :)
Comments
I just wanted to say that really do appreciate this feedback, and I think it is good to have criticism from someone who likes some parts but not others. There's obviously no way to please everyone, but if a person can dislike some things but still like others enough to keep reading that is usually a good sign. :)
Sarah Hawke
2018-03-22 19:56:32 +0000 UTCI get that. 's why I wanted to praise the subtle, tasteful information dump in the opening parts of chapter three. ;)
SpectralTime
2018-03-22 19:25:21 +0000 UTCNothing to apologize about! Early impression feedback is very useful. My goal in the first book is to be a little careful about exposition aside from whetting people's appetite. The next book will start developing the politics more - this is almost meant to be more of a prologue. It's a tough line to straddle, though. You want to give people just enough to be interested but not bog them down, and of course every reader has different tastes. I personally hate blatant information dumps unless they are done in a really clever way. I'm not great at pulling this off yet but I want to get better.
Sarah Hawke
2018-03-22 19:23:12 +0000 UTCSorry about that. Still getting the hang of holding down shift before hitting enter to add a line... Also, nuts. Guess that's what I get for commenting on an incomplete product, huh? (Or, at least, only two chapters of a product.) Anyway, that's good news! ...Maybe a one-word adjective for each of the governments he mentions having spies on that second planet might help too? I mean, it's where you mention attributes of the Dominion and the Convectorate to give the readers some idea of what they're like. Like, when he says "even the V’rath," he could add "hyper-isolationist" or "wanna-be" or something, just so we get the lay of the land without a lotta extra verbage. And put similar adjectives in front of the Kreen and Jadari, of course, just so that we know if they're militaristic, opportunists, etc. ...Unless I've watched too much *Star Trek* and it's harder than I think to narrow them down that way...
SpectralTime
2018-03-22 19:15:41 +0000 UTCThanks for the comments! Suffice to say, Kaveri is more than she appears so far in the preview chapters. E: Yeah I'm planning on adding some more details in review, especially visual ones.
Sarah Hawke
2018-03-22 19:08:53 +0000 UTCFinally sat down and read it all over last night. I'm... ambivalent to Cole as a character, because he's more of an open horn-dog, but he's growing on me as, like Jorem, he demonstrates that he's got a kind heart under it all. Raxyl is great, and I love him, and I hope he gets his own love interest and story instead of being killed halfway through to show how serious the situation is, even if I wish his color-change emotions were explicitly-spelt-out more often. Kaveri is... okay? I mean, I like her well enough, but I guess I'm not really as big a fan of the hyper-submissive thing as a lot of other fans probably are. Which is fine, you're not writing a story for me, personally. I hesitate to comment on the mystery since so little of it has been revealed, but I *will* comment on the utter lack of expository text. On the one hand, I get it. Ya don't want to bring the story and pacing to a grinding, screeching, spark-raising halt so that we can be lectured on the finer points of interstellar politics. Fair enough. Hell, when you *do* introduce them, you do so in such a quick, tasteful way that it enhances rather than detracting. But... I can't help feeling like I'd enjoy parts of the story better if I had a good idea of what a Subari, Neyris, or Kreen look like. Also, if those names were given lower-case letters like humans are later, but that's just a private pet peeve for me. It's like... a certain amount of skimming over that is fine when using stock races like elves and such, just because we all know what those look like. But not knowing what those three things are took an opening sex scene I was already ambivalent about at best and flat-out killed it for me. I mean, again, not wanting to bog things down with exposition and attempts to communicate visual information through a textual medium, but this is sci-fi! I wanna *see* the cool aliens! Still excited for more though.
SpectralTime
2018-03-22 19:00:15 +0000 UTC
