Well, I feel like Dave's given you an excellent critique and could just say "ditto," because I read the same piece he did, and leave it at that. But there are a couple of more things you should think about in your next draft.
First of all, spinning off what Dave was saying about parochialism and fetishization; I want you to think more about--how can I put this--the ethics of your ethnics, or rather, your presentation of, well, anybody that doesn't look a lot like me and you and Dave. Does every native have to die? Do they all have to be masked? threatening? bestial? (The Burroughs homage isn't doing you in favors in this department, y'know.)
And the other thing is the ending. Since everything has, frankly, gone completely off the rails by then, you're inviting any reading, and I don't think you're going to get the one you're after from most folks. Because my reading, frankly, is that the Red B&D queen wins. She gets what she wants. I mean, as with the first piece in this series that we read (still love it, by the way), the hero is dependent on the villain's overreaching and some supernatural malarkey to actually achieve his (the hero's) goal, however ill-defined that goal might be. But in this case, I read the big pyrotechnic ending as her gaining the totality of all knowledge and then transcending physical existence. I know that's a stretch given the genre constraints we're supposed to be working under, but you lifted all those when you brought in the aliens and the transdimensional stuff.
Look, I know this is hard to hear. But you're working in very broad strokes with a very bright pallet--and when you've made the (legitimate!) artistic decision to reject sophistication and gravitas in your storytelling form then you have to absolutely elevate your storytelling craft. And so far, I'm not seeing that elevation, sorry.
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Date: 2008-06-09 09:27 pm (UTC)First of all, spinning off what Dave was saying about parochialism and fetishization; I want you to think more about--how can I put this--the ethics of your ethnics, or rather, your presentation of, well, anybody that doesn't look a lot like me and you and Dave. Does every native have to die? Do they all have to be masked? threatening? bestial? (The Burroughs homage isn't doing you in favors in this department, y'know.)
And the other thing is the ending. Since everything has, frankly, gone completely off the rails by then, you're inviting any reading, and I don't think you're going to get the one you're after from most folks. Because my reading, frankly, is that the Red B&D queen wins. She gets what she wants. I mean, as with the first piece in this series that we read (still love it, by the way), the hero is dependent on the villain's overreaching and some supernatural malarkey to actually achieve his (the hero's) goal, however ill-defined that goal might be. But in this case, I read the big pyrotechnic ending as her gaining the totality of all knowledge and then transcending physical existence. I know that's a stretch given the genre constraints we're supposed to be working under, but you lifted all those when you brought in the aliens and the transdimensional stuff.
Look, I know this is hard to hear. But you're working in very broad strokes with a very bright pallet--and when you've made the (legitimate!) artistic decision to reject sophistication and gravitas in your storytelling form then you have to absolutely elevate your storytelling craft. And so far, I'm not seeing that elevation, sorry.