A human shaman named Celendros reluctantly fights against the evil king Gavun to save the people of their world from slavery and poverty. When an ancient idol is discovered, it takes the war in a whole new direction. Equestria.
(A unique take on the HiE genre. Please note that this is not a crossover. The idea is original (To a point.). I've spent a very long time on this and hope to any who read that they enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.) (P.S. This story was named after and inspired by the Rush album "Power Windows".)
Chapters (4)
Time to get reading.
2436013 Let's hope it takes less time for you to read it than it did for me to write it
2437820 I'm glad you enjoyed it, I worked extra hard to make it a good read.
"Rush is variety, dude."
^^
I read Havindr and all I could think for the rest of this was about Magicka. lol
Big beginner's problem, look at Twilight's lines, read all of the last ones individually. See how they're all questions directed at your protagonist? Now maybe it's juust me, but when I read that I feel there's a lack of characterization given to the source characters...a lack of personality. It's a tool to inform the readers of things yes, but it's boring and dry, and your chapter here is already very very wordy. I was sad to learn so much about your world's magic and nuances already, now there's less left to the imagination, and worst of all, you didn't give me much else to wonder at.
So in the end, it's interesting, but only for about five minutes. For me at least.
I find myself really wanted to edit the sentence structure and tense mistakes I see...not too much as far as spelling or grammar which is good, though.
Very intriguing. It's clear you thought a lot about how this world works. How it's magic functions, how it's government is set up, how wealthy the people are, and so on and so forth. I do lament the fact that we got to read so much of it in the first chapter and through blatant exposition directed directly at the reader by an omniscient narrator. It leaves very little to the imagination and future chapters and feels like mindless drivel that only exists to get readers up to speed. I might be jumping the gun here, but with a little adjustment - swapping Equestria for another original world and fixing some of the grammar and tense issues - I wouldn't be surprised if you could actually get this published as an actual novel. Speaking of that latter issue, there were a couple of sentences that sounded off to me, but only for one could I actually pin-point a flaw in it:
This sentence should be in the past tense, yet it's in the present one. Also, the second 'it' is referring to a person (Gavun Adernal), so it should be either 'he' or his actual name. I think his name fits better given the context of the sentence, but that's just my two cents.
*sigh* you don't stab them in the head, you have to cut the whole head off!
Or set them on fire until they are a pile of ashes.
Very nice chapter. I particularly like how you give an explanation for why Celestia trusts Celendros, even if you almost hand waved it. Though I did notice some thing that rubbed me the wrong way.
First off, some nitpicky things.
You have Celendros say he doesn't kill ponies because they're sentient animals, but that is a lie. He doesn't kill ponies because they're sapient animals. Every single animal is sentient, but the only known sapient species to man is man itself.
How did that thug on the train swing his battle-axe "down horizontally?" Is this just some phrase I've never heard of? Because the terms down and horizontal are not compatible the way I know them.
The narrator seems to make his own judgments in some situations, though I think this is merely the fault of poor word-choice. Take, for example, Twilight's sketch of Celendros absorbing the idol fragment's power. You write "Twilight giggled with excitement documenting everything that was happening even drawing an illustration, not the best but it would do." This says the narrator finds the drawing "not the best," it seems to me like that would be Twilight's observation. Something along the lines of "Twilight giggled with excitement, documenting everything that was happening, even drawing an illustration. Not the best, but it would do, she figured," would seem like a better sentence to me. A simple addition, bit it tells a very different tale. Also, I took the liberty of fixing what I think are some grammatical errors, but I'm no expert on the subject, so I may be wrong.
You also, at some point, start two sentences in a row with the word "but." The way it stands, that reeks of amateur. I'd avoid too many sentences with the same structure within close proximity of one another.
Now, two things that really bugged me.
1. Celendros has a great personality, but whenever he interact socially with a pony, he goes to almost self-insert Mary-sue levels of bland. I might be interpreting the character wrong here, but he seems to me like a very dark person with a strong moral compass. Someone like that should, in my mind, not be this sociable. A little less small talk from him would be appreciated.
2. We missed quite sometime between chapters, didn't we? A week of Celendros and Twilight living under the same roof, the first week, no less, is quite a thing to miss. I'm left wandering how the two interacted in that time, if at all. Did they avoid each other most of the time? Did they talk and get to know each other? Did Twilight try to get more info about Celendros' life, world and/or magic? It seems to me like I, as reader, missed a lot of character development, leaving me to wonder whether actions such as those I talked about in my last complaint are out of character or the result of unseen development.
Now, don't take this all the wrong way. Most of these are small issues to me that I can overlook. I enjoyed reading this chapter and am looking forward to more. It certainly wasn't as bad as a God of War crossover on the site I stopped reading, recently.
2691232 Indeed. Cutting them into little pieces usually also does the trick, but I'd watch the remains for a few minutes afterwards, myself. You can never be too sure your opponent doesn't have a gradual regenerative ability.
2694427 Just want to clear some things up. First off i'll go in and fix those grammar errors when I can.
Now let's get to it.
1. There was a reason why I did that thing with the narrator, it will be explained in the future.
2. Celendros is not a dark person at all, he's just a man who wants to be alone because that's all he's ever been. He's never really had a friend for more than a few days as hinted in the first chapter. He's warming up to having a friend, but still has his doubts.
3. I skipped a week because it was unimportant to the story and would've been a waste of time. There's a lot that i'm being forced to skip over because there's already a lot to put down on paper (metaphorically). If I went into each and every detail that I want to get across what I wanted. This story would end up being over 300,000 words long when its finished. And as much as i'd love to do it, people just don't have that kind of time and neither do I. So i'm trying to keep the overall word count down to novel length.
3179729 It's meant to be long, so it gives the reader more time to be immersed in the story before having to leave the world of Socobeck and Equestria.
Likin' it so far. Keep up with the good work!
As I promised you yesterday.
This review is brought to you on behalf of the group: Authors Helping Authors
This review is based on the prologue.
Name of Story: Power Windows
Grammar score: 7 / 10
You have some difficulty with tenses
Are you American? :troll:
Be careful about the “its/it’s, than/then, you’re/your, etc…”
Apart from that, you can use more dot instead of comma to give rest to the reader without dampening your own writing. Aim for sentences around 15 words.
Pros
- This story has a lot of potential.
- You can create good and expressive description.
- the four truths.
Cons
- You show the same weakness as I do, you always try to overdo your story with descriptions, names and long sentences. That can be enhanced.
- The meeting between Celendros and Twilight, it’s really cliché. They don’t come from the same world!
- The king is a big bad evilious monstrous villain that would require more development in my opinion.
- You’re bringing too much thing in too short space. You are wasting good ideas that could turn into adventures and plots and thus enhance your story.
Notes Section
- Don’t switch of “subject” in one paragraph. In this one,
You speak about the shamans first, then, Celendros, and then mention the King as a “he” when he is the “object” of the verb in the penultimate sentence. Choose a subject per paragraph and then skip a line when you change. It will force you to develop and enhance your description and will push you to match description and first person writing, which is very difficult.
-
Here I finally understood that you were “telling a story” since the beginning of the prologue. Use italic and “” in that situation in order not to mess with reader’s mind. You switch between present tense and past tense quickly and without showing a clear line between those two parts, you’ll frea out any unaware reader.
- Don’t go for overly long and cryptic sentences like “It ravages views upon the world and keeps its wielder away from destiny’s grasp to forge a new, twisted strand of metaphorical thread.”.
- “They, the Shamans fought back once”. Get rid of “they”, go directly for shaman.
- You tend to repeat a lot the same words in a short paragraph especially with the word “room”. Try to avoid that.
- You tend to mention secondary characters, places and characters that may have no interest or relevance in your story at the moment. It is better to make an ellipse now about them to introduce their concept slowly thereafter instead of forcing everything down the readers’ throat right now.
- Instead of using the “meanwhile”, try to take profit of the [ hr ] html code of fimfiction.net
- You kinda throw away ideas that could enhance your plot and further development of your story like the world colliding, the power of the artefact, etc… Don’t do it. Keep it hidden and then you’ll have good plots for your chapters ^^.
Conclusion.
The story is promising, really promising. The only thing that I can advise you is not shooting a bullet in your own foot. Try not to waste your ideas and throw too many information in your story really fast. You’ll disturb the reader and lose good opportunities for your story.
₰ φ Ҩ ұ ϡ Ϫ ϡ ұ Ҩ φ ₰
Enjoy your review!
This was brought to you by the French guy RealmOfMereShadows
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Please help me out by looking at my story:
Beneath an Endless Dusk
It is an [ALTER. ‘VERSE], [DARK] and [ADVENTURE] story featuring a whole new universe set up one hundred and eleven years in the futur of the show. Equestria has been ravaged by an event following Twilight’s coronation and the remains and chunks of the world aren't happy and safe anymore.
Great story; very underrated.
3515124 Thanks a bunch bro, it means a lot.
WOOHOO ACTION
4689307 WOOO stuff happening!
Yeah, I saw quite a few instances of sloppy grammar and spelling, including the instance in the AN of you forgetting to capitalize an i.