FicWad

This chapter feels rougher than the ones before. It took me several rereads to realize that it was because there's more focus on the characters and their actions and less on their surroundings.

(I consider it a good thing, by the way, that I couldn't pinpoint what was different the first time I was reading. It means that while reading, my attention was held by three story so much that I couldn't/wasn't distracted by outside considerations.)

I was delighted with the line(s) "which consisted of hints of.... A voice that had used too many languages". It was great to finally have stated what was merely hinted at before. Love the language-switching, and the whole "Giovanni?" exchange was fun!

As usual, I have a question: Was the "an livid little bird" deliberate, as a writing out of an accent or was it a typo? The line brought to mind the um, cockney accent? I think? sometimes used in movies/books set in England.

It was an entirely random association; not sure why it came to mind, except that it did.

--

I've been sitting on the review for this chapter because there was something nagging at me that I couldn't figure out.

This last chapter made me realize how effective your scene-building is for me. It's something that I wasn't aware was going on until I read the last chapter and saw the contrast between the (relatively) sparse descriptions and the more detailed descriptions of previous chapters.

I'm not sure how to say this, so I'll try an analogy. If I were watching a movie, the first few chapters would have been mid-range shots -- close enough to see how the characters move, and yet far enough away that they don't overwhelm the scene. All the while, the camera pans over the scene as a whole, sometimes lovingly lingering on one little detail. Then suddenly, boom, something happens, the music crescendos in the background, the camera zooms in for a tight shot of the characters, and the surroundings just drop away. And if it's really well done, you don't think about how the director achieved the effect, you just feel it.

I felt something like that happen here (sans the background music and the cameras ;))

And what I like most is that I wasn't aware of it until I had this chapter to contrast it with.

Phew, okay, that sort of tired me out. How do people write all day? No, don't answer that! Entirely random and entirely irrelevant.

Looking forward to the next chapter :) I've just discovered Story Alert, which means that I won't have to worry about accidentally missing updates on the recent posts page. Yay!