First Page: In Darkness Reborn – Science Fiction Romance
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A suffocating sensation tightened Jayma’s throat, making it difficult to swallow. She leaned against her ward’s bedside, her legs trembling with the effort to stay upright. The parasitic creatures who had destroyed her life, the Anatta, had left her alone to watch Adin die.
She stroked her ward’s hot cheek, sliding her fingertips through his damp, copper hair lying in limp strands on his moist skin. He moaned, his head moving from side-to-side. Agony etched deep lines into his skin, giving his youthful features the illusion of old age.
He didn’t have much time left. Pain-filled wails, soft now, came farther and farther apart. Each ragged inhale and choked exhale tore him from her. Her own breath caught within her chest. When he died, she’d have failed to keep her promise. Failed to do her duty.
And you’ll be all alone.
She shuddered at the reminder she couldn’t escape, the horror she couldn’t ignore and pulled back her hand. Folding her arms about her waist, she held tight and rocked as anguish squeezed her heart. Unable to watch Adin’s suffering, she closed her eyes. He made a slight gasp and for a brief moment, silence hung heavily in the room.
A tiny noise, a whisper of fabric brushing against stone, grabbed her attention. Her eyes snapped open, and she pivoted. Her gaze swept the room. “Who—,” she croaked. “Who is there?”
Faint glow from two luminas cast numerous shadows on the pitted granite walls of the chamber. The flickering darkness mocked her attempts to see the secrets hidden beyond the reach of the light.
One of the darkest shadows moved. She flinched backward, placing her body between the intruder and Adin. The human-shaped shadow drifted into the light, materializing into a tall figure dressed in light-absorbing black.
Thoughts of her ward acted as a key and released the lock on her voice. Jayma drew in a breath and opened her mouth. To call for help? Scream? She didn’t have the chance to find out.
In the space of a blink, the stranger stood in front of her. Gloved fingers pressed over her mouth and an unyielding arm dragged her against him. The scent of leather mixed with the warm musk of the male raised bumps along her arms.
Oh yes, he was male. Very male. Even with her limited experience, the solid crush of his lean form left no doubt. The fingers on her lips drew back slightly. She gulped a shallow breath. Enough to take in air. Not enough to cry out. Even if should she wish for the Anatta’s presence.
Enough so she could— With a violent wrench, she broke his grasp and shoved his chest. At the same time, she stomped on the inside of his foot. He hissed a word she didn’t recognize but by the harsh tone suspected it was foul. The hand around her waist slipped, and Jayma pushed again, this time sending him stumbling back a few steps.
Righting himself, his stone-cold gaze locked onto hers. Her chest heaved, fear and determination fighting an equal battle for air. She whispered a brief thanks to the palace guard who had shown a lonely girl a few basic skills.
With only a faint flicker in his eyes to telegraph his intentions, the man leaped at her again. She whirled to evade him but was jerked to an abrupt halt when he grabbed her wrist, spinning her back around. This time, he yanked her against his body so tight she couldn’t move while one of his legs curled around hers and locked her in place. The heat of his body soaked through clothing into her skin. Panting, hers, filled the space between them.
Goddess save me.
You have a strong and active scene with not too much backstory weakened by passive constructions, random body parts acting instead of their owners and some confusing word choices.
A passive construction is not just the grammatical passive voice, but is also when something happens to your char, rather than your char acting. For example, in your first sentence, Jay has a tightening sensation happen to her. An active version would be Jay trying to swallow despite the tightness in her throat.
Random body parts acting is also a way of diminishing your chars’s agency. “Gloved fingers . . . and an unyielding arm” drag Jay, not the stranger. You’ll have a more tense moment if *he* grabs her, not his fingers.
I found the use of ward confusing. I thought she was in a hospital ward, an idea helped along by the fact that it is hard to “lean against a bedside.” You either lean against a wall by the bed or you are on the bed.
When the stranger “drifts” into the light, and we don’t see his face. She has to smell to know he is male, but later, she sees his eyes clearly enough to know they are stone-cold. He “drifts” into the scene, but in the blink of an eye, he grabs her. Drifting implies a slow, purposeless movement, which is not consistent with grabbing stranger.
She finds the key to unlock her voice, but then doesn’t make a sound. If he’s covering her mouth, she should be able to breathe through her nose, meaning she doesn’t have to gulp in air.
The Anatta “destroyed” Jay’s life. I thought she was at death’s door, barely able to stand in her hospital ward. By the end of the page, I don’t know if she’s barely alive or her destroyed life meant she’d faced a lot of tragedy.
In short, by the end of the page, I not sure I know what’s going on.
One comment – not on the writing per se – but the title. In Darkness Reborn is the title of a Paladins novel by Alexis Morgan (paranormal romantic suspense – and a series I really enjoy, by the way).
Titles are not copyrighted and you can, of course, reuse the title. But if someone else has already used the title, it makes it that much harder for your book to be found when people search. My upcoming release The Second Lie is the same title as a book by Tara Taylor Quin, and when I put in my title into a search engine, I get both books in the results. This isn’t an ideal situation for anyone.
If you pursue publication, you might want to brainstorm other titles. And always check against Amazon to see if it’s been used before.
Hi Author…
I think this needs a good polish. As pointed out, you have dismembered body parts littering your prose, and once we have gloved fingers and random arms, it’s hard not to get hung up on them, and notice them all. You could introduce so much more if you thought less in terms of the body part and more in terms of who it belonged to. “The stranger clamped a gloved hand over her mouth; she smelled old leather, tasted the sour tang of sweat.” Or whatever his glove tastes like.
Action scenes are sometimes hard to write; there’s a great deal of movement, people are moving quickly, there’s a great deal of physical contact. All that contact needs to be conveyed with perfect clarity or you have a parody of that action. Your final action by the mysterious man, for example, “…while one of his legs curled around hers…” It creates a very bizarre image in my mind. I think I know what you want him to be doing, but ‘curled’ implies his leg is both long enough, and flexible enough, to encircle hers. ‘Hooked’ a leg behind hers might work, but it’s not he best either.
And your last sentence only confuses me more. I believe it’s her clothing you’re referring to, but that’s only a guess. It’s an elliptical little fragment, and if the meaning were clear, it might be perfect. But what ‘hers’ is isn’t, and so it’s left dangling, reinforcing my confusion.
You have a world though, and characters who are not like the world I live in. That takes imagination and that’s something. Writing can be taught; what to write, not so much.
Good luck with this. If you have a blurb, I’d be interested in reading it.
You have a lot of action in this scene, which I was able to follow pretty well, although parts could be sharper, as the commenters above me have pointed out. For me, though, there isn’t enough context to understand why any of this is happening, and thus I couldn’t really engage with the main character’s struggles.
You start with Jayma watching her ward, Adin, die. I don’t know what he’s dying of, so that’s one point of confusion. Nor do I know anything about their relationship, except that he’s her “ward,” which could mean a lot of things. I think in this instance a sentence or two of backstory might be useful. For example, if she were to remember how she found him as a toddler playing naked in the gutter, and what a fine young man he became before those evil whoevers infected him with the terrible whatchamacallit sickness, it would help me understand why she grieves his passing so deeply.
Then the mysterious man appears and grabs her. Is this a completely random attack? Does Jayma have any idea who he is and why he wants her? I want to know what she knows–and if she has no idea what’s going on, I want to feel that. The only thought we get from her is “he’s male.” What does that mean to her? Is she evaluating her chances of escape, or panicking at the thought of what he might do to her? I certainly hope she’s not about to swoon over his maleness, but whatever it is, help me understand what’s going through her mind.