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

[liana12]

Actually, I especially appreciated one thing you did (not liked - I'm not such a sadist :) ), and it's how you kicked the rug from under everybody's feet (or whatever the English expression is for shaking the basis of someone's world) with putting in doubt Companions' credibility and trustworthiness. Actually it nearly made me smirk at Randy, like "and now, you'll see how difficult a normal government has it", but he's too ill to be so mean to him. I like your Moondance very much - soo in character and much more developed than in canon. I did have a doubt re practical side of administration - why cant they have non-heraldic magistrates to take care of the budget and such stuff, instead of loosing the time of one of the very few mages on it? But then I started thinking on late-medieval administration (whose history I actually teach, among others), and I think you're perfectly right. Historically (so to speak) Valdemar is in an age of transition between an early state and something more sophisticated. When one reads chronicles from this period, it turns out that every really good king was so busy they got up before dawn and worked hard all day to somehow keep track of all the state matters, only slowly realizing the need to delegate beyond the few trusted councillors. So you hit bull's-eye on this. There is one character out of character (hmmm) for me, and it's Tantras. In canon he is steady, quiet, good-humoured, a good man and reliable friend without being too wise or thinking too much, the opposite to Vanyel. Yours is completely different, and to be honest, I'm not very fond of him, but he is very consistently different from the beginning, so that's perfectly k within your version. And I would like more Stefen, but that's just a personal crush because I absolutely love your version of him, and I haven't any idea where you could expand on him :)

[swimmer963]

Re medieval history, cool! I get most of my history advice from my brother, and a lot of how Valdemar runs is based on my experience working at small organizations. (And, yeah, they super clearly need to offload a bunch of the stuff, like the budget!)

Re Tran, yeah, I don’t think I had a super good handle on his personality in the books, so I probably replaced it with something that seemed more interesting. And, to be honest, I needed someone to be the asshole in this ;(. I think I could make an argument that book 2-3 Tran is more similar to the canon character, and the divergence is due to things that happen differently after that - his being Chosen by Taver, needing to stretch past his limits to grow into that role, and then losing Taver (and the fact that the current crisis brings up a lot of that baggage is not helping.) I also think that canon Tran would be the character with the strongest reaction against Van using blood-magic, because he is a fairly straightforward person, good-hearted but less likely to think deeply and question things.

I love Stef and hopefully there will be lots more of him soon! It was hard to work him in much for this section, since he’s not in the loop on the current crisis.

[liana12]

Btw (writing syllabi on legal history, hence the post), if you get in mood for an administrative reform in Valdemar, what about using the way it really happened? In every single medieval state, when the king and his great council could no longer handle all the state affairs, new institutions were created, first as specialized departments of the Council, then as independent ones. In France it was the royal court first, in England the Exchequer, modeled on the Norman one and probably the most effective tax collecting institution in Europe. All of this was manned no longer by aristocrats, but by professional magistrates, usually educated for the purpose at newly emerging universities.Something like this could ease everyone's workload :).

[swimmer963]

Ooh! That sounds like some fascinating stuff to explore! Randi is definitely the sort of King who would push through reforms (and, because of his illness, I think he's going to be forced to delegate a lot more than e.g. Elspeth was). I might have to do some research into these historical institutions!

[liana12]

If you do, try books on legal history rather than general history; in the former you'll get the process of state shaping distilled from most historical event and easier to follow. And if you read French, especially books on "Histoire des institutions" are really good for that purpose. Good luck with reforming Valdemar :)