Bored, read for me please?

[darkelf105]

Hey guys, if you're bored, could you read this for me. I'm really frustrated and am stuck with this novel'[s opening. It's only about three pages, and I just need some general crits and more importantly, if the book started like this, would you keep going? Is it interesting? Is Isabelle interesting enough to follow? How's the world. It's only three pages so alot about the setting will be answered in due time, I just need to know if the setting is interesting.  THANKS!

Cere, Chapter 1---The Cry in the Empty City

 

Isabelle True searched. The city pressed in around her, making her smaller and lonelier than she really was. The mammoth buildings, made long ago of golden stone, stood empty within the desolate confines of the Wasteland.  They were abandoned now. The city had lain empty and silent in the Wastland for many centuries. It used to be a metropolis, now it was ruins, with only Isabelle and the Protector living within the Edifice, the city’s old fortress. Isabelle had her back to the hill that stood with it’s hulking fortress and maze at the center of the city like an exposed ribcage. She could feel it at her back, like a phantom heartbeat. The Edifice dominated the city and could be seen for many miles out. Isabelle did not like how it brooded over the landscape. It made her uncomfortable although it was the place she called home.

 Aquaducts, the city’s old veins, dried out and unused, ran the length and breadth of the ruined metropolis, their high arches making a shadowy tracery over parts of the city. Isabelle was following one now, keeping it in sight to maintain her bearings. This particular aquaduct ran to the center of the city, to the Edifice. She kept it insight, for underneath it, in the dark intestines of the city’s underground sewers and waterways, there was a direct route back to the Edifice, a passage that circumnavigated the dangerous maze at the bottom of the fortress.

She longed to run her fingers through her short hair. Isabelle cold feel sweat collecting behind her ears and it itched horribly but she didn’t scratch for fear of  dislodging the scarves she had wrapped carefully around her head and face to keep out the Wasteland’s grave dirt.  She felt uneasy thinking about the vast, dead exapanses of the Wasteland where the deaths of the world collected.  She walked faster, eyes scanning the deserted buildings.

Isabelle’s footsteps jacked harshly along abandoned streets, while the open holes of windows and doors yawned darkly at her. She fingered her silvered dagger, looking around her. The Hallowed City was not empty. Not today. Today it was filled with crying. As she walked, her skin pimpled from stepping through hot sunlight and then into the cold shadows cast by the buildings. The hairs on her arms were raised because at the edge of her hearing she felt the cry of whatever was in the city. Her nose tickled; the dust was in her nostrilS despite her best efforts to protect against it.

The sneeze was building pressure in her sinus cavities and her mouth twitched as she supressed it. She did not want her whereabouts be known. As she grimaced, the cry stopped, leaving a faint ringing in her ears from its absence.

She stopped and looked around. The soft anguish of the sound had been present all morning. Her scalp prickled with a sense of danger as the harsh sunlight around her dimmed.

 She glanced up at the sky, a dry, cracked blue, faded from the burning winds of the Wasteland. The sun shone down strongly, but banks of clouds were moving across its face. They came rushing in from the east, an occurrence that was rare in the Wasteland.  Isabelle furrowed her brow. This was unexpected and she did not like how ashy the light was getting. A breeze started, but got stronger and snarled into something more astringent. Dust swept up and around the city, eddying in dry currents.

She blinked the Wasteland’s darkling light from her eyes and tried to squint against the grave dust blowing into her face. The wind gusted too strongly for her to see clearly in the open now and she was forced to pull her scarves higher over her features and retreat to the protective confines of a nearby doorway. She huddled toward the closed door, keeping as much of her front against the building as possible. The dust from the wasteland beyond the city scoured flesh ruthlessly and she had no intention of wandering back to the Edifice with a smooth face, blank as paper.  

The wind roared harder and Isabelle could feel the dirt trickling down over her boots. She felt it around her ankles searching for ways inside the layers of clothes she wore to protect against it. The wind plucked at her back with angry fingers and Isabelle squeezed her eyes shut so tight tears seemed along their edges.  She had known that the city was dangerous and that things got swallowed in its empty corridors and yet, she had still come, chasing a phantom sound. The wind screeched more violently, engulfing her with dust, making it hard to breathe and Isabelle felt trapped. She had to do something. She was not some weakling girl, but daughter of the Protector. She knew things, was heir to ancient knowledge, even if she didn’t know what its purpose was.

  “First there is the word and from the word there is thought and from thought there is becoming!”

She shouted as the wind and grave dirt buffeted her body and she was pressed hard against the stone of the ancient portal.  She didn’t understand what the chant meant, only that the Protector had told her it was powerful and old. She screamed it, hoping that the wind would rip away the words and not her.

“First there is the word and from the word there is thought and from thought there is becoming and from becoming there is word and so the word goes without end!”

She yelled it defiantly, daring the wind to take from her what it could.  The fear was still metallic, lodged on her tongue, but as she screamed it became distant.

She stood braced against the door, crying out against the elements, praying silently that her anger was enough to keep her alive.  

There was a pause, a realeasing of atmospheric breath and as suddenly as the wind storm had swept in, it subsided with a keening moan, leaving only little gusts of breeze to stir along the buildings and ruffle lightly at her scarves. Isabelle had never encountered a wind storm like that before. It had been so sudden. There was usually some warning that the winds were brewing over the endless graves of the Wasteland. Some indication that they were going to come screaming in over the city. The storm made her uneasy and something within her guts constricted a little and her tongue was dry in her mouth. She swallowed and began to head back, away from the outer edges of the city.

 She was loath to abandon her search for the source of the crying, but the wind storm had to be reported to the Protector. Isabelle was not sure that the Protector would be aware that it had happened, ensconced as she was within stone bowels of the Edifice.

Isabelle looked once more at the city’s empty streets and then turned her gaze toward the hulking monster of the Edifice. She made her way under one of the stone arches  that made up the backbone of the  aqueduct she had been following. She searched along the dust that had piled up under it’s columns, looking for something. She found it and scrabbled with a round, metal cover half hidden in the dirt. Once she had pulled a latch on the cover a certain way, the lid sprang up, the rusty hinge creaking. She fished out a light stone from her bag and said the word that activated it and threw it into the darkness. As it fell she noted that the ladder down this particular hole was still sound. None of the rungs were missing and the metal it was made of still seemed sturdy, unworn by time and the Wasteland.

 

Comments

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

I noticed a few typos here and there but everything looks fine to me. I'll look at it again later, when I really have a chance to sit and look at it for more than a minute. You know I am interested because it is a girl, doing stuff, and you have something happening (the storm) in the very beginning of the book.

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

Stoopid typos. That's what I get for writing at the front desk. You would think the library would be more conducive to writing.

[owaine.livejournal.com]

A good beginning. It has that "I can't wait to see what comes next" feelings to it.

I rewrote the beginning paragraph(s). It's in my voice/style, so feel free to ignore it; but, I felt that the city needed a little more kick to it. Also, I would dump the whole Aquaduct paragraph. It has a good feel to it, but at this point in the story, it doesn't add anything.

Anyway... here is my first paragraph.

Isabelle True stalked through the abandoned buildings of the ancient city. The weight of the mammoth structures, built centuries ago from golden stone, made her feel smaller than she was. The city was once a thriving metropolis. Now it was an empty ruin surrounded by the Wastes; it’s only inhabitants Isabelle and the Protector.
Pausing at an intersection, she looked back at the way she had come. The forgotten builders of the city must have liked things orderly, she thought to herself. The roads radiated outward in straight lines from the center of the city, like spokes on a wheel. Dominating the view was the Edifice, the massive fortress with its citadel in the heart of the city. It troubled her the way it brooded over the city. It was designed in such a way that it always looked as though it was watching you, no matter where in the city you were. She turned back to the road ahead, irritated at the goose-bumps that always formed when she looked to long on her forbidding home.

[owaine.livejournal.com]

Note: I'm clueless how to work with this LJ thing. There is supposed to be a paragraph at PAUSING. All my formatting is gone. Paragraph indents, etc. and apparently I cannot use html in comments?

[darkelf105.livejournal.com]

Lol. I'm not so great at LJ either, but I saw where you meant there to be a new paragraph :). Also, thank you for taking the time to rewrite it, seeing some of it rewritten helps clear my head and I will most definitely be looking at your revisions for help when rewrite as they were very helpful!