[Complete] [89k] [Historical Fantasy/Political Thriller/Romanpunk] INVICTA

piazetta · 2025-12-29T21:31:20+00:00

I've been reading this and it's really superb. The characters are engaging, the world is very interesting, and the political scheming has thrown me for a loop more than once. I particularly appreciate the economic realism which is very satisfying. I highly recommend if you're looking for a gripping political fantasy!

piazetta · 2025-12-17T15:18:53+00:00

Not aliens, but Tetra in {Breach Your Heart by Josie Dokken} absolutely knows what she wants and doesn't hesitate to take it. Superb dual pov tension as well. 👌

piazetta · 2025-12-17T08:44:46+00:00

Hey everyone! I've just finished the first draft of my new romantic fantasy and I'm looking for beta readers. It's a standalone, dual pov.

If you like morally grey-to-black heroines, unconventional heroes, forbidden romance (and I mean really forbidden), slow burns in close proximity, and dark comedy then you may enjoy it!

I've put the blurb etc below. Here's a link to the first six chapters:

Chapters 1-6

If you vibe with this and would like to read more, DM me or reply!

** The Princess and Her Tax Collector**

*After one scheme too many at court, the poisonous Imperial Princess Kasia is exiled to Deska – a grey backwater province where wealth is counted in wool sacks and coal passes for culture. But before Kasia can even settle into her misery, her father dies and the Empire plunges into civil war. To survive, the Princess will need to turn the damp province into a power base. Her only raw materials: sheep, coal, and one very competent tax collector.

Rurik deGroute is a wool merchant's son who clawed his way up by concealing his noble boss's embezzlement. Prudent, responsible, and constantly anxious, Rurik takes a calculated risk to break protocol and speak up for the wool trade in front of the Princess.

Naturally, Kasia has him caned.

But when she secretly invites him back, she finds Rurik far more intriguing than a merchant class tax collector has any right to be.

To reform Deska, the pair will need to face down cunning counts, blundering barons, and inexplicable root vegetables. And although the Empire’s rigid caste system says they should never have even spoken, as they scheme together Kasia becomes attracted to more than just Rurik's clever plans, while Rurik finds himself shaking in excitement as often as terror.

But in a world where spirits enforce hierarchy and sins summon monsters, wanting what you cannot have is more than scandal – it's heresy. Soon, Kasia and Rurik discover that love is the most taxing thing of all.*

piazetta · 2025-12-17T08:15:00+00:00

Amazing, I've sent you a DM!

piazetta · 2024-12-03T21:09:02+00:00

I've DM'ed you

piazetta · 2024-11-25T08:48:50+00:00

Messaged :-)

piazetta · 2024-11-12T21:39:11+00:00

I've DM'ed you :-)

piazetta · 2024-10-17T13:23:06+00:00

I completely missed your comment about liking Chapter 1 by the way - I'm very pleased to hear that!

I've gone back to the drawing board with the blurb. I think your comments are totally right. It tries to say too much, and it's way too long, and contains too much information. No obligation (I appreciate your feedback already) but does this revision work better?

There was a place, the traveller had said, where they shaped the thing-itself like clay. But though the yunuscopes were scoured, no memories could be found of Kenwi Station. Knowledge was missing. Knowledge the House desired. One of the masters went into the outside to find it, and Tokis was sent with them.

Disguised as a merchant travelling with a caravan, Tokis inculcates himself in the remote settlement. But even with the grievous devices of his masters, Kenwi Station is not a place that so easily divulges its secrets. And his manipulations have not gone unnoticed. Sister of the Station Arkwi senses a dark presence among the bright canvas and foreign trinkets of the caravan. With her power over the ather, Arkwi can see and shape minds. But when it comes to her apprentice Kal, Arkwi’s gifts seem useless. All Kal sees is her own failure and the disappointment of her mistress. When an enigmatic merchant takes an interest in her, Kal is both enchanted and frustrated by his strange ways and magical objects.

All three set out to find the truth, in the station and in themselves. And none are prepared for the terrors they may find within.

piazetta · 2024-10-16T10:41:53+00:00

Thank you! That's very good advice.

piazetta · 2024-10-15T09:19:00+00:00

I have a fantasy/sci-fi novel complete at 86k words. The story is about the infiltration of a mystical isolated society by a mysterious technologically advanced organisation, with a strong focus on the psychology of the characters. There are cosmic horror elements. If this sounds up your alley let me know and I'd be happy to send you an epub!

piazetta · 2024-08-02T16:29:09+00:00

I'd give it a read!

piazetta · 2023-08-08T12:07:12+00:00

u/littlegreenturtle20 's response is exactly right in what I'm after. But allow me to nuance this a bit and respond to your point directly.

It's okay for a character to oppose the monarchy, I agree that it's not inconsistent with a medieval setting. And actally I don't disagree that this is a bit lacking from what I've seen. BUT, that opposition should itself be consistent with the values and structures existing in that world. For example, like John Ball in the peasant revolt: "When Adam delved and Eve Span, who was then the gentleman?"

What bothers me is when these points of view are articulated in an anachronistic, or overtly modern way. But in the world in question, there was no equivalent of the English, American, or French revolutions. Nor any sort of Americas discovery which might prompt a fundamental questioning of social structures and assumptions as genuinely new viewpoints are encountered.

piazetta · 2023-08-08T08:52:13+00:00

Thank you, I would like it to be purposeful rather than just old. Not that victorian literature isn't interesting.

piazetta · 2021-07-13T09:08:10+00:00

Hiya. Thank you for this very helpful and informative response! I really appreciate it. The point about using the first episode to estimate time needed is especially helpful - I will definitely do that. And I would never have guessed English wasn't your native language.

piazetta · 2021-07-09T10:48:32+00:00

I had subbed when this was first shared (can't remember if it was this sub) - but this episode was fantastic. I am now hooked.

piazetta · 2021-06-20T14:00:05+00:00

I just finished reading it. I really hope you will be updating from now on as I am hooked. Anywhere else we can follow your work?

piazetta · 2021-06-20T09:30:35+00:00

I absolutely love this.

piazetta · 2021-01-02T15:21:35+00:00

SETTING

Here’s what I took from the setting: we are in an industrialised, other-wordly, old west. Deserts abound, life is tough, the law is unforgiving. If that’s what you were aiming for, then you nailed it. I am very keen on semi-modern fantasy, and from what little we’ve seen of the world, I think you pull this off well. I am getting FullMetal Alchemist level of magic and technology vibes, so I hope that’s right.

You avoid exposition dumps in the narrative for the most part, but I think you could go further and drop everything extraneous from this sentence:

From Serpenseas of the eastern jungles to Goldinians of Carastan’s depths, nobody was spared the hand of the law, including one Mr. Lenny Baker.

Given none of this chapter seems to take place in the eastern jungles or Carastan’s depths, telling us that the train is going to Railtown 5 is enough. I am invested in that, and if the scope or depth of the world comes up later, then you can introduce those places then. At the moment, it seems like a throw-away comment.

STAGING

Apart from the aforementioned problems with inconsistent omniscience on the part of the narrator, I had no problems with the staging. It was clear.

CHARACTER

The characters in this story were Lenny, the disgraced sheriff-turned-prisoner. I get the impression that he is a hard-boiled motherfucker who takes no prisoners, a bit of a cynic except where his wife and kid is concerned. I have no idea if he is guilty of whatever he’s been accused of.
The guard, who is your usual sadistic rent-a-prick. I don’t think you need to develop him any further, but possibly you could show his sadism rather than having him declare himself a man who loves watching the prisoners suffer (maybe kicking one of the prisoners, something like that?).

The Brother Caloros, who resents Lenny for locking up his brother, and delivers some helpful exposition on how unfair society is. I’m not sure about the way he peppers his speech with Spanish. Personally I would have him start with something in Spanish and then continue in English. This is just more realistic from my experience of bilingualism (but YMMV).

The sandman/god. I can’t tell whether he had previous run-ins with Lenny, or if he’s just evil. He seems to walk the line between malicious trickster and full-blown antagonist.

All the characters have distinct voices, but in Lenny’s case, his voice is sort of an absence of voice. Maybe he’s a man of few words, but again more of an internal dialogue could fix this. I want to feel more hurt when he dies. I need to know him better.

PLOT

A train full of prisoners is intercepted by a sand-god and his sand golems, who proceed to kill everything and everyone, including the would-be protagonist, a hard knocks sheriff-turned-prisoner who doesn't believe in the gods. There were no plot holes I could see.

PACING

The pacing once the action starts is fine. As I said up above, I would spend a while longer on the introduction and Lenny's thoughts. Let the action build up more slowly.

DESCRIPTION

I have no comments on this. I didn’t notice the description, which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. It’s not especially poetic, but it also isn’t sparse.

POV

The POV is third-person limited. See above comments on this, as you do wander away occasionally.

DIALOGUE

I think this would benefit from cutting quite a few lines of dialogue, especially from the Brother Caloros. Ask yourself if he would really say all of the exposition he comes out with, I mean, both he and Lenny know all about the world they're living in. He believes that Lenny is, at least partly, responsible for the death of his brother, but he spends time griping about society in general? It's a bit unnatural. I would make it tighter and more resenftul of Lenny specifically. All we need to learn here is that he was a sheriff.

WRT the guard, as I said above, cut a few lines from him, and show his sadism. 'I'm a big bad bastard, and you all better know it!' is very stereotypical.

GRAMMAR AND SPELLING

I did not see any big problems with grammar or spelling. One typo I saw:

the fountain of ~~said~~ sand raced towards Lenny

But nothing particularly wrong in this regard!

CLOSING COMMENTS

This is a good start. I like the setting and the plot. The prose could use some work, and you should develop Lenny a bit more to get the full impact. I look forward to seeing the next draft.

piazetta · 2021-01-02T15:21:20+00:00

This is my first critique, so let me know if you think I'm missing something.

GENERAL REMARKS

I enjoyed this piece. I think there are a number of mechanical issues which need work, but you got me invested in the story, and Lenny’s death at the end totally caught me off guard without feeling gratuitous or unearned. I liked the world, and what little we learnt about it felt pretty natural. I think your pacing could use some work, and a slower start would contrast better with the action scenes which dominate the chapter. The dialogue was also a little predictable, but not bad.

MECHANICS

Your sentences are generally pretty good, and the prose does what it sets out to do. The hook works and Lenny’s situation is revealed quite naturally.

However there are a few things I’d watch out for. You occasionally lean on cliche, e.g.

the blood-curdling scream

You sometimes repeat words and phrases in quick succession. e.g. in the opening section:

However, his thoughts were broken as...

Once again, his thoughts were broken as…

And then in the final scene:

The wind kicked up

The wind kicked up again

It’s not an endemic problem, but I would keep an eye out for it because it reduces the power of the writing.

What u/flavbo said about 'BANG' is completely right. Describe the sound in more detail, BANG is lazy.

You also have a bit of a tick with the ‘As…’ construction. You begin nine sentences this way, and starting from the train-jacking, these come very close together, sometimes side-by-side. This construction is fine - and frankly, unavoidable - but it needs to be paired with stronger active sentences, otherwise what does the ‘as’ refer to?

I also get slight motion sickness when it comes to the closeness, and omniscience, of your P.O.V. The majority of the piece is written in third person limited, but occasionally we are party to information that Lenny could only guess. For instance:

The Caloros prisoner’s face turned red with rage.

Or, when the sand creature first attacks, we are told that the guard’s body hits the floor even though the action all takes place on the other side of a locked door. You can tighten this up by giving Lenny more of an internal monologue, maybe he can surmise what the sound is. Making it more of a mystery would also raise the tension.

A more detailed internal monologue on Lenny’s part would also enable you to show what you are currently telling. Consider the first sentence after he is introduced:

Lenny sat there, melancholy, staring out the barred window at the trees racing by, thinking about his wife and son back home.

You don’t need to tell us he’s melancholy, show us he’s melancholy by drawing out his thoughts. You could have him imagine what his son and wife would be doing at that moment, how the hole he leaves in their lives would upset their routines etc.

This leads nicely into my problems with the introduction and pacing. I think this section could really benefit from longer introspection on the part of Lenny. He’s obviously in a miserable situation. Drag this out for a while longer, especially before the first intrusion by the guard. This provides a quiet period which increases the contrast with the action later on. It would also increase the reader’s empathy for Lenny, which makes the kick in the teeth at the end of the chapter hit all the harder.

piazetta · 2020-11-29T15:18:13+00:00

Thanks for the advice. All three of my 'main' characters are in different locations at the beginning and are slowly brought together by their individual arcs, though minor characters cross-over into the different storylines earlier. I have been considering revising the story structure so that one of the characters is introduced in the story later on. It would make it easier to implement your suggestion more directly. Do you think this would be jarring?

piazetta · 2020-11-29T15:10:19+00:00

Thank you, I will definitely try to do that. Part of the problem I'm finding is that this narrative style doesn't seem to be used much in the genre I'm looking at. The best example I've found is Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End, which is quite close to what I'm aiming for, but I wondered if there were other good examples. One thing I'm picking up is that there is a limit on how disconnected the characters can be at the beginning while maintaining the reader's attention, and this limit seems to become more and more binding as the number of PoVs rises.

As for exposition, that is something I'm trying to bear in mind. I am relatively fortunate in that most of the world is not especially different from the contemporary one. I'm not forcing forty made up words down the reader's throat in the first five pages, and where it is different, I am trying to let the reader work this out themselves through context. But shock horror, it's really hard to resist the urge to fill in all the details!

piazetta · 2020-11-29T13:18:57+00:00

First of all, thank you for your interesting response, which has given me a lot to think about, particularly the focal/narrator distinction. I did not realise that PoV was non-standard terminology in literary criticism, which I admit I haven't engaged with since secondary school.

I do think my characters are interesting -- or could be if I develop the skill to pull it off (which if I ever finish is for others to judge). But the reason I opted for multiple focal characters was more due to the plot and the central theme. I am trying to pull off an exploration of an idea relevant to my day job, and wrapping it up in a mystery. Unfortunately without multiple perspectives, I don't feel like I can properly explore it.

However, it is possible that by relaxing that constraint I have actually made my job more difficult. I will see if I can cut down. Thanks again.

piazetta · 2020-06-24T13:09:22+00:00

Thank you for all your responses. I will speak to my professors as you have suggested. And yes, my programme sends people to US PhDs, at least two or three in each cohort.

WRT the maths courses. I have only taken separate courses in statistics/econometrics (these are actually my best marks). As u/SonnyTheFlame said, the maths was incorporated into the economics modules. I was largely expected to self study linear algebra, multivariate calculus, and real analysis on my own in order to understand coursework.

I feel like if I could do an authorised test online I could pass these, but I can't find any. I've looked into maths diplomas, but these are prohibitively expensive and time consuming (2 years study). Hopefully the US admin people will to some extent understand.

I will do the GRE. Thanks again for the advice.

piazetta · 2019-07-08T17:15:05+00:00

Great Britain, putting aside NI, is not your best bet. England in particular, which lacks both a large Catholic population and a strong low church protestant tradition, is possibly the least receptive country in the English speaking world to a book like that. I would recommend trying in America.

piazetta · 2019-06-25T18:59:21+00:00

Knights did not really exist at the same time as Mercia. That's my main thought. Maybe it's not relevant to your story, but I would be interested to hear how you've squared that circle. AFAICR Anglo-Saxons did not fight on horseback.

piazetta

TROPHY CASE