Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Heh, yeah it was kinda hard to find. Thankfully, someone pointed it out for me.
[quote=Gelcube;3871][img=https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/23438110/Alpha%20Download.jpg]Screenshot![/img][/quote]
Ugh, finally finished. My first impression was like it felt like a slice of life of multiple characters. It wouldn’t be bad if they live exciting lives, but its just humdrum. Gonna need to chop a bunch of it off, if necessary maybe just put the scenes in another book where the characters are involved more? Just backtrack the timeline so the next book might actually be happening at the same time as this one.
The story picked up at around page 230ish with Tal Gor’s battle. That’s rather a lot of pages to go through where the reader is bored like heck. Then it felt like it was building up for like the big battle in Nysegard, when it suddenly stopped abruptly. Er I hope the battle was in the missing 20%, because as of right now I’d give the story 2 stars in Amazon. It’s boring. I was seriously not entertained. I didn’t see the usual funny scenes or exciting action scenes (excepting Tal Gor’s battle) to root for the characters that I had expected. Good thing it’s still at Alpha. Time to fix it up.
So far, funny/action/memorable scenes for me was:
At the start where a demon was trying to get a dismembered head out of their behind ( heh )
The dramatic entrance to Nysegard within the volcano eruption and stuff. This felt rather wasted though. Should time it as the place is getting attacked by Unlife, you get an action scene, a dramatic entrance and a timely save.
Tal Gor’s battle.
Maybe Melissance’s entrance and the D’Orcing ritual? It was just interesting though. Didn’t quite evoke any emotions really.
So not really a lot.
[quote=The Author Guy;3939]That’s why adding too many massive battles gets tricky.
One thing I battle with is that assembling giant armies takes weeks, these guys are all pushing the believability angle on that front. [/quote]
Well it doesn’t have to be a massive battle all the time – skirmishes, a cool duel, foiling an assassination attempt, a funny incident, a touching scene would work too to break the tedium. The book was too much about people talking about boring stuff which I guess is probably needed to move the plot forward but would be better done in a shorter conversations/scenarios.
(Edit) Post here stuff you think needs to be chopped off and why and also rebuttals.
Table of Contents: Just chop it off. Unnecessary waste of space and just by looking at it, would it really be helpful to the reader? If you must have one at least give per chapter a short descriptive title though this would be like a spoiler.
Preface: Chop or move to the back.
Starting from Chapter 121. Chop off Vaselle’s scenes. As for the dimensional gate invention, could probably explain how it came to be when they first used it for some important scene. Didn’t recall any in the book.
Rupert and er company, forgot his name. Could chop off their scenes as well after the shaman meeting. Don’t think we need to learn he won a drinking contest.
Chop off the too many tea time scenes where so and so were discussing the current events (or at least make em shorter) while they eat/drink something.
Chop off Damien and other people’s scenes where they don’t really do anything. Like the one where he does a disappearing act before Jenn confronts vaselle. Do we even need Vaselle to meet Teragdor? We could just get rid of the scenes that resulted from that encounter.
Rather rambling I know, it’s hard to go through all that text a second/third time.
Well that’s it for now, I have to reread per chapter first to decide unnecessary parts.
[quote=Flakes;3899]The book itself held my attention. Though I will be honest, It read a bit like book 6 of the Wheel of Time, wherin not much happens as we move toward book 7. There is a lot of shifting back and forth in place, a lot of new concepts are introduced, but nothing really happens to advance the plot.[/quote]
Well I’m still less then halfway through the book so far (up to pg 139), but I agree on that from what I’ve read so far. It was interesting but there wasn’t exactly a lot of memorable scenes. If I have to rate it in Amazon, it’ll be 3 stars – just an Okay book. It was slow going with no comical or action scenes to break up the tedium.
Just have to spice it up like in heavenly host beta like when you added the space battle with the lich/dragon attack and the revised ending. Hm, gonna need more of it though. Because in 100+ pages so far, there’s like no hook to make me excited to read.
“Yes! Finally the next book is in my hands.”
Title
Dedication
Contents
“Ugh where’s the story?!”
Preface
“Grr”
“Finally …”
Nice fight at the end though the usage of “knight” became rather repetitive though. That’s it for now. Sleepy.
Just skimmed through it so far, but the ending felt a lot better to me. I’ll have to read it more carefully when I have time.
Hm, was thinking for a final battle maybe one where at first glance, you wouldn’t know who’d win. But as time goes on, maybe after Tommus fought against another boss type demon (insert cool action scene). He pauses for a bit, starts looking around, he could see his army dominating. Sickened by all fighting , blood, gore etc, he finally gets fed up and does something attention grabbing (dunno: magic applified shout “Enough!” or something) that made everyone stop and look towards him. Then I guess you could put that same offer as before, join or die.
After finally finishing through beta 2, I’d give it a 3.5/5.0 a bump from 3.0, so I guess either 3 or 4 stars for an Amazon review. I’d suggest since major overhaul is probably too much, just keep polishing the action scenes, maybe put more cool scenes and change the ending somewhat. Tommus surrounding the enemy army and just asking them to join is simply too anticlimactic after all the set up and plotting and all that in the rest of the story.
I’ve read “Poor Man’s Fight” by Elliot Kay, and I’ve given it 5 stars simply because of just a couple of things. One was a short but cool spar between the hero and an antagonist. The other was near the end when he pretty much single-handedly beaten a ship full of pirates (2-3 chapters? can’t recall). Anyways, talk about a climax. That was badass.
“Into the Abyss” was also the same. It had these cool scenes which I’ve liked reading repeatedly. The “pirate” fight with the Oorstemothians with the bonding scene with Rupert and Tom; dinner with Lenamare where Tom told em off, and also Tom’s duel with Talarius which was simply a great climax.
The action scenes with “The Heavenly Host” doesn’t seem up to snuff. While I thought some were cool, like when a lich got turned into an icecube; the one where Hilda dropkicked a big orc; and the scene were Hilda did a 1 vs 5 bit. I never had any inclination to read them again. Hm, actually thinking it over, those are the only 3 scenes that I found mildly interesting. The rest are pretty much forgettable.
I’ve been rereading this scene for a while now, I keep thinking the way Antefalken and Tom was interacting is wrong. Antefalken believes Tom to be a powerful Archdemon who might be posing as a new fourth order demon for some diabolical plan (refer to Damien’s conversation with Antefalken after Tom and co. came back from the Abyss after picking up Rupert after he died for the first time). Tom also comes out rather naive the way he talks back which doesn’t jibe with his powerful demon image who’s supposedly a few hundred years old – he should have known better.
It might make sense if it was Boggy doing the teaching since he knows the truth, only problem would be Boggy not knowing about Tom’s stealing mana from the heavens part unless someone told him. Maybe Tizzy would work since he was there and all, although him speaking so coherently for such a long time would be weird.
Just finished, and I have to agree with Iume, the story only rates 3 out of 5 for me if going with Amazon reviews. Some might even rate it lower.
Tom seems rather whiny and hesistant compared to his bad ass image in Book 1. Sure he might be in situations where it might be way over his head, but while he might think it, Tomas the Greater Demon would never let it show since it’s a sign of weakness and that’s a no no (refer to scene 96.4).
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of action in this story. Tom only got to fight against hydrahounds that’s about it. Heck Hilda seems a lot cooler than Tom right now – a 5 vs 1 and a dropkick finish on someone way bigger then her. Too much plot thickening I’d say. You’d also think from the Title “The Heavenly Host” he’d have a climactic battle with an angelic foe at the end but nope the ending was quite a letdown.
Story definitely could use some trimming down. There are too many new characters to keep track of. In addition, the incubus and gay parts might turn off some readers.
There are parts that made me smile though like the D’orcs. Heh.
