Dreamland Review Archive

The God's Cross World (T)

ii. TRANSITIONS

Omniscient narration is harder to smoothen out than third person limited or first person. Because of this, there are areas where I find something jarring. For example, after the woman died there in the first little bit, it says something like 'thirty-seven and a half seconds earlier' and nothing else. That, specifically, was a little jarring for me, because it seemed almost like that Spongebob thing with the 'five hour later' subtitle? It sort of feels like you're just telling us something and splitting the story up, especially when it moves perspectives there right after. Is there any way that can be smoothened out? Any way you might connect one scene to the other to make that transition less abrupt? Like I said in pacing, this might be easier to do if you add in a bit more detail on these characters, which I'll talk about next. My suggestion would be to make it more of a sentence, something like, 'little did she know, only thirty-seven seconds later, the god this person sat doing this'. That's a smoother transition.

0 7 / 1 0

i. CHARACTERS

I don't really feel for your characters, and I feel like I don't really know them. You don't have detail on them. You don't tell us anything about their pasts, what they're feeling, what they want, etc. You've stepped back almost completely as a narrator, leaving everything up for a debate. While that might work in a character that you want to keep mysterious, it doesn't work for everyone, because then we feel really disconnected from your characters. This woman and this child in the first chapter--I don't even know if that's her kid, or if it's somebody else's. Did she sell out her kid just because she wanted the money? If so, why did she keep her kid so long? It's not necessarily that I need more plot information, it's that I need more information on what these characters are thinking. Then we move on to this Celius for most of the chapter, which I don't understand why we didn't start with. It's almost like the woman and her child were a prologue? I'm not sure.

ii. SCENES

I think you describe enough, but sometimes you'll get into dialogue and begin to stray away from any description at all. It's not a big deal, but continuously describing the scene--what the characters look like, what the areas around them look like--as you go along can really help bring the scene to life. For example, if one character has sunlight on her face when she turns a certain way. If one character kicks a stone as he walks. Simple things like that.

0 7 / 1 0

i. PLOT

To be honest, I'm too confused with what is happening in your story to truly judge the plot. I liked the little trick with the lightning and found it interesting, but there are just so many different plotlines for me to understand what's going on in the beginning, which led to confusion in the rest of the story. I would like to know more about this woman and her kid, more about these people that took her, and less about these gods and what they're doing. I know the latter are the main characters, but then why am I never coming back to this child again? It was just a little too much for me to focus on anything. I'm confused with this feather, with who these other people are, if he meant to hit her with the lightning or not? While I do think being dramatic is all fine and good, there is a fine line between confusing us just the right amount and giving us too many characters and plotlines to follow. 

ii. TONE

I like your ability to write simply; think that's a good skill. I really like how 'impartial' your narration appears, but again I think it's a little too far back. A little more detail on the characters and their emotions may make your tone slightly more intriguing, especially in the beginning.

0 6 / 1 0

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to be too specific with this review, since I was confused as to what was going on. While I could follow the story, it took me two or three reads very slowly before I could move on, and there are still a lot of parts I don't get. Omniscient is an extremely difficult narration to tackle, and I think it's the source of my confusion with this story. While I love what the premise could be, I just wish the narration didn't move around as fast and had more time on the characters, so I could enjoy the story a little more. I would try practicing omniscient a bit more, reading a little bit more up on how to do it without confusing anybody. It's a tough thing you're tackling, so it's no surprise that it might take a bit of extra work!

3 8 / 6 0