Aphelion

Has anyone read this? In a lot of ways it's really good. The characterization, dialog, setting and plot are all quite good, and the young king has a very strong character arc.

The aspect of it that didn't work for me was the use of Tom Swifties, the dialog tags which I felt used too many adverbs and which sometimes did a lot of telling that could be better shown. As an example:

"Or today is good too," continued Lord Sizzle smoothly because he had survived in politics a long time. "But we were about to discuss the annual budget."

I think these would have bothered me less if the same information had been written as a short paragraph instead of being part of the dialog tag.

Overall this is a very nice piece, and it deals with some thematic material that's more serious than the light tone conveys. Good flow, and it's easy and fast to read.