the_passerby
So sorry I'm in your massage board it seems my comment was too long to be sent in the book.
First of all, this book is strangely—unfairly—underrated.
I’m binging it. You have a unique way of making your readers shiver.
Look, I don’t know how open you are to not-so-flattering comments, but I want your blade to cut sharp. So I decided to point out the little scratches on it.
First, give us a moment to breathe. I know this is your style, but you use too many precise, intense, and epic descriptions for even the smallest actions.
Sometimes I feel like there’s no real flow. I don’t know… It feels wrong, yet it feels good too. Maybe I just need to get used to it.
And maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like characters other than Lucien, Rhyd, and Cadeyrn don’t have their own voices.
Yes, the atmosphere of your story makes everyone afraid to speak, to use as few words as possible. But looking at the big picture makes me feel like they’re all one person, speaking from different positions.
Anyway, you’d have to try much harder to make me drop this story. You’re showing me what I’ve always wanted to find in books.
the_passerby
@sapphicgurlproblems I completely understand what you mean. The current state of the story makes total sense, and even at this stage, it remains deeply compelling. Of course the difference between Lucien and Rhydian comes through. Honestly, both characters are very well developed. Lucien feels deep, sarcastic, and precise—he strikes exactly where he should. That said, there are moments when his train of thought becomes a bit tangled, and it suddenly feels like he jumps to something unrelated. It’s probably perfectly logical in his own head; I think it only feels that way because, as a reader, I’m not always privy to the full chain of his thoughts. There was a line—by Rix, I think—where she says to Auren, “You can’t come here. My Alpha bleeds in these halls.” That line was so poetic and striking that it felt very Lucien-coded to me. Overall, Lucien is completely his own. I’d even say that a star like him doesn’t need more light to shine—he needs a darker sky around him. he needs the other characters to be less like him. As for Rhydian: he is as quiet as he needs to be. But so far, I’ve mostly seen his confused, exhausted, and wounded side, which makes it harder for me to fully reconcile that with the way he’s initially described in the story. I need to see the reason for his father’s fear of him—and the Court’s—in his dialogue at some point. Maybe a line that completely disarms everyone, yet gives no one, not even his father, anything to challenge him on. At the moment, Rhyd feels like he’s falling a little short of the shape the story first sets up for him. In contrast, Lucien already feels like he’s in his strongest possible form.
sapphicgurlproblems
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this, genuinely. I’m always trying to figure out how to sharpen the story, and I do agree with you: it does lack a bit of character development right now. That’s actually a big reason I decided to rewrite in the first place. As a BL lover, I caught myself losing the plot and just wanting them together already so I pulled back, stripped things down, and this rewrite is me trying to rebuild the bones properly.
Your feedback about flow and voice really stuck with me. I think part of it comes from where the story is right now, it’s still very much in its “trailer” phase. A lot of characters haven’t been fully introduced yet, and the atmosphere is intentionally tight and restrained, which might be flattening voices more than I’d like at this stage.
That said, thank you for pointing it out so honestly. Please keep it coming, this kind of feedback genuinely motivates me and helps me grow as a writer.
I do want to ask you one thing from a reader’s perspective:
do you feel you can differentiate between Lucien and Rhydian as characters right now, even a little? I’d love to know what comes across (or doesn’t).
