Finally, review time!
I will say that I like the premise; particularly the idea of Saito being ordered to spy on and eventually execute Shuntaro though befriending him along the way. I saw it as a Fox and the Hound -type thing, and I’ve always been a fan of that sort of story. I found myself really eager to see where the story would go from there, but reading on, I feel like the climax came too early, and ended too quickly. Shuntaro getting tortured and Saito having to kill him – that felt like the climax for me, but as Saito hardly even hesitated, it all seemed to happen a bit fast, and I feel like Saito hardly changed at all because of the experience. Ruthless killer then, ruthless killer now. I would’ve liked to see him hesitate for at least a second, maybe learn a bit more.
Additionally, because that felt like the climax, I wasn’t really emotionally invested in the final couple journal entries. The depictions of battle didn’t seem to matter much at that point – you could’ve easily glossed over the last battle and spent more time on Shuntaro’s torture and execution. That’s what I think, at least. The ending wasn’t of much interest to me and the middle-end is what I feel should’ve been the ending.
I’d say this entry made me think, but honestly, I really can’t, because it seems just about every thought it tried to bring up I’d already considered before. :/ These are the Crusades we’re talking about, after all, and I’d say nearly everyone on the forum agrees that point in history was an atrocity that hardly reflected the values of the religion that started it. I agree with that wholeheartedly, even being a religious person myself.
I think that’s why this entry felt a little weak to me. I knew where it was going almost right from the start, and while I feel your descriptions were powerful, they didn’t serve much purpose given the fact that there wasn’t much room left for surprise in this entry. I will praise your effort and choice of subject, though. The premise was good, it just didn’t come out quite right. At least, that’s how I see it.
I’m sorry to say I simply don’t have much to say about this entry. It didn’t draw me in like some of the others did, and I wasn’t very into the whole thing, but I think that’s mainly because I’m not as much of a history buff as some of the other readers here. I can’t quite put my finger on anything you, the author, did to prevent me from being so engaged. All I can really say is that I wasn’t. Sorry about that. :/
If nothing else, I can at least say that I didn’t see the ending coming, so it surprised me more than some of the other entries. That’s one of the few things about this story that really stood out to me, so I praise you for that, at least. ^^
Another entry that I like the idea of, but wish it had given me more to think about. The idea that history repeats itself is nothing new, even if it is something we shouldn’t forget, and quite a few times recently I’ve heard scares of a potential WWIII popping up here and there. Much like a lot of the other entries, I’d like to say this gave me something to think about, but it just didn’t bring up very much that hadn’t already been considered.
Additionally, although this is a small nitpick, it always bothered me that the ‘p’ in ‘pendulum’ in the entry’s title wasn’t capitalized like one would expect it to be. Unless there’s a subtext here that I’m completely missing, I suggest working on capitalization for your titles.
When I first read this, I worried it would be another entry that I felt I couldn’t properly critique due to my lack of knowledge on the subject matter. But much to my surprise, that didn’t seem to make a difference! I really liked this entry, both for the great descriptions of everything as well as the choice of subject matter. It’s not often we at WOTM squeeze in a “war” component and wind up with such an unusual view of war, at least for the majority of the story. The line about finding a naked soldier asleep in his tent really solidifies this for me – the main character’s war experience is very different from what we’d usually see in a war story, which I found very refreshing. In fact, there were hardly any depictions of an expected war battle until the end. But when it did get there, oh wow. Your descriptions are stunning, and actually made me widen my eyes a few times at the events portrayed as I read on.
Only real critique I have is that I would’ve suggested finding a way to squeeze in an explanation for Timur the Lame’s title closer to the beginning of the story, rather than mentioning his limp towards the end. Because up until that point, not being all too familiar with the source material, I really had no idea whether I was supposed to read “Lame” as the English word ‘lame’, which must’ve had some reasoning behind it that I wasn’t aware of, or if it was actually a foreign language word/name that was supposed to be pronounced completely differently, like “lah-may” or something. It was a little distracting, but that’s only a minor complaint. Additionally, I noticed a couple typos as I read, so I suggest proofreading more closely next time, but that’s another minor thing. Overall, I’d say it’s a pretty solid story.
Ahhhhhh I’m a sucker for time travel. I’d just like to get that out of the way.
Secondly, I will say I enjoyed the idea of time guardians specifically meant to protect their own time period from time travelers that could change things in their histories. However, It made me wonder just how there can be so many other time travelers, though, and why, if time machines are popularized sometime in the future, they aren’t better regulated to prevent people randomly popping back in time just to talk to a historical figure in the first place. Just a little confusing. The other confusing thing were those last couple of scenes with Calan and Miliana back in 2014; the first one I initially assumed was how they first met, but then it was implied that it wasn’t. So… what was the point of it being there, towards the end of the story? It adds almost no new reveal that needed to be put in the end, and instead just re-establishes things we’ve already figured out, giving us exposition that… really should’ve been at the beginning of a story. I mean, I understand it’s a time travel story, but you still need more than that in order to have a good excuse for telling a story out-of-order. This isn’t one of them.
Also, I do love Miliana’s design – upon first meeting her I couldn’t help but imagine her as some sort of combination of Tinker Bell and Navi. And if you want to establish a sort of romance between them, that’s fine, but maybe you don’t need to specifically address how it could be seen as weird? Up until that point, I really hadn’t thought about it – mentioning the bizarreness of the relationship not only brought it to mind for the first time, but also interrupted the flow of the story. It just seemed all-around unnecessary.
Ah well, still a nice time travel story regardless. It just could’ve been better with a lot of things towards the end cut out, maybe replaced with something more interesting to use as an ending, or a better climax since, now that I think of it, it seems kind of void of one.
