Children of Cain

This story was definitely given an extremely interesting setting. The pre-flood world is full of potential, and turning it into this low fantasy pagan nightmare was a great move. The story is short but moves quickly and was filled with action.

I will say that the story would have been drastically improved had you not put everything in that bold text and burned out both my eyes. I don’t know if it’s just a me thing, but I’m pretty sure there’s a reason books aren’t printed in bold lettering. It’s alright for emphasis, but my reading fatigue was off the charts here.

So what was a great thing about this story was the creativity you took with the setting. A sword formed from the limb of the tree of life is great. The legendary origin of the story certainly justifies it’s ridiculous power. In addition, the whole thing is permeated with violence, as is fitting for a pre-flood world.

SPOILERS

The main character gets plenty of characterization, but a lot of it is done through mixing narration with internal monologue which made the perspective confusing. The narration typically isn’t treated as the character’s thoughts, so when the sword suddenly responds to the narration as if it were the thoughts of the main character, it becomes confusing for the rest of the story as to whether the prose that isn’t dialogue or action is narration or internal monologue.

I did like the fact that it seemed there was effort put into the geography and layout of the world. One nitpick is that the man Ahasuerus is a Hebrew alternate name for king Xerxes, so reading that there was a city before the flood named after a Persian emperor was distracting.

I did enjoy the storyline itself, and it certainly has the potential for greatness if it is workshopped a little. While it was very short, all of the paths that I read through had a definite call to adventure, though most of them ended right after that call. It is very apparent that the deadline inflicted quite a bit of damage to this story.

I’m not really sure what to make of it yet, but I would gladly read an unbolded and finished version.

An intense, grimdark story with rich lore that could be fleshed out more.

As with many religion and mythical stories, there exists a base text that offers lots of space to work on the lore of the world. There's a good amount more that I would like to see about the world, children of cain, and various settings/characters that pop up. This would definitely naturally be filled in as the main character moves through the world, the narrator filling us in as we encounter it.

The writing itself reads quite rushed, though that's understandable as it's a contest entry. Hell, some of the fight scenes benefit from the fast feel of the writing. Of course, it needs to be polished quite a bit especially with commas and dialogue/inner monologue.

It has a lot of potential, definitely. I would love to see this lengthened and fleshed out.

Why is everything bold?

As has been mentioned already, the story is quite short. I barely feel like I've started, and it's already over. But, unlike some other shorter stories, I don't feel as if it's complete. It's more like the intro to a greater adventure.

Proofreading wise, this wasn't the best. Paragraphs are disjointed, commas are missing in a ton of places, and you really should read Gower's dialogue punctuation article.

Absolutely loved the idea of a talking sword, though. Wish I had more intersections with it.

I did not take into account how faithful to the contest theme this was. I'm a filthy heretic that hasn't read the bible, but to me this kinda felt like a fantasy setting. I could be wrong, idk.

I did not regret reading through this.

Not bad, not bad at all. But wish there was more to it.

I enjoyed the writing, and thought that it was an interesting concept for a story. The talking sword was cool, and I liked that you gave the sword its own distinct personality.

Unfortunately, it ended just as I was getting into the story and character. I would guess that its short length is deadline related.

Overall, I hope that the story continues.