yet another

i was pretty interested to see how this chapter was going to start off. i wasn’t sure if art had entered a paralell version of his world where a woman who looked like his mother was there, or if it was actually his mother. 

and to be frank i was a little bit miffed that the thought never occured to art in the story. i think after reality-hopping for a while, that would be a concern. is this your loved one, or their doppleganger? etc

anyway the chapter itself seemed to go pretty well. some grammatical errors here and there, but nothing huge. i’m a little puzzled why partway through the chapter there was a swap where instead of refering to her as ‘his mother’ the text refers to her as ‘mom.’ that seems to be placing the narration more on artemis’ point of view, rather than the outside semi-omnipotent text we’ve been having thus far. i also feel like ‘mom’ in tesla and edison’s time may have been a bit of a slang term. i can’t confirm that cause googling ‘when was the word mom popularized’ just gets me a bunch of unrelated crap. BUT ANYWAY art may be okay to use that language, but the narration deffinately isn’t.

a little puzzled why the pigeons continued to arrive, when it was stated they knew the letters were coming back unopened. i know the pigeons are supposed to be a bit of a magical fudging kind of like owls in harry potter, but the birds themselves ought to be described a bit in this case. i seem to recall them being unusually white from previous chapters? make sure that’s in there. if they’re white, and they’ve been desperately flying all this time trying to find art, you’d think they’d look lean and tired. art or his mother might want to bring them in and give them teacakes to peck at or just *something* to illustrate that these characters are generally compassionate towards all things, organic or electric.

i really liked the entrance of Mrs. A. i did not see that coming, and i really like the tie back to chapter 1. very well done. her language is good and specific to her character. i’d put a lot of effort though into writing some facial emotes for her as being kind/nonthreatening though. her words are very reassuring and we know she’s very beautiful, but again, this book will make a lot of people think back to His Dark Materials and the last thing you want (i assume) is people drawing paralells between Mrs. A and that crazy evil lady with the golden monkey whose name i can’t spell or be bothered to google right now. in other words, just let her exude non-threatening behavior towards art. describe the feeling he gets from her character. is she like a military general? a pure scientist? was she putting on an act of being a high society lady when he last saw her, or is that how much of her behavior really is? this might be addressed in coming chapters, honestly. not sure.

anyway, in general it was a good chapter. needs a lot of revision to the grammar and some fleshing out of the scenes but it works very well and moves along nicely. probably one of the better chapters so far. 

i do have to ask, though. why were the contents of the cooler in art’s room (wine & beer) specifically described? it could have been just general refreshments, but it wasn’t. and we know art isn’t a drinker, so it seems a bit out of character for his room. is this going to become important at any point later? if not, i suggest revising it to fit more with his character. it jumps out as inconsistant and looks a bit like a plot hook- but if there’s no reason for it, you don’t want this, as it leaves a feeling of loose ends.