December 17th, 2010 at 04:24pm
Disregard my last comment, it all came back up in recovery mode.
Story Review Thread
Title: I thought Deus was some sort of Greek word. Thus leading me to believe your story would have a lot of mythology in it. It was a pleasant surprise that it wasn’t filled with Greek mythology to the point it was too hard to understand. I adore one word titles that incorporate something from the story directly. It’s like a summery within the title.
Layout: Your layout fit the story very well and it also wasn’t hard to read at all. The banner part was my personal favorite. It truly fit the overall tone of the story. I don’t know if this was intended or not, but there was a lot of blue in the layout, and you mentioned the blue of the other character’s eyes and hair. I thought that was clever- intended or not.
Chapter One: “Deus laid his head against the cold rock silently with his eyes focused on one person.” I feel as if the syntax of that sentence is a bit off. I suggest changing it to ‘…silently laid his head against the cold rock.” It really a big problem, just thought to mention it.
You have a special talent for word choice. I don’t want to fill up your entire review with nothing but word choice, so I’ll make note of a few here:
- “…words washed over him…”
- ”…tried to drink his every feature…”
- “In that moment, he had died.” (Fabulous ending to that section!)
- “…silver raincloud, poised to pour the torrential fury of the heavens…”
- “…allowing the voice to wrap around him…”
- “…face as blank as an unpainted canvas…”
“Deus watched his boy turn away from him, confusion laced in his eyes. He pushed through the crowd as he turned, and made to walk away like he could escape the sound of death..” This tid-bit was slightly hard to understand. In the first sentence, the subject is Deus. In the second sentence the subject is the boy that Deus’s affection is towards. However, since you don’t introduce a new subject and start with ‘he’ I thought you were saying that Deus pushed through the crowd, which didn’t make sense until I re-read it and realized that you meant the boy.
It was a tad shocking that Deus came out right away and said that he was a demi-god. I would expect something like that to be kept secret, but him coming out with it right away and then having the nerve to kiss Jacob did not make the story move to fast at all.
I am slightly confused at the end. Is the end the beginning of the start (if that makes sense) or is he getting beheaded again?
Overall: Overall, I think it was a really great story! I won’t lie, when I realized that it had God’s in it, I didn’t think I would like it. Your story was actually tremendously well written and I enjoyed it very much! You have a very poetic way with your words. It seems like you take your time and choose your words very precisely which makes it very easy to picture everything going on. This is the first story I’m reading on Mibba in a while so I don’t know if this is new or not, but the image your separated sections with really added to the story as well. It made it much easier to read and to distinguish parts. I didn’t think it was too long either. In fact, I’d love to have read more of it.
You’re very, very good with imagery. I was able to paint a nice and clear picture in my head of the boys. The plot itself is very interesting; I’ve never read a story like this before. It’s such a shame it ended that way, I didn’t want Dues to die! He sounds like such a sweet and tender boy. I really think that if you wanted to this could go a long way. It’s still good as a one shot but I could just imagine all the troubles that could go on in the village if Dues didn’t die. But, it’s good for me to imagine.
I really really like this!