Aphelion

Wow. It is hard for a woman to get ahead in the workplace (especially when there's a moat around it). :)<br><br>Lysandra is a strong, competent leader faced with a difficult task. Tradition, scheming, and law have trapped her in a situation where she must sacrifice per position to save herself and her unborn child--and she does, to her credit.<br><br><br>The details of the setting were sparse: a stairway; a smelly, dirty chamber; ledges on a stone wall; a secret passageway... Unfortunately, none of them were described well enough that they seemed real to me. Moreover, a python big enough to hold her unborn child climbing down the side of a stone tower? I couldn't buy that. The stonework of your average storybook castle is quite smooth, and since no other description was substituted, I saw gravity winning that fight straight off.<br><br>The only really good descriptive bits I noticed were the bat guano and the foul odor when she doused the fire with the chamber pot.<br><br>Fictional Queens of the past, Dido, Guinevere and the like, laid the groundwork that this character could be based upon. Likewise, they helped explain motivations, and suggest internal struggles that could have been going on in Lysanda's head while she escaped--but she doesn't seem to have them herself. All she focuses on is escaping, and how to do what she's doing.<br><br>As she steals into the King's chamber, her husband whom she loved enough to travel across the sea to be his wife, it doesn't dredge up a single moment of grief or loss in her. She just grabs the clothes & the sword.<br><br>True, she places the blame on the assassin before skedaddling, but here to, I wondered why she didn't have a thought for her child, and the throne that had been stolen from him or her. There was no hint that she would help the child return and reclaim its birthright.<br><br>Without sentimentality, all that was left was wooden to me.<br><br>Now, in all fairness, grief is a tricky thing, and some people do not show it--some not for years. However, if that was the case, I would have liked to see her forcing the emotion down... burying it as deep as the husband she would not be around to bury. Still, her actions kept the plot from working for me. As a gut level reaction, things didn't hold true.<br><br><br>I may be a professional stick in the mud, but upon seeing Ms. Dunn's credentials, I expected more.<br><br>Nate

Like Greg, I found this to be a well-told and interesting tale. It is also true that a little more description might have made the story more vivid.<br><br>To address some of the comments made by Greg and Nate (Ms. Dunn, please forgive me if any of my speculation about your intent is incorrect):<br><br>It isn't explicitly stated, but I would suspect that Lysandra's powers are not unique among her own people (they may even be common). The inscription on the late king's sword hilt certainly suggests that he knew about them and may even have found them attractive.<br><br>As for her lack of concern about depriving her unborn child of the throne -- if her powers are considered unholy, and her child inherits them, he or she would be in danger from the moment of birth. With her own life (and the unborn child's life) in immediate peril, returning home where such abilities are accepted made sense. <br><br>Similarly, she may have put aside her grief to focus on her two goals: survival (hers and her child-to-be's) and justice. A brief mention of a nostalgic memory or two probably would have covered this ("as she dressed quickly in his clothes, the memory of his touch, rough and gentle at the same time, made her eyes sting. But she shook her head and forced herself to focus on her twin objectives: survival, and revenge. There would be time for mourning later."), but might also have slowed things down.<br><br>Finally, depending on the skill of the stonemasons and the era (architecturally and engineering-wise) in which the tower was constructed, the exterior stonework of the tower might allow a constrictor enough traction to at least turn free-fall into a survivable slide. (There may have been ledges, protruding beams, etc., too.)<br><br>Watch for "Prince Lysander: The Return of The King", coming soon. (Just kidding)<br><br>Robert M.