Let's Read Experimental Book Club

[Thaal Sinestro]

http://omniverse-rpg.com/showthread.php?...0#pid74100

Variant B

I enjoyed this a lot! It felt EXTREMELY Warhammer. You really nailed the setting and the tone of the universe, and I'd say that your style is similar to the novels I've read from the series. Strong Voice, good grammar, ample emotional depth. I got chills a few times reading it.

I like that as the writing went on, it went further into depth. It felt really like a flashback, where we were seeing the big, big details, and you worked us down to the personal level. From macro to micro. Obviously a person who wasn't familiar with the bare-basics of 40k wouldn't get a ton of what was going on, but I don't think that's the audience you're writing for, so that's not an issue. I'll be continuing reading to see how fine your details get, because I feel like I had JUST caught up with the personal details of the moment when the post ended (which was a good place to break, I think).

I don't really wanna speak on detail depth for that reason, because you weren't writing FOR depth, you were recapping events and setting an emotional tone, and I think you really accomplished that goal well.

I only found 1 typo in the thing on my first read-through, so very good work there.

“Dead.”, the praetor muttered

The centurion ducked through the stone archway of the tower and into the streets of the capital, he was met by two dozen marines and a half-platoon of auxilia in total, inspecting their equipment as they sat perched atop a half-functioning Land Raider. The bottom dregs of the underhive slum-gangs and fanciful scions of feudal world nobility, and all things between. Sons of Terra, of Cthonia, of Barbarus, of Bodt and Chemos both, and of the thousands of other worlds under the banner of the Imperium. But above all, they were the defenders of humanity, and their duty is to die standing.

This is a cool paragraph. It made me think back to the military a bit, and how we're all from such different places, but are all there for the same reason. It was a cool moment of personal depth and reflection that might have gone unnoticed by a more action-minded scene, so I liek that you started us out at a "still" point in the narrative.

It's hard for me to point to specific ways to improve in this post, because te vast majority of my writing style and experience lies in finding the details of a moment. However, I think it would be cool to hear about more specifics, even in the grand, sweeping narrative parts. Which specific battles had lost specific things of emotional importance to the speaker? Was there a building, a person, or a scene that you can pin in the grand details? You don't have to like, tell the whole story, but just a line or two. "We lost brother Garrack there," or something similar, to illustrate feelings of personal loss or defeat. That's just my style though, and I don't think that your writing is particularly hindered by a lack of those kinds of details, it's jsut a stylistic opinion.

Good work! I always enjoy reading your stuff, and I think you're really at home in the 40k lore.