editorguy

Hmmm... I, too, as you might have guessed, am also rather fond of speculative fiction and fantasy, especially the latter. I would say that TSOI definitely has the power to grab and hold a reader with any appreciation for this kind of story, and many with no appreciation for either genre. There are passages in TSOI that are achingly beautiful and make me cry when I read them, and there are other parts that make me laugh aloud still, even after editing them. But, for me, the most important thing about TSOI is what I call the distillation: If you strip away the details and boil the story down to

The interludes are necessary pieces in the overall scope of the story. Not only that, I personally believe that some of the best writing in the story happens in the interludes... I will never forget the image of the old farmer beating the great bell in Taldor Valoren and announcing the advent of The Lord Protector, nor will I ever forget the fight to free the children on the way to rescuing/waking the duets. It would be a poorer story without the interludes.

I have done final edits on all the elemental interludes except Gold, which I'm still waiting on. We got through all the edits on chapter 45, the first chapter back in the 'present time' and it's a doozy. You're gonna love the answers it provides. cheers!

Let us recall that Ajax was entirely dependent on supplies from the planet below, in terms of food and other necessaries. And the gates stopped working almost immediately, and the shuttles within just a couple of years. And twenty five hundred years have gone by. a ghost moon, for sure. But even back then, after the immediate chaos settled, I suspect everyone who wasn't in stasis started back down to the planet because supplies were running out.