Reply To: Suggestion for formatting the book
You generally inserted chapters with descriptions of the various types of magic, moon cycles, day names etc. For the fans interested in creating fiction based on this setting this is obviously a treasure chest of information they need to know so that their stories wouldn’t conflict with each other. Most readers however aren’t going to create fan fiction and this serves as a distraction from the main story. Personally I read a few of these chapters and then generally skipped them. I would recommend either putting all this lore into a separate book (or just on the website) or into an appendix at the end of the book. It won’t distract the reader from the story that way.
Also, there are a few contradictions in the book. For example, at first no indication is given about whether or not Tom knows of the Courts of Chaos, so when they are first mentioned and there’s no reaction from Tom it makes me think “why the Hell isn’t Tom asking questions?”. I can’t speak for all of the readers, but it’s probably a good idea to have all the new stuff explained to Tom first, so that the reader isn’t confused about what Tom knows and what he doesn’t know. After all the readers are likely to associate themselves with Tom, seeing how he’s from ‘our’ Earth and such. Later in the book it’s mentioned (or implied?) that Boggy and Tom had been in a bar fight. A bar, apparently, located in the City. Again it’s implied that Tom has been there already, however when he travels with Antefalken he asks questions that a person visiting the City for the first time would ask. This just sows confusion about what Tom knows and what he doesn’t know, making it hard to follow his progress. It would be nice if in the next book the reader gained knowledge about the world of Astlan (or rather the knowledge that Tom gains about the world) through Tom, rather than through the perspectives of other characters and the “special chapters”.
P.S. It would be nice if you had an RSS feed with updates on the site (although sending an announcement through the forum should also be possible), so that when the next book comes out I could buy it straight away (I wrote a review on goodreads, by the way, hope you register there as an author)