The Broken Places

Well, I've read it all.
I'm a newbie and I'm not sure I'm qualified to criticise this. All I will say is that I would buy this.
I'm noting your name and the book title. Let me know when this is published and it will be. I will be buying this. I want to know how it turns out.

Ju x

I'm enjoying this. I'm glad i got to it at last, sorry it took so long. L. K. Hamilton before the degeneration into porn but for fairies...! (If you see what i mean...)

This is excellent. I'm totally pulled in. Carla Jo

I didn't think I would like this. I didn't... I loved it. when I first started reading I thought...mmm macho stuff but when he laid into the wife beater I wanted him to win.
You took me straight into the action and when he got injured I cared about what happened to him and I only started reading because you used the same name for a character as I did.
I'll be back when I've read some more.

This is really excitingly written, fast and wild. I have been drawn immediately into the story. Urban magic is totally my interest as well. It always seems so wrong to call it fantasy. This sounds very real to me!

Very interesting and compeling read.

I stumbled upon your book while trawling through the fantasy charts and thought I would take a look. I like it a lot. I wasn’t sure from the pitch whether this was right for me but reading the word ‘redcap’ I was intrigued, having never seen a story about one before.

You immediately launch us into the tension inside Grey’s head, having to get out of the house to look for trouble, and I was hooked from there in. As the story unfolded I started to pick up on the things which made him special. The violent urges. His ability to heal quickly. Vulnerability to iron. His description and those of his friends in Ch2. It’s great that you don’t dump all this on the reader immediately. Nicely polished and crisp sentences, with each word earning its keep. You keep a fast pace going and put a great hook from Ch1 into Ch2.

I agree with someone else who said the cover could be better, it didn’t give me a sense of the great story awaiting me. Have you spoken to Bradley Wind? He’s fantastic and did my cover and loads of other people’s on here.

Anyway, I babble. Great story and shelved with pleasure! If you wouldn’t mind taking a look at mine too, I would be grateful for your comments ;-)

Scott Foley (Warlords of The Dreaming God)

This is a really intriguing story. It just draws you in, and pulls you along. I noticed, though, that you last updated in February. I hope the next chapter comes soon.

Aevanyll

Looks like my sort of thing! On my watch list!

This has the flair of old detective noir. The descriptions are vivid and you hold a good tension level as well.

The only thing is that the excessive use of pronouns is distracting at times, Especially when so many sentences start with I and He.

The MC has a strong voice and personality however, and the premise is intriguing.

Rian

I'm enjoying this. I'm glad i got to it at last, sorry it took so long. L. K. Hamilton before the degeneration into porn but for fairies...! (If you see what i mean...)

This is excellent. I'm totally pulled in. Carla Jo

I like your take on the Celtic mythology and the massive update in the legend. I will so be reading this. Carla Jo

On my watchlist and looking forward to reading it!

Thank you, Jukav!!

Well, I've read it all.
I'm a newbie and I'm not sure I'm qualified to criticise this. All I will say is that I would buy this.
I'm noting your name and the book title. Let me know when this is published and it will be. I will be buying this. I want to know how it turns out.

Ju x

I didn't think I would like this. I didn't... I loved it. when I first started reading I thought...mmm macho stuff but when he laid into the wife beater I wanted him to win.
You took me straight into the action and when he got injured I cared about what happened to him and I only started reading because you used the same name for a character as I did.
I'll be back when I've read some more.

I appreciate the fast pace and the terse Hemingway-style sentences. I think those are certainly appropriate from a first person narrator who is also an avid, and somewhat uncontrollable, reader of The Old Man and the Sea.

The prose and style are really working for your story. The only criticism I have to offer -- and this is just from a reading of the first chapter -- is that your character comes off a little too much like John Walsh with a degree in English. Why does the wifebeater come to the bar that night? How does he know that your narrator is there? Maybe slow down some sections like that and explain the grievance in a little more detail. Right now the fight comes off flat, like an episode of America's Most Wanted with the narrator tussling it out with a known bad guy. Maybe the narrator has a love interest with the wife? Then we'd see him warts and all.

Thanks, Debbie. I'm really glad you're enjoying it! And truthfully, I don't like the jacket cover either. It's an image of Grey I created using Hero Machine, an online character builder. I think it's a neat picture, but it's not great as cover art. I'm just using it as filler until I come up with something better.

And thanks for your suggestion about the iron. I always worry about over-explaining things when I write, because I don't want to interrupt the action. So I feel like you gave me permission to add in this particular explanation. It's now in my updated Chapter 2. :)

Still reading this - great stuff. But I have to confess I really don't like your jacket cover. It looks too boys-own comicky and you might alienate your femail readers this way?

But this is one of the best fantasies I've read on this site so far.

Fair enough - but maybe you need to make that clear to the readers? I'm quite into that type of fantasy and know the accepted set of "rules" as will many other people! If you want to break them, that's fine (and even good), but you need to let the reader know that you know you are breaking them, IYSWIM. Does that make sense?

Tom Deitz is one of my favourite authors. Oh, and Mercedes Lackey does that kind of thing too. I do miss not being in London and having access to shops selling all the American fantasy imports! Amazon isn't the same.

I've bookshelved this, btw, as it's one of my favourite recent discoveries!

Wow, I didn't expect to get feedback so soon. This is awesome! Thanks, all. I'll be posting more chapters soon. I just want to give them a final once-over first.


Debbie--I realized early on that a faerie couldn't really function in the modern world if he was affected by everything that contained iron. So I went with making it all a matter of degree. When my characters refer to "cold iron," they mean the purest, most unrefined forms of iron. Steel and similar alloys have been melted, smelted, processed, refined, and reshaped to the point that they've lost any mystical significance and no longer pose a threat.

I actually haven't read Tom Deitz yet, but he's on my "To Read" list. He was a guest speaker at the library where I work a year or so ago, so of course, we have all his books. :)

Good start, though I did wonder about all the iron in his apartment (refrigerator, radio etc). Does that not affect him? I presume you've read Tom Deitz, btw - he write this sort of stuff and set in Atlanta too!

Liked this very much and will definitely read more.

This is really excitingly written, fast and wild. I have been drawn immediately into the story. Urban magic is totally my interest as well. It always seems so wrong to call it fantasy. This sounds very real to me!

Your opening chapter certainly carries an impact. At first I found it difficult with the first person narrative but a few paragraphs in I could see why you did this. I enjoyed this and it makes me want to carry on reading and find out more.

Wayne (Prester John)