Adamagika: The Spirit Within 1. Adamagika Series

Good start. I especially like how you start the villain off by torching someone with green flames. He sounds particularly badass so I'm looking to see what other kinds of villainous things he's up to. I also would have chosen to torch that servant that showed up...he seemed kinda slow, especially when he said, "I can find them again if you'd like." I wanted to reply, "Well...duh? I would sure hope that you could find them again since I sent you to find him in the first place. It wouldn't do to have you find them and then lose them now would it?"

On 01/08/2011 08:08 AM, Kavrik said:

Good start. I especially like how you start the villain off by torching someone with green flames. He sounds particularly badass so I'm looking to see what other kinds of villainous things he's up to. I also would have chosen to torch that servant that showed up...he seemed kinda slow, especially when he said, "I can find them again if you'd like." I wanted to reply, "Well...duh? I would sure hope that you could find them again since I sent you to find him in the first place. It wouldn't do to have you find them and then lose them now would it?"

Hehe. I never thought of it that way. I just figured that power and greed blinds people from seeing the obvious.

I've read through Chapter 40 and have come to the realization that I still haven't a clue as to what will happen next. I also wonder why Adam has not told his uncle about the divided spirit that inhabits/inhabited both he and Jacob and about his somewhat imperfect knowledge about the underlying spirits and their world? Seems a lot of misunderstanding about the basic source of their magic should be investigated.

 

I hope the epilogue is not a blow-off that nicely but in broad strokes kills off any chance of a sequel.

On 04/05/2011 12:13 PM, Daddydavek said:

I've read through Chapter 40 and have come to the realization that I still haven't a clue as to what will happen next. I also wonder why Adam has not told his uncle about the divided spirit that inhabits/inhabited both he and Jacob and about his somewhat imperfect knowledge about the underlying spirits and their world? Seems a lot of misunderstanding about the basic source of their magic should be investigated.

 

I hope the epilogue is not a blow-off that nicely but in broad strokes kills off any chance of a sequel.

As seen from this chapter, the existence of spirits were not confirmed. If anything, it was doubted. After the High Mage Lord's testimony though, things may be different and Adam might be more open to discuss such matters with Magister Aenhol. He did actually once try to mention it to Magister Aenhol as they were leaving the city to go to the village (Chapter 3) but the older man brushed it off. Perhaps that wasn't the best time discuss such things. Perhaps things have changed by the end of the book. I guarantee that the epilogue will not kill off a sequel. It will actually lay the grounds for what will happen in the next book.

Well, that was .... excellent. Somebody said it should be published. I agree, though it needs a knife taking to it and a damn good proof read. Seriously - it is publishable standard as a story and as a piece of writing. I don't think your hobby status should inhibit you. Part of the whole point of epublishing is to democratise, make it easy, keep the control to the author.

 

However ... actually, perhaps that should be 'howevers'! ... there are lots of things would need addressing before that. But this piece of work would be totally worth the effort.

 

The overall concept is really very good, and I think you do something most scheduled online writers don't. You plot the story to the end before you write it. There is a consistency here that would have been simply impossible without a good plan. For instance, the whole Jacob / Saphiron thing, or the Mme Rooste thing.

 

There is one thing that occurs to me, though, about this writing method, which arises out of a couple of the reviews: the readers are not reading at a normal speed. I never read unfinished work (i.e. ... big hint ... get a f move on with Charlie), so I was able to keep most of this in my head while I read it. But a story of this length published a chapter a week means that it is almost a year from beginning to end. For readers, that makes it pretty difficult to maintain detail knowledge in a paradigm (fantasy/thriller/complex) which relies upon detail. I think, for the most part, you handle that reasonably well, but there are still some issues. I know that you flagged up Mme Rooste as evil in Ch16, but as this was not resolved till, perhaps, Ch38, that means 22 weeks apart. That's a long time to hold that detail in focus WITH due significance.

 

There must be some academic writing on the issues of this form, because it is nothing new. Walter Scott, for instance, started out ths way. And something runs in my head that Hemingway did a bit of serial writing (?). At any rate, I'd suggest it implies that keeping characters 'alive' to the reader in some way is probably necessary. That would mean doing some serioys development on Mme Rooste (showing a little more of her nastiness, but also misdirecting through some apparent humility and niceness).

 

Adam, Jacob. Sweet. Beautiful. Boom bang-a-blowjob! God, that made me laugh. As if a first bj isn't an event likely to blow your head off ( ) already, you had to take the walls down too. What was really clever, though, was the reaction of the gryphon riders when they arrived. They just seemed to roll their eyes, like, horny teenagers out of control. Again. Seen it all before. Can you just imagine your mother hearing howls of orgasm through you bedroom door just rolling her eyes? Hilarious

 

Your clever (bloody irritating? ) use of the undisclosable disclosed in the prophecies which should not be revealed was well clever. And you tied that big structural device back into the actual plot between Victor and Aenhol. It teases the reader in such a beautiful torture. Like ... we characters know things we can't tell each other, but we can tell you readers we know them, just not what we know ... hmmm. I hope if you do ever publish this you get yourself a bodyguard. You're so gonna need some protection for that one!

 

For the sequels, can I make a suggestion, please. There is one major plot device which needs some explaining ... spirit freedom. At the moment it looks like a plot hole. The spirits ... which are just that, spirits ... crave freedom. Yet they can only have it in the manner of embodiment within another (self determining) body. Which kinda suggests a lack of freedom, if you see what I mean. ... Or are they all heading for Lord Raezhul status, where they actually subvert the host? I mean, it was all grand with Ho-o an all, who (seems to be) is a benevolent spirit. But then The Weapon (inadvertent penile allusion, there ... I congratulate you ). How is the spirit within the sword free? It has no apparent agency. Even Ho-o seems only to have the satisfaction of facilitating action through the body of others. The same is true of Raezhul. For me, that was the most troubling part of the plot, but also one of the most interesting parts. I really do think that could make an interesting plot driver in the future.

 

Aenhol For High Mage Lord. Whaddyamean there's no vacancy? You're in charge of the plot. Make one!

 

Great work, great story, great read, grates on my tits I'm prolly gonna have to wait 18 months for my next installment!

 

D

On 12/10/2011 09:00 PM, Dannsar said:

Well, that was .... excellent. Somebody said it should be published. I agree, though it needs a knife taking to it and a damn good proof read. Seriously - it is publishable standard as a story and as a piece of writing. I don't think your hobby status should inhibit you. Part of the whole point of epublishing is to democratise, make it easy, keep the control to the author.

 

However ... actually, perhaps that should be 'howevers'! ... there are lots of things would need addressing before that. But this piece of work would be totally worth the effort.

 

The overall concept is really very good, and I think you do something most scheduled online writers don't. You plot the story to the end before you write it. There is a consistency here that would have been simply impossible without a good plan. For instance, the whole Jacob / Saphiron thing, or the Mme Rooste thing.

 

There is one thing that occurs to me, though, about this writing method, which arises out of a couple of the reviews: the readers are not reading at a normal speed. I never read unfinished work (i.e. ... big hint ... get a f move on with Charlie), so I was able to keep most of this in my head while I read it. But a story of this length published a chapter a week means that it is almost a year from beginning to end. For readers, that makes it pretty difficult to maintain detail knowledge in a paradigm (fantasy/thriller/complex) which relies upon detail. I think, for the most part, you handle that reasonably well, but there are still some issues. I know that you flagged up Mme Rooste as evil in Ch16, but as this was not resolved till, perhaps, Ch38, that means 22 weeks apart. That's a long time to hold that detail in focus WITH due significance.

 

There must be some academic writing on the issues of this form, because it is nothing new. Walter Scott, for instance, started out ths way. And something runs in my head that Hemingway did a bit of serial writing (?). At any rate, I'd suggest it implies that keeping characters 'alive' to the reader in some way is probably necessary. That would mean doing some serioys development on Mme Rooste (showing a little more of her nastiness, but also misdirecting through some apparent humility and niceness).

 

Adam, Jacob. Sweet. Beautiful. Boom bang-a-blowjob! God, that made me laugh. As if a first bj isn't an event likely to blow your head off ( ) already, you had to take the walls down too. What was really clever, though, was the reaction of the gryphon riders when they arrived. They just seemed to roll their eyes, like, horny teenagers out of control. Again. Seen it all before. Can you just imagine your mother hearing howls of orgasm through you bedroom door just rolling her eyes? Hilarious

 

Your clever (bloody irritating? ) use of the undisclosable disclosed in the prophecies which should not be revealed was well clever. And you tied that big structural device back into the actual plot between Victor and Aenhol. It teases the reader in such a beautiful torture. Like ... we characters know things we can't tell each other, but we can tell you readers we know them, just not what we know ... hmmm. I hope if you do ever publish this you get yourself a bodyguard. You're so gonna need some protection for that one!

 

For the sequels, can I make a suggestion, please. There is one major plot device which needs some explaining ... spirit freedom. At the moment it looks like a plot hole. The spirits ... which are just that, spirits ... crave freedom. Yet they can only have it in the manner of embodiment within another (self determining) body. Which kinda suggests a lack of freedom, if you see what I mean. ... Or are they all heading for Lord Raezhul status, where they actually subvert the host? I mean, it was all grand with Ho-o an all, who (seems to be) is a benevolent spirit. But then The Weapon (inadvertent penile allusion, there ... I congratulate you ). How is the spirit within the sword free? It has no apparent agency. Even Ho-o seems only to have the satisfaction of facilitating action through the body of others. The same is true of Raezhul. For me, that was the most troubling part of the plot, but also one of the most interesting parts. I really do think that could make an interesting plot driver in the future.

 

Aenhol For High Mage Lord. Whaddyamean there's no vacancy? You're in charge of the plot. Make one!

 

Great work, great story, great read, grates on my tits I'm prolly gonna have to wait 18 months for my next installment!

 

D

Wow, thanks for that very detailed review. It's great!

 

Yeah, I realized that thing about proof reading, haha. This was my first stab at a novel and every time I read to edit, I found errors new errors each time. >.< There are even several writing rules there that I break which I didn't know were wrong till someone pointed it out in another story. I tried going back to edit this but it took too much time away from writing new things. Haha.

 

I also didn't have an editor or beta reader for this one so all errors here are mine. I might get help for the next one.

 

This story actually incubated in my imagination for several months before I started writing it. I love stories where things "all come together" in the end rather than "this happened, then this, then this." I wanted to give the same thing to my readers.

 

Regarding the timeline, my biggest challenge was that I had released the story while writing it. When I first started writing A:TSW, there were supposed to be less than 30 chapters (I think 27?). The gaps between parts (such as what you pointed out with Madame Rooste) were supposed to be shorter. But I found out later on that I could not squeeze in the story to fewer chapters unless I had chapters consistently over 10,000 words long or that I took out certain plot points. I couldn't have either of those. It's something I'm working to fix though for the next part.

 

I'm glad you liked that scene with the gryphon riders. I liked writing that even if it felt a bit awkward writing a sexual scene.

 

Haha. I'm already needing bodyguards to protect me from my Charlie readers. But yes, that's a theme (perhaps device?) I use in this story which will occur again in the sequel where certain issues left unresolved in A:TSW come to a close.

 

Regarding spirit freedom, I have not forgotten (nor overlooked) that part. It was just not central to this story but will be highly relevant in the sequels.

 

Unfortunately, Magister Aenhol will not be the High Mage Lord any time soon. However, I'm sure you've noticed a vacancy.

 

With my schedule, it will take some time for Book Two to come out. However, I'm working on a Interlude story which involves a character relevant for Book Two but has not been introduced in A:TSW. I'm going full steam ahead on that one after Charlie is done.

 

Again, thank you for the review and I hope you like Charlie also when you start reading it.

well Hamen its not that the story is sad per say its just that i wasn't all happy, its basically my fault i am so empathic i cry when i am happy even lol i don't mind a good cry lol. Its just that i really get into a story and i really like adamagika so i got into it real deep, because it was so light hearted however when he ended up making the deal with the guy to save adam and all the things started to get a little too drama filled lol i really fell for him because i really loved him so is somewhat an underdog in the shadow of adam any way don't let me discourage you the story was very very well written your world as i said is just simply amazing

 

Oh yes now i remember at that time i was going through an emotional period with my relationship so my emotion of hurt and change was superimposed on this story the fact that they were having problems kinda add to my stress lol, any way take that as a compliment that your story was so good that it had that effect lol.

On 01/24/2013 03:52 PM, itachibones said:

well Hamen its not that the story is sad per say its just that i wasn't all happy, its basically my fault i am so empathic i cry when i am happy even lol i don't mind a good cry lol. Its just that i really get into a story and i really like adamagika so i got into it real deep, because it was so light hearted however when he ended up making the deal with the guy to save adam and all the things started to get a little too drama filled lol i really fell for him because i really loved him so is somewhat an underdog in the shadow of adam any way don't let me discourage you the story was very very well written your world as i said is just simply amazing

 

Oh yes now i remember at that time i was going through an emotional period with my relationship so my emotion of hurt and change was superimposed on this story the fact that they were having problems kinda add to my stress lol, any way take that as a compliment that your story was so good that it had that effect lol.

Aah, okay. Well, I'm glad you liked it anyway (despite the tears hehe). Thank you.