Hey, London. Here's the next review of the Blasphemer's Cypher.

"After a prayer begging the Lord to guide me to a good solution. I pull my book bag off my shoulders and get started." - The first sentence here isn't an independent clause but a phrase, so the period should be a comma (there are of course such a thing as authorial freedom, but splitting it up into to two sentences doesn't seem to serve a purpose here).

"Once I get the basics down, I’ll figure out to make it satisfy both Sesedos." - Hmm... the opening conflict of the chapter and Jinxx's reaction is solid, but if she overcomes the conflict this easily, it feels like the story has stopped barely before it got started.

"Could anything Lady Margaté said about Pryde be true..." - I must admit, this paragraph made my concentration wander off. Showing Jinxx's thoughts on the dilemma she's in and the information she's just been handed probably isn't a bad idea, but the paragraph focus much more on what happened than on how it makes her feel. And while I do think it's a place where you can get away with some info dumping, the paragraph has a bit too much of it, if you ask me.

"I must to get these patterns done." - The "to" seemed to have slipped in there by mistake.

"I hope I don't make any mistakes." - I'm going to go back to the "too much 'telling' of Jinxx's emotions" lecture here. A good indicator of "telling" is distancers -- here "hope" -- so named because they also create an, usually, unwanted distance between the reader and the POV. I have this exact same problem in my own writing, but looking for phrases like "I hope", "I see", "I feel", etc. are indicators that the writing gets telling, especially when it comes to character emotions.

"I start to obsess about Pryde and Lord Sesedo again, so I get up and walk around the room." - Just so you don't think I suggest you "show" everything instead of "tell" it. This is a good example of where "telling" is good choice. You could of course spent a few paragraphs showing her obsessing about Pryde and Sesedo, but the how doesn't seem important here, so you skip it nice and easy and move on to more important things. Thumbs up from here.

"I don't think I've seen myself except in the stream next to our house since then." - She's never walked by a window and stopped and looked at herself?

"I grimace when I see my child-like face..." - Things really start to meander here. Instead of seeing her in anguish over the impossible task at hand, she just sort of does nothing. So it feels like the story has completely stopped. Also, this paragraph really only seems to be here to info dump how Jinxx looks.

"Lady Margaté has ugly, man-ish handwriting. Why did she write down a list of numbers?" - Two things here. Why does she thinks it's Margaté who wrote it? Two, generally I think your sentence level writing is more than solid (I think I've mentioned it a couple of times already), but in this chapter, where we get a lot of more of Jinxx's thought processes, I'm seeing an issue. The sentences in themselves are good, but when we're seen Jinxx thoughts, the sentences in each paragraph doesn't really seem to connect. This one is just one example, and there are others before it in this chapter. I get that our thoughts aren't always coherent, but in this chapter it took up so much space it made for some jarring paragraphs.

"He thrusts out a note. "You'd better make it right."" - Is this what the note says? Because the quotation marks made it seem as if the Beard said it.

""Oh, gosh, thank you. You don't need to." I hope he ignores me. I need an escort or I’ll fall." - A small but good line, her thoughts contradiction her words and, thus, revealing a bit about her character (that she's polite to a fault).

"Despite never having worn a noble's gown, I suspect anything Lady Sesedo would accept would require assistance to get into. I close my sketchbook. I can't have Mr. Osmacadia thinking I'm not giving my studies everything. " - Two great potential conflicts here, but neither of them really seem present in this chapter?

"I'm sorry, but I have to finish my work for Lady Sesedo this afternoon. May I be excused from practice..." - Here are actually a few line where I think "telling" would be more effective. As it is, we're shown the dialogue even though it doesn't really have any conflict. You could of course stuff conflict in there, having the priest showing more concern that Jinxx might not be the ideal solo singer after all, but you could also just cut the dialogue and briefly explains in a sentence or two, that she had to tell the father that she couldn't make it, and his expression made her wonder if he would drop her for the solo (or something like that).


Conclusions
The way I see it, this chapter had one major issue the previous chapters didn't. Too much realism. Jinxx's disjointed thoughts and her procrastination instead of doing the task at hand is very realistic, but it didn't make for very interesting reading.

The other major issue, in my opinion, was that the chapter started with the conflicted introduced at the end of chapter five, but it's almost completely absent from paragraph two and onward. There's was potential for some great conflict, but it wasn't really present.

Other than that, it's much the same as the previous ones with solid sentence level and descriptions but also, at times, heavy on backstory.


No disclaimer here, because you're a WYRM and knows that it took time and effort to provide this feedback and that it's only meant as a help to improve your writing.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .