It is good to see you attempting a long piece Fainne.

I can tell that you have a rich imagination and a well-spring of ideas that you have drawn upon to build this world and populate it with characters.

I have to be honest though, I am confused at to what’s going on.

The prologue holds up well enough. I can understand that somewhere, someone wants something from the woman named Kinana. He already has it though and presumably kills her.

That part I can follow. What come next raises the questions. It jumps to a scene in a village at night. There is a woman and she is outraged as to what’s happening, there is mention of a war, and of some children who are important and related ot the people talking.

Later on when we learn that Ariza has a “gift” I wonder, is this one of the children the others were talking about?

This opening chapter of a longer work does do a good job of raising a lot of questions. Who are these children, what gifts do they have, what significant do they hold. All these things are good. It gets the readers mind going. I feel though, that there isn’t enough information about the setting and the world situation. I can understand that the things they are talking about are important to them, but why are they important to me, the reader? Give us some more information about that and I think this chapter will be all the more enjoyable to read.

Keep up the good work!

 *** The visuals in this story are well written, I could see clearly what and where the characters were doing. I was confused however as to the time or era that the story takes place. You gave subtle hints as far as the characters themselves. I wanted to know more about them, their history for example, maybe even a brief description. I could surmise some of their character by your dialogue. This story has the potential to be a really great novel one that I would gladly add to my collection of books in my own personal library. Try reading the story to yourself, but slowly that way you can catch even mistakes I didn't. You are your own best critic... You are off to a wonderful start and I look forward to reading more...you have succeeded in adding another fan to your list! Write on...***

 Right--so first, I'd like to say...hooray! It's really good, Fainne. I was trying to read the first chapter and prologue last night, but didn't get too far before I had to go to sleep (long day). But hey-morning now, and I'm wide awake and loving this! However, I would like to say that of all that I've read (chapter 1 and the prologue), I liked the prologue better. I felt that you were better able to peak my interest in it. That being said, this chapter was pretty good, too. I was confused at the very begining, with all of them in the tent, but I guess that's what happens when you jump into reading something that's already moving at a fast pace. I liked the whole secret-chamber-under-the-tent thing. When you're describing their surroundings, though, I'd like to recommend to think 3-dimensional: floor, walls, ceilings. I saw lots of descriptive writing about the walls and the shelves--the antler hooks thing was a great example--but not much about the floor or the ceiling. Was it made of earth? If so, was the ground (or ceiling, even) damp? Cool? Could Suviana see the ends of plant roots in the ceilings? I think if you incorportate these sorts of descriptions--without over-doing it, of course--you'd have a really nice setting going on. I completely agree with what everyone else has said in their critiques of this, too, by the way. Another thing, too--when Ariza was saying words like "mir" and "kima",  I noticed that you didn't start new paragraphs or use speech tags or anything, like "Ariza said..." and so on. I found this a bit confusing, but after I passed "mir" and got to "kuma", it made more sense. I think, as a grammatical thing, you might want to change that up. Great, great job, though! If I'm not super tired again later today, I'll read chapter 2 and critique.