First half of book 7, extremely rough draft

[swimmer963]

This covers the aftermath to the ending of book 6, so unsurprisingly there is a LOT OF DRAMA. This feels like a pretty critical arc for the overall story, so I'm taking a pause to get people's thoughts and decide if I want to make changes before I keep going. (I rushed to get this out of my head before our work retreat, so it's really extremely rough, e.g. probably still full of typos and possibly scenes I forgot to finish. Sorry.) 

Contains: ok, not even going to list themes, it's literally just everyone having feelings for 80,000 words somehow. 

Book 7 first half EPUB
Book 7 first half MOBI

(Spoilers for book 6 below) 

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Note: I made some modifications to the ending of book 6 - roughly, Vanyel copes about 30% better and talks himself down from the belltower *before* Melody and Savil find him. I also split the final Leareth conversation into two halves, one before and one after Yfandes leaves. See here for just the last 2 chapters (google doc). 

Comments

[swimmer963]

Aww I am so glad the Van/Yfandes reunion worked well! This section was sooooo hard to write bc I was trying to wrap my head around the messy, crazy feelings people are inevitably having about this.

(I really want to write a scene where Melody completely loses her shit at Yfandes, righteously pisses on Van’s behalf and taking out all her frustrations from the whole ordeal on an available target.)

How did the rest work for you? (Or, I’m confused, do you mean you haven’t read the beginning yet and just skipped right to the Yfandes reunion chapter?)

I am super delighted to have Starwind and Moondance around too. Moondance is one of my favorite characters to write and, yeah, he has a unique relationship with Van and is able to support him here when even Savil can’t really.

[kaza999]

Well I read mostly the Yfandes parts, and skipped around a lot. Haven't gotten to a more thorough reading yet, and I know a lot will change, it being an early draft.

However I think more should be made of the companion programming--Fandes said she needed to make sure she wouldn't accidentally repudiate Van, and I think that's really important. I think van and fandes should definitely talk about that more, especially with how van has had concerns about the ethics of compulsions before.

It's one thing to not be able to trust someone because of the way they behave, it's another to not be able to because of a magic spell, and I think once they get a handle on the situation fandes and van will be angry about that.

I think it would be interesting to see how this impacts their relationship with the other heralds and companions--They're in a really unique situation here, and I'd love to see the implications of that explored more.

[swimmer963]

Yep! There is a ton of further exploration to be done here (I mostly ended it where I did because I ran out of time before having to fly to Europe). Van & Yfandes have not really addressed any of what happened yet, or thought through the implications it has for Heralds in general, and it's going to take them a *long* time to rebuild their relationship and trust each other.