TAF said:
I'm surprised to see the descriptions as a positive given that prose has never been a strong suit of mine whatsoever. Even the descriptions in this that I like are much too few and far between for a book of this size, and are paltry compared to a lot of other works I've read.
I would submit to you this question: what is the purpose of a description? To enable the reader to see what is happening in his head with more ease. Let me therefore say that - save for a handful of times - I could picture everything perfectly. Therefore, even if your descriptions might not be as 'prose-y' as you'd like, they certainly got the job done, and I would say that they were excellent. Remember: the goal is not fanciful language, but visualization. Your imaginative descriptions were perfectly spaced to aid in that.
TAF said:
Similarly the praise for the prologue is essentially a negative for me as the author because it also means the book is all downhill from the very beginning. Writing Thomas losing his faith was relatively easy because I too have lost my faith in myself as a writer. But I am glad there's one chapter you unequivocally liked. All of Thomas' hopes, circumstances, and choices in the prologue echo throughout the rest of the entire story.
Well I suppose you can look at that as meaning the story is downhill from there, or as meaning that there is at least one chapter I loved without flaw, break it down, and try to emulate it in the rest of your writing. The process of becoming a better writer is about using criticism to build up, not down. If at any point my criticism has failed to point out an area for improvement, than I would consider myself a failed critic.
TAF said:
I'm curious if you could elaborate on what you mean as Reed being an antagonist. He's mostly consistent with how he is in the first book, save for a reveal or two.
He creates conflict. Conflict in turn creates tension. Tension is good. Once Reed started acting up, I paid more attention every time he was on set, because I figured he was going to cause trouble in some way.
Perhaps 'antagonist' was a bad word, as Reed is not an antagonist the same way Silvin is.
TAF said:
Your comments on Silvin serve to me as proof that charisma is indeed the biggest ingredient for making the audience like an evil character. All the other antagonists are mostly joyless.
I would disagree there. Charisma can certainly help a character extensively, but I - and I might and probably am alone here - do not believe that it alone can make a reader
like any character. I've mentioned
Oceans' Eleven before. Those characters have charisma, I liked none of them, and was bored by the entire movie as a result.
There are far more important ingredients to making reader's like - and truly care for - evil characters. Top of the list is them recognizing that they are evil and/or trying to change.
Regarding the free indirect speech, you seem to have misinterpreted it as just having different PoV's. As I've explained previously, free indirect speech is simply incorporating a character's perspective into the 3rd person narration. The PoV can also shift quite freely, though the point remains that even if Thomas was the only PoV in the entire story FIS would still be used. You've probably used it yourself even unintentionally.
Regarding jumping around the PoVs so much, it's a fair point I suppose. Perhaps I as a reader just don't require so much time in exchange for my investment, and so give limited PoV to each character (even Thomas) in turn. Once something endears me to a character I am more or less locked in from there. I also want to see things through the eyes of others in the group, because they are important. I just imagined it'd stick better, and having your reaction being just indifference to various gut-punch moments hurts the story immeasurably. I'd even incorporated your TMHW feedback to give the characters more "strong" actions, choices, and introductions, though it doesn't seem to have helped much.
I did look back at the first time I asked you about it previous to my review. In the above, I'm using 'PoV' to describe inserting a character's thoughts into the 3rd person narration. However, the effect is basically identical to shifting PoV, so this point is fairly moot.
Now it is certainly true that I require more to invest me in a character than the typical reader. I've noticed this as I've studied writing. So my comments can certainly be viewed as what is likely a minor issue blown out of proportion.
That being said, I believe there is something to showing how a character views something, through their actions and dialogue, without resorting to entering their head. This is something I have been trying to rely on more in my writing, while also making sure characters don't just say everything they think (because it's ham-fisted and unrealistic).
If I'm perfectly honest, I have to admit my lack of investment in the characters is likely a symptom of several issues, including FIS, too many characters in the group, and my own over-inflated needs for character investment.
Perhaps you could give some examples of the strong actions/choices you had the characters do? I'd be curious to see why I missed those.
TAF said:
One of I risks I knew going in with this was that the characters stop making good decisions. In TMHW they mostly make sound decisions given the circumstances, but that is not the case in this book and it carried problems with the reader even if it was intentional.
Well, questionable decisions can certainly be handled. There was one passage I pointed out where someone finally called a bad decision, and the group spent a minute explaining why they had to do it anyway. Bad decision or not, that passage worked.
Now I don't know if the character's are being
caused to make bad decisions (my personal bet is possession, which also explains Header's strange shift in character), but if someone had simply pointed out the decisions, or at least questioned them, things would have been so much better. Now granted, maybe there's a plot reason you can't do that, so as I said this is a relatively minor issue.
TAF said:
Yes, Apostle misses shots but they're not real soldiers so it's kind of a moot point. One wounds Irene, one wounds Stacey, and one kills Montag and that's about it. I guess I could've added a character specifically to get killed by them early on to establish threat but eh...
It's more the scenes where they spray bullets mere feet from their target and hit nothing. Elias does this. The Reaper does this. The CIA guys do this. I've never fired a gun in my life, but if you gave me an automatic weapon and a man-sized target ten feet away, I can practically guarantee I would hit it.
This is a valid criticism as distances to places are rarely mentioned. Both books are the journey more than the destinations, but still.
I will mention that noting actual distances is merely the easiest way to band-aid this. A better way to actually fix it would be to have a true sense of progression for the group, either with them making progress in unraveling mysteries, defeating enemies, or whatever. Mysteries are unraveled, but it is mostly all through dialogue from Nazar. The heroes mostly just stagger from place to place. At the end, they are just as capable as they were at the beginning.
TAF said:
long-winded can describe much of the book as a whole. You didn't even mention that 90% of the book is dialogue.
It's not so much long-winded, as it is the fact that the flowery language comes in clumps. And there's nothing wrong with dialogue. An entire story can be dialogue. Dialogue doesn't make a story longer, or boring, or meandering. Sometimes it can cut what would have taken several paragraphs of prose to explain.
Neither Silvin or Elias see themselves as evil but they are perfectly aware of how others view them and so describe themselves as thus. Silvin is a lot more tongue-in-cheek about it: he's been played up as a bad guy in the media for years.
I never got the idea that Elias didn't consider himself to be a bad guy - he seemed to genuinely believe it when he said it. At least to me.
TAF said:
I will strongly contest Header's actions at the end. If you felt it was out of the blue then you need to reread any of Header's earlier scenes leading up until that point.
Then I guess I need to reread Header's actions. It's not so much what he did, but how he did it.
This is fair but I just couldn't bring myself to jump from 25 to 64 chapters between stories.
Do it. I jumped from 16 chapters in
Valkyrie to 31 in DoD and the story wasn't negatively affected (that I'm aware of).
TAF said:
Given how invested Thomas was in Brooke I would expect to see the opposite of growth now that she's dead.
Were this real life, I would agree with you. But if by the end of all this Thomas just ends up right back where he started, I'll be surprised. Unless the whole series ends with everything destroyed and King victorious, and turns out to be some sort of observation of how we're all doomed or something. Which I'm guessing won't be the case...
TAF said:
I find this curious since I actually think the Stacey/Thorn romance is superior to the Thomas/Brooke one, though that may just be preference and you never said if that one was any good either. Where any of those will lead any of them remains to be seen.
Well 'superior' is a subjective term here... I find Thomas/Brooke to be more believable, because they legitimately gain something from each other and I can see as a result how the attraction might start. Given Stacey's backstory, I would expect her to shun all the guys, and I'm completely flummoxed as to why Thorn is attracted to Stacey. It just seems to... have happened.
TAF said:
I can't say it's not demoralizing spending seven years writing a sequel only to get the same score (if not subtly lower) than the original, though I never expected you to love it so I can't get too upset really.
I've been demoralized my fair share by your ratings, so you're in good company.
Seriously though, I think the idea of the story is a good one, there's just a combination of factors (centered around the characters) which keep bringing it down for me. And yes, I am very overly critical, as evidenced by the difference in ratings for TMHW between me and AMIS.
I would again be glad to offer my ideas on how you could make the final entry better, but it would ultimately come down to what I think would work, and may not be indicative of readers as a whole (again, as evidenced by AMIS's rating).
It's probably nothing. 
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