2/18/2009 c5 2Patch72
I will admit, at first I only began reading this to get a review on my own story... but I was pleasently surprised. I love how you broke up each chapter as a way to introduce and connect the reader to a different character. That was very bold and it certianly paid off. I for one look forward to future chapters from you, keep up the good work.

1/14/2009 c4 Royal Bliss
I'm going to group my review of the 3rd and 4th chapter together (it's 2am here, kind of tired).

3rd:

The character Journey is a very interesting character. I like that she's a revolutionist and that she's all secretive about it. I'm also glad you didn't bust up and explain her whole mission. You really know how to hold your dice when it comes to things like that. I really hope to learn more about her (nice name choice by the way). The relationship between her and Carmen so far doesn't seem out of place or forced. The dialog isn't cheesy, it actually sounds realistic in a way. The only thing I found odd was this:

"My inbred survival instincts told me to be cautious"

Mainly the inbred part... I haven't heard anything worded like that. I don't know if you meant to have another word but anyway, it's not much of a big deal but it did stand out to me.

4th:

This was a pretty short chapter. At first I thought the main character was a boy. Mainly because I haven't heard the name Avalon used for a character and because she climbed a tree in the beginning.

The interactions between her and the characters in this one seem to be harsh. I'm still trying to decide if the teacher's reaction to her coming in late was overly harsh... but I guess it seems to fit with the whole mood of the world. I guess if it were general fiction in today's world then I'd say it was overly harsh.

I kind of think this was really abrupt:

"Our parents' tax money goes to educate trash like her. You think I'm supposed to be happy about it?"

It seems strange that he would have an outburst like that in front of her...mainly because of it's length. Usually upset teens are too emotional when it comes to something like that so they keep the outburst to a minimum of a few words. But anyway, that's just my view on it. It seems to be an important piece of information for this chapter.

I do like the overall voice in this one, especially at the end. It's a very realistic reaction to what just happened to her.

There's another character yet to be introduced, according to your summary. I'm kind of wondering if you're going to have each chapter dedicated to a certain character. Since the first chapter you seem to be weaving two characters together, that's a good idea... since you're not dropping everything a character in a previous chapter and starting anew. If you did that I think people would lose sight of the first character introduced because of the span of chapters after him. So nice choice deciding to set it up this way. And great job on the story so far :) It's very entertaining!

12/12/2008 c2 SREFiction
Interesting relationship between these two. I like that you've created a sort of balance between them. I'm interested to see how the world they live in will be revealed to the reader through your characters. I'm not so sure about the POV changing from character to character. I've only read a couple stories like that end they ended up feeling episodic to me. So far so good, though. If you can keep the flow nice and not jump from scene to scene...as I said episodic...I think you'll have a great story.

I saw a couple misspellings at the beginning with the word curfew, but later in the chapter you corrected it, so you may have just missed the first instances of it.

Just a suggestion, but you may want to stay away from the modifier, "so", you use it quite a bit at the beginning of the chapter and I've learned the hard way that using words like "so", "very", "really" etc. tend to take away from what you're trying to convey to the reader, because we end up ignoring it altogether. Some examples:

So, yawning, I relaxed on my branch without hesitation, attempting to sleep.

"So, you stayed out past cerfew again, huh?" I asked Jonathan after a minute.

"So, you met Kelly?" I asked, genuinely interested.

You can easily drop the word "so" and say the same thing. If you say the sentence again in your head without the "so" the sentences take on more pointed meaning instead of the reader skimming over them because of the repetitive usage.

Just some suggestions. I look forward to the next update.

~L2C

12/9/2008 c1 Royal Bliss
This is pretty good so far. Jonathan mocking Kelly in the beginning really shows a lot of his personality right away and it isn't too blunt either... I do think the last name Cold makes it a little obvious that he is bitter though. But seeing how the story is coming along so far, I don't consider it a big deal.

I would watch your comma usage. Especially in this sentence:

Mom and I had been rich once, before my dad had been arrested, but, because everything we had owned had been under his name, Mom and I had been left with nothing when the government confiscated all of his belongings.

It is a mouthful to say and can easily be broken up into another sentence. Also you have some capitalization errors..

e.g.: I scrambled for a car's description and finally settled for, "Um, a blue one...What'd you get?"

The 'u' in um should be lower case as well as any dialog similar to that sentence structure...

e.g: I spun to face whoever it was and growled, "What?"

e.g: I snorted unsympathetically, "Everyone does."

And there are some misspellings but I didn't notice them as I was reading, only when I went back to check if there was any. But just read over it quickly and you should catch them.

Anyway, so far so good. I'm glad the overall voice of Jonathan isn't too passive and that it kept my attention throughout. I can also very well see the influence the Giver has on this already. Nice work and keep it up :)

12/9/2008 c1 24Mark Piersley
good stuff...can't wait until part two if there is a part 2.