[This message has been edited by hinton (edited July 09, 2008).]
I'm not sure why the first 13 are spent telling me about the seasickness Thane is now apparently over.
The first line - Thane forgot all about his seasickness - is at odds with the rest of the text where he recalls the seasickness.
IMHO, you could cut this section and jump into the next 13 without losing anything. All the information - the MC's name, the ship's name, the sea he's crossed, the time he spent crossing, where he left from and who is in charge will come out more natually later in the story if it's information you need at all.
Hope this helps
It sounds like the problems already pointed out still exist. You could get rid of the first paragraph. If you want to keep it, I think the main problem is referring back and forth in time. If the events were sequential, you would have more immediacy, eliminating “was” and “had seemed”. Also there are too many references to the island. Could you start with him retching and feeling awful, maybe a thought such as “Curse Markus for this awful trip!” And then have him see the land; he wouldn’t completely forget how he feels, giving his relief more impact.
One thing that catches my interest here is his wish to "curse Markus". It hints at conflict, and personal engagement.
What is so interesting about the island? What does your Main Character (MC) know that we should know? I hope it will soon become clear why they made this trip, although as Bent Tree points out it doesn't have to be in the first 13 for a novel.
[This message has been edited by MrsBrown (edited July 02, 2008).]
quote:
The first sight of land was so soothing that Thane forgot all about his seasickness. Three moons of painting a wake across the Farlbrit Sea had seemed like a lifetime[[This line made no sense to me]]. There were times he thought he would die retching aboard the Crow’s Cry and times when he wished nothing more than to curse Markus for the entire trip.
Now, as Thane looked[[Could sub-[looking]. We know who the POV is here]] out into the distance he saw it standing there as beautiful as the Solemn Father himself; land. The island was much bigger than he had imagined and an ominous sight at that. It smoothed out over the horizon line with four long fingers made of mountain poking up into the heavens above.
The Isle of Veins, he thought to himself as [[Cut this and start a new sentence]]his eyes tried to pick out[[scoured theperhaps? details of the island through the haze.
If this were a short, I might be concerned with the hook, but I tend to relax my anticipation for strong luring devices in novel length intros. The prose should be seamless though.
I liked this, and if it were polished, I would turn the page. The milieu seems interesting, by what I have read here.
[This message has been edited by hinton (edited July 09, 2008).]