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The Long Road Home · Original Short Story ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 2000–8000
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Lamiak
The contents of this story are no longer available
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#1 ·
· · >>Scramblers and Shadows
Hm-hm...

Well, firstly, this could use a whip-round with a pre-reader. Some misspellings and what.

I wouldn't have minded a hook of some sort, either, or a proper description of the MC. We get a pretty good one of Railgrave, but Abednego just kinda gets skimmed over. Honestly, what grabbed me most in the beginning was the idea of 'lackluster light', since I'm pretty sure lackluster literally breaks down to 'wanting brightness'. :P

The power outage feels like an un-fired Chekov's gun to me; are you using that for something and I missed it? I kept wondering if Railgrave had done something with the cards, and when the lamia said the boat had left early, that was my first thought on why.

The Greenteeth disaster also seemed to get a bit more emphasis than use; it's covered with a lot of specificity quite early, and I thought it would end up being rather more important than it was. Honestly, even just cutting the name, making it less specific than 'the Greenteeth disaster' might help with that; if it's unnamed, readers would pay less attention.

Um, the lamia came across as rather a bitch to me. Alright, perhaps Abednego is no saint either, but her attitude seems to change so fast I got whiplash. A bit more rationalization of that would, I think, help? Though I'm not entirely sure what would be best. Still, she's kissing him and then abandoning him; she is, at the very least, pretty cold-hearted or manipulative, if all the emotion she's got for that is a bit of hemming and hawing.

I wondered if you chose 'Abednego' specifically, as it means something like 'servant of wisdom' IIRC, and he's basically doing whatever the lamia asks in return for answers.

Oh, and paraffin; I usually think of 'paraffin' as 'candle wax'. I'd probably call those lamps 'kerosine lamps', although... to be honest, I don't know if you need to draw so much attention to the fuel? It doesn't really seem to be a plot-point, and you might be better off simply saying 'lamps' or 'heaters' or something, so the readers aren't wondering what they need that much flammable stuff for.

On the positive side, this setting is interesting, and gave a pleasant Gormenghast (Railgrave especially) or New Crobuzon vibe. Perhaps it's not as static as the one, or vibrant as the other, though. I didn't really feel lost in it, which was good, and although it's odd it does seem self-consistent.

Overall, I do think the plot hangs together fairly well, even if the execution of the specifics is a bit hit-or-miss. Overall I enjoyed it, so... good work!
#2 ·
· · >>Scramblers and Shadows
I'm going off-slate to read this one and spread the review love around.

In terms of constructive criticism, I generally try to read stories with an eye toward larger, structural issues, and this one's doing fine on the structure front. (That's no small thing! It's the first of the five stories I've read so far to have all of its elements come together into a coherent larger journey. So, well done.) Chief among the problems here is that old devil show-don't-tell. There are entire scenes which are given to us at a distance:

He wanted to pass his exams. He wanted to be a success. He wanted to leave this life of his behind.

But he didn't ask for any of that. He asked if he could talk to her.

She assented.

It was difficult at first. What experiences could one possibly share with a magickal creature living in – but not really in – the canal? What questions could one ask that wouldn't sound like an interrogation from the Ministry of Thaumo-Cryptid Intrusions? But, somehow, they muddled through.

What was she? A lamia. What was her name? She didn't have one. Would Lamia work? No – it was a description; lower-case only. Were there others? Not here. Not anymore.

He learned she came from somewhere far off, but she's been stuck here for so long that she'd forgotten how to get back there. For all she knew, the lamiak from her home might all be dead too.


This is edging up to the 8k limit, so it's possible these scenes were abbreviated for space; if so, I hope this gets edited to actually show us the conversations. But if this was an intentional stylistic choice, I'd urge you to reconsider. Think of it in terms of what showing and telling's relative strengths are: showing brings us into the scene, gives us an emotional connection to the characters, offers detail and focus. Telling imparts information quickly and unobtrusively, when you want to establish something and then move on from there to something more important. Telling is good, for example, for exposition -- but when you've got a pivotal scene between the two most important characters in the story, then this is the 'more important' you should be saving your space and focus for! If this drifts down my rankings -- and I expect that it will as I continue my reading -- it will be mostly due to that tell-heavy writing style.

Agreed with !Hat that the lamia's turnaround is rather startling. I mean, there are ways it makes sense in hindsight -- your narration up front establishes lamiak as dangerous monsters humanity made an effort to eradicate, and straight-up calls them parasites (in a way that's reminiscent of how a lot of people see MLP's changelings) -- so the idea that she was playing him from the beginning isn't coming out of nowhere [1], but the more I think about it the more questions I have. What is the lamia's actual motivation? If she's evil and feeds off of people's needs, then it makes no sense to use her as a karmic agent and punish him for ignoring the woman looking for her son: she either wouldn't care, or would encourage him to be uncaring and incompetent in order to drive more people to her in desperation. But if she's not evil and trying to make a difference, then why didn't she bring the city's problems up with him? Betraying and exiling her most solid ally in the city seems like an objectively shitty way to work for justice when she could, y'know, just ask. Given what we see him do on her behalf, he's wrapped completely around her finger.

And then there's the eggs. It's clearly important to her to get a nest of lamiak started in the new location, and yet she sends them off with the dude she just betrayed. Did the thought that he'd just destroy the eggs out of vengeance occur to neither of them?

Moving a little more into the details ... I love a lot of the geography here, but I just can't assemble a proper mental picture of your setting in my head. The second scene establishes that the city's basically built on the margins of seven bridges with a tiny bit off spillover onto land at the edges (which is super cool), and that "the castle" is spread out throughout the city because there's no room for a big building (even cooler), but then you've got canals throughout the city which are large enough for boats? So they make canals on the bridges? And there are several references to named streets, which makes no sense if the city's all on bridges; the bridge itself would be the street and there would be no need for separate street names. If the bridges are a major part of the city but most of the city is on land, you really need to revise your descriptions.

So, yeah. Definitely things to work on here on a bigger and smaller level, but it's not a scrap-and-redo-whole-scenes rough. This is a solid foundation for a second pass.

[1] On second thought, that needs significant touch-up too. What exactly does Caskarule know about lamiak when he first meets her? He certainly reacts as if the idea of a woman rising up out of the canal water isn't a freak-out level event, and goes along with the gift thing without question, both of which suggest that there's a body of common knowledge about them. But then he goes off to do basic research in super-restricted archives, and what basic knowledge exists paints them as evil, so either he should have been as bewildered as the audience or his non-negative reaction needed to be heavily lampshaded.

Tier: Almost There
#3 ·
· · >>Scramblers and Shadows
Enjoyed - Lamiak — A+ — Entrancing view of a dystopian future woven with magic. Really sucks you into the story. Only a few minor autocorrect catches. The weakest part seems to be right at the last meeting up until the end. It seems to get a little vague, where the rest of the story was rich with descriptions and scenery (but being wounded will do that, I suppose.)
#4 ·
· · >>georg >>Scramblers and Shadows
I thought this was beautiful throughout, but I think I feel the same as Mr. A_Hat about the end -- the Lamia undergoes a rather rapid transition from grateful co-conspirator to self-righteous bitch. Certainly I understand her position, but it comes across as rather untelegraphed and jarring.

I'm not a fan of the word choice, in places. I'm all for evocative phrasing, but words like "illuming" and "ginnel" just seem unnecessarily obscure.

Those quibbles aside, though, this is at the top of my slate at the moment. Flawed, yes, but ambitious, and I like ambition.
#5 ·
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>>Cold in Gardez It's fairly simple, and obvious from this year's election cycle at least. The lamia was lying to not only him, but most likely a great number of others. The narrator is reliable. The subjects, not so much.
#6 ·
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To our medal winners, Horizon, Oroboro & Fahrenheit: Congratulations and well done!


So --

Lamiak

Yeah, I wrote this. And I think the diagnosis is pretty clear. I got carried away with myself and tried to cram a novella-sized story into ~7k words. So while all the essential plot beats made it in, the important character groundwork got squeezed out.

Oops.

Anyway, if anyone's still concerned about the lamia's motivations: She's not evil. She just has a broader perspective than Caskarule.


>>Not_A_Hat
Oh, hey, you guessed my story. I was wondering how long it would be before that started to happen. And you also twigged the Gormenghast influence (that book is still bouncing around in my head months after I finished it). Anyway, cheers!

>>horizon
Thanks for going off-slate to look at this. I don't have much to say since, y'know, I agree with most of what you say.

>>georg
Yep, Caskarule stops paying attention as much once he gets shot. I'm glad this got noticed, but perhaps I could shore it up a little. Thanks!

>>Cold in Gardez
Looking back, "ginnel" is definitely going overboard. Anyway, think you -- especially for the comments about ambition. I appreciate that.