Saffire story critique
The overall story was quite compelling. Saffire discovers a mystery and is keen to explore it, so we are pulled in quickly. Saffire herself is a realistic character, and it’s interesting seeing events unfold through her eyes.
Amongst these events there were a few problems:
I thought the world could do with a lot more explaining, as I got very little sense of place. I had trouble picturing the world, which made it more difficult to be drawn into Saffire’s story.
Some of the phrasing is good, for example, I really liked ‘Would he be laid back, more in tune with an arm-chair than her mother…’, but some of it tries too hard, for example I didn’t like ‘Time’s tornado had twisted the last seconds of holiday from her’.
I thought the sequence where we meet the ram-man lost some of its power due to not following what I understand to be the ‘name conventions’ in fiction – someone is referred to (by the narrator) as ‘Golradir’ with no explanation, then, the ram-man is called ‘the Trickster’ by shapeshifters, so Saffire can legitimately refer to the ram-man as the Trickster from then onwards, but she continues to mostly call him the rather unwieldy ‘ram-man’ or variants thereof. Rather than coming across as an avoidance of repetition it just sounds awkward.
A similar awkwardness crops up later, with the ‘Duck’ and the ‘Xmas gang’ – the explanations could be worked into the narrative more successfully.
We have alarms going off at the beginning of ch 2 at the school, and also alarms going off at the beginning of ch 3 at the lab – there needs to be significance to this (which I can’t see) as it’s too odd otherwise. Or change the chapter structure so they don’t both start the same way.
I was puzzled by Saffire’s grandfather ‘driving away’ – in a boat? Saffire had to row to the bus stop. I don’t think the world has been established enough yet for the reader to immediately think ‘drive’ is Saffire’s euphemism for travelling by boat (I assume).
The mother/ daughter/ Jake scene was a bit over the top. The same effect could probably be achieved with fewer histronics.
Some of the character descriptions were odd. For the grandfather we had ‘seduce’, with Dodo it was ‘pimp’; what with the alcoholic mother, creepy ex-boyfriends, an angry Jake, Fudge and Lucien, there was only Donna (and possibly the tramp) who was remotely sympathetic. Is there a reason for everyone to be so horrible? Saffire is alienated certainly, but I was left wondering, why? In the drowning scene, I wondered why no one (other than the tramp) helped her. The bullying came across as spontaneous, so I wasn’t sure why they hated Saffire enough to let her die – they could’ve called for help without risking themselves.
The visit to the lab was a good progression to the mystery, and Saffire doesn’t find out too much too soon, though perhaps the scene could be more dramatic. The events themselves are good – Dodo goes into a mysterious room, and the ‘contamination’ thing is obviously a lie, although maybe these could be worked to even greater effect.
The age of the protagonist was interesting; I thought usually the protagonists in YA fiction were older. Possibly there’s some kind of subtext going on that I didn’t pick up on - parts of this are rather disturbing. In places there was a feeling of unease – is this deliberate?
Despite some problems, I think this is a good story. The switches between the mundane and the bizarre are interesting, and I think you’re building up to some interesting ideas. The ban on science experiments, the cryptic tramp, the strange dreams, and the lab, all work well together to deepen the mystery and involve us in Saffire’s story.
