Jack and Adam: Genesis

Hi Chad!
I'm in the YA group, but went on vacation and fell behind on my reading, I'm afraid! I've been looking forward to reading this for a while, so I'm glad I finally got to start! :) I just read through the first chapter, and found myself very drawn in by Jack's character. He reminded me a little of Jack Sparrow, from Pirates of the Carribean, but that might just be me. :) I found just two little critiques:

'She used her gift to find cures that were supposedly untreatable'; I think you might mean 'She used her gift for find cures to (ailments, conditions, diseases, etc) that were supposedly untreatable'. I could be wrong, let me know if I mis-read!

Then (and someone mirrored my thoughts, below) the transition from "Come on, when have I been wrong" to the next paragraph left me a little confused. I had to re-read it a couple of times to be sure I hadn't missed something. Just a simple transition-sentence, to let us know that their initial approach did not go as planned (or maybe it did?) would make it much smoother. I really like the way you have Jack remembering the statement, as a way to tie the paragraphs together, but a little more would be good. In reading it again, I realize that the transition would work great in a movie, but without visuals, we need more guidance. :) I have a feeling that you see the action as a movie in your head while you write...I know how that goes. :)

Anyways, I really like it so far, and will give it a whirl on my shelf!
L.

Hi Chad,

I think you have a good premise here. Made me think of Nix’s Shades’ Children mixed with Red Dwarf and Star wars. Not a bad combination, huh? The first chapter was a tad long for my liking, but that’s just me; I prefer shorter stuff. Like all of us on here, I think there is still room for you to tighten the prose a little. Feel it would move your story at a better pace if you chopped into some of those sentences. However, when you describe stuff you do a good job, no doubting that. I think this has a good chance and a definite market so it gets my backing.

Good luck,

Steve ;>

p.s if you get a spare moment please check out my book Twistwood. It’s a Wild West fantasy horror written at a pretty fast pace and full of action.

Nice one.

Chad,

I’m a wee late reporting in from the YA group. I’ve only taken in the first chapter so far (not much to go on, I know), but I plan to read more. As others have stated, you have a very engaging opening that drops us right into the action. I loved the action and enjoyed most of the dialog. That said, I have a few comments:

You don’t actually introduce your character names until the third chapter. In fact, you describe the planet in some detail before you tell us who exactly is “safe for the moment”.

I liked the hologram twist, except I’m not entirely sure how it worked. Where were Jack and his crew really located? How did a hologram get captured? If Jack wasn’t really in the cage, how did “the thunderous sound of marching boots beat” against his ears?

I’m going to back this based on what I’ve read so far. Hopefully the rest of the story retains the same energy.

Thanks! ~Steve

Hey,

This was an easy read for me, I really liked it. The sitting was cool.

Shelved,
Kimmy

Hi Chad,
This reminded me in a way of the Wizard of Oz where they go into the great wizard's stronghold to find it's all an illusion. I think that the basic idea and the way you build the suspense is good. I think you need to work on it a little more to achieve a really powerful effect. For example - you jump quite a lot from the ship and the binoculars to the cage. I thought you needed something to say how Jack got there. The river of lava is a powerful image, and you described the witch's men's hair I think it was, but I couldn't quite picture the whole scene. It was clever that Jack was just a hologram - as was the witch - but I think that you could have milked the suspense more as he went into the lava - again there was too much of a jump cut for me. I hope this helpful - you have some powerful imagery here.
Tricia

Hi Chad,

I'm having difficulty focusing on this, but I think it's because it just isn't my genre. But you have a lively writing style, which you exhibit with a lot of energy and passion. I'm putting you on my watch list, because I believe your story will have appeal among young teen boys. Best of luck!

Shannon

.Love the start. We’re right into the action. I really enjoyed reading this and think it will be a winner with the targeted age group, and adults who love reading YA, like me, lol.

Here’s a couple of suggestions I have learned to use in my writing over the years.

Read through and take as many of the speech tags out as possible. If there’s action, use that to show the reader who’s speaking and when there’s only two people conversing prob don’t even need to show anyway.

Also check your tags, you have quite a lot of ‘Gruella shouted’ ‘Jack shouted’

I think if you do that, the prose will be tighter. You know what? After thinking for a bit, I’m going to back the book. As I said, just make the writing tighter and this really is a story kids will love. Hehe I just like the idea and believe all writing can be improved. Do you have crit partner/s to work with either face to face or via email? If not, I would heartily recommend trying to find some.

hi chad,

you've got a great imagination and a good idea for a story. by the time you've got plenty of reads and nitpicks, read some different styles on here and tightened it up, i'm sure this will get rolling.

hope the new ya recruits give you some advice.

have fun-TJ

Hello Chad,
this is a review for the YA group.
So many ideas thrown in here that there's a danger of being swamped. I think it's the side roads you sometime wander down that detract from the overall effect. Especially when dealing with Adam. For example, pages 8 and 9 are overdone, with spider men, racing trains, and last minute escapes. The chase may be required - I don't think it is - but the detail here reads as if you are very consciously writing a kids sci-fi and want to include everything that comes to mind. Just out of interest, slim the chase down to a couple of paragraphs and see if it works.
The pages with Adam are more like the text for the new graphic novels. Perhaps the whole book might be suitable for that. They are becoming increasingly popular.
The sections where Jack is involved appear more mature somehow. I would suggest going over the Adam sequences, and see if you can match them for a more grown up feel. The writing generally is good, you are never short of ideas and the storyline is entertaining. However it takes a while for both threads to gel - I think about chapter 15 - and I feel that a pruning of the Adam pages would benefit the book greatly. I'm going to keep it on my watchlist, so perhaps you might want to be in touch if/when you update.
Scott.

Signing in for the YA group.

Comments on Chapter 1...

I think there is a potentially good story here, but it's lost something in translation from mind to page. At first we are approaching Gruela's lair (Cruella?), with a group of too many characters. Then Jack is suddenly hanging from a cage. I'm taking it he has been captured, but how is a hologram "captured"?

You do a quick summary of the world, half lush, half desert, then we are back in the Gruela's lair. Given you have supplied very little background to this - how Jack and the gang got here and why - you might as well just get straight on with the story.

By all means drop us straight into the action, but why not start with Jack hanging over the pit? While you're at it, why not give us an idea of how old he is, what he looks like? Sketchy detail to let me fill in the blanks is good, but I'm not getting ANYTHING about him. I'm assuming he's an adult, but given your target audience, he could just as easily be a kid. I just don't know. While you've got Jack hanging over the pit, you can bleed in some information about why he's there, even a brief flashback.

As it stands, I really can't work out what's going on nor why. We seem to be in a SF universe, but then we have a witch and magic (and holograms). As I wrote upfront, I think there's a good story here. It just needs some refinement to get it across - especially to its target audience.

Best wishes with this. Take all comments with the proverbial grain of salt.

Regards,

TomW

Hi,

YA group member here. You have definitely put us in the action and it moves along well. I agree with many of the points made below as far as digging deeper into the story, so to speak, goes. So I won't leave any suggestions with you. Great pacing. Very inventive story. Jack is a fun character.

Best,

Niki

Hi, from the YA group. I didn't really think I'd like it at first, I've never really had a thing for sci fi books, even though I've never read any >,< but I really liked it. The descriptions were good, pace great, I loved the twist in the pit. I'll have to read more. So, so far didn't see anything to critic on, I like how it gets right into the action. Good luck with this.

oni

Hi there! Just started, and it's pretty fun. It feels a little like a David Weber novel. The twist at the end of the chapter is great. I'll be back. Carlajo

You write in an active fast-paced style but it feels like the narrative for a video game more than a book.

Hi Chad: YA reading groupie here--reading a little ahead of pace. I've only read a few chapters of Jack and Adam: Genesis, but I have a couple of observations. First, when I started Ch. 1, I felt as if I had come in on the middle of things--like the action was already in progress without me knowing who's who. Perhaps if there were a bit more exposition at the start, I'd have a better grasp of what Jack and the gang were up to. You break in Ch. 1 right after Jack, Risa et al. are about to undertake their mission, then pick up again with Jack in custody, in the cage. It's unclear how that happened. And whether the others are with him isn't made clear until after Jack pulls his hologram stunt and Risa tells him about the message she just got.

I find the language itself not consistently strong, although for the most part you write in concise sentences. But then you have things like "She used her gift to discover cures that were supposedly untreatable." You mean "cures to diseases" right? And then there's this sentence, which is not quite accurate: "Through rumors and lies, black magic became the source of her knowledge and Gruela was banished from her home world." It's not "through" the resource of rumors and lies that she adopted black magic, but "because" of the rumors and lies, isn't it? I don't mean to be so nitpicky, but these are things that drew my attention.

I'm not a big SF reader, but I suspect you understand your target market better than I do. The first few chapters are really action-packed, and I know that kind of start really appeals to many young readers. I wish you success with this book. Best, Rob

Whoops! That was lucky. I was thinking you hadn't got back to me about the more detailed notes and i thought i'd check back here before dumping them, and you do want them! If i might say, I would always suggest that a direct reply to a reviewer is best via a message, otherwise they're blissfully unaware of it, which is always a shame...

Anyway, here they are:

The pitch is appealing and sounds like a good romp, but there is quite a lot in it.
The clash of fantasy names with sci-fi surroundings is fun but does strike one.
'sure.” A man' – 'sure,” a man'
And the same as above, over and over. You don't connect your dialogue tags to the dialogue. It reads very awkwardly. (to me)
'But we're risking ours!' - haha, good point!
'into the pit' – i wondered here exactly where Jack is but read on to find out. Three paragraphs later i'm still very unclear of where everything/one is.
'grated floor of his cage' – ok, now i'm getting an idea.
'that glowed' – i'm a bit relieved that she glows, actually. Although cage over lava is a terribly effective plight for a MC, i was having slight images of Indiana Jones. (I know, jaded reader, it's different, it's outside, there's lightening, etc., but still, she's glowing which is particularly different.)
'hours for the metal to cool' – hmm, this seemed a bit long.
'he stuffed a cigar in his mouth' – ok, Jack's just aged from twenty something to forty something in my mind!

I assume this first chapter is in the future and the first part of the novel will be bringing us up to this point? I thought the revelation about the hologram worked well, but i was expecting Jack to have to agree to the sacrifice in order to get the antidote and then either Greta would say, haha, just testing you, or he would actually get sacrificed (i was reading this all along as a future scene). So i was actually a little disappointed with the easy resolution, since as a first, future, hook scene (if you see what i mean) i was anticipating bigger things.

Overall i did enjoy it. I'm just reiterating that because i rattled off the notes as i read, so they're not necessarily phrased in the very very very gentlest way that might ever be conceivable, if you see what i mean... Hope they're useful, anyway!

Bring them on! I want, want, want details, I feel it will only make me better. As far as Kitten's book, I was just going off of what the others had said and didn't feel the corrections were warranted since she was pulling it. I wanted to encourage her to push on, edit it and bring it back for us. Thanks for your comments, I appreciate it. I really do! And if you have time to send me the details, I'd love them. Thanks again.

Hi, i've just had a look at the first chapter and taken some notes. I got the impression from your comment on Kitten's book that you perhaps weren't so keen on detailed notes, so i'm saving the file and i'll post them if you want them.

Overall i enjoyed this. It's fast paced and fun. I didn't feel i was getting a very consistent idea of Jack, though. I think possibly in some ways it moved a little too fast for me, i didn't get much of a feel for where i was or who i was with at any point. Anyway, please let me know if you would like my more detailed impressions.

Oh, i'm reading for the YA group. I'm aware that i'm very early, if there was any chance you could also take a peep at 'Witch Child' early (tonight...) that would be fantastic, but if you want to keep to the schedule that's absolutely fine and please don't worry about it in the slightest.

Hi, i've just had a look at the first chapter and taken some notes. I got the impression from your comment on Kitten's book that you perhaps weren't so keen on detailed notes, so i'm saving the file and i'll post them if you want them.

Overall i enjoyed this. It's fast paced and fun. I didn't feel i was getting a very consistent idea of Jack, though. I think possibly in some ways it moved a little too fast for me, i didn't get much of a feel for where i was or who i was with at any point. Anyway, please let me know if you would like my more detailed impressions.

Oh, i'm reading for the YA group. I'm aware that i'm very early, if there was any chance you could also take a peep at 'Witch Child' early (tonight...) that would be fantastic, but if you want to keep to the schedule that's absolutely fine and please don't worry about it in the slightest.

Melissa, thanks for reading my story, I appreciate it. And thanks again for the corrections, I've read the story so many times I can't see the mistakes. Thanks again for taking the time to read it and also for backing it.

Chad

I liked this a lot. Read the first chapter. Jack is great. He reminds me of the best of the sarcastic, matter-of-fact adventure heroes, like Indiana Jones or Rick O’Connell in The Mummy. The pace is fast, description and dialog good.

I generally only provide detailed feedback when I think the manuscript has merit, so please don’t take the following crit wrong:

“…giant ship [comma] sat a smaller [,real] one.” It was a little jarring that “outcropping” is used twice in first two paragraphs and is described once as the bow of a ship and once as watchtowers. “A man said…” [should be “The man said…”or “another man said…” because it’s not clear how many people there are yet] -Folks here on Authonomy are going to suggest you identify your characters right off the bat instead of calling them “the man” etc., since it’s hard to keep them straight-
I’d like to see more commas throughout, one last example, “The man said [comma] and the hissing voice…”

“…began fumbling with the cage’s oversized lock.” There’s no frame of reference for “the cage,” is Jack opening it from the outside or is he in one? Later, we find out, but way it was presented drew me out of the narrative.

cower at her voice [“voice” used twice in same sentence, maybe: “the sound of it.”]

I’m going to pop this on my shelf for a bit. I can’t believe I’m the first person to comment!

PS: typo in your blurb: “revenge will have [to] wait as Jack…”