I have recieved very little constructive criticism on this so far and was curious as to what a more wide and, therefore, critical audience would think of it.
[quote] Earth is a myth, or at least to them.
The universe is a rather uninhabited place. To the human race, there are no aliens with three-legged death machines, nor are there grey humanoids with horns representing candy, nor four-jawed warriors, nor once-human, now emotionless machines. However, these all exist somewhere in the universe.
Humans also do not believe in magic. They are also wrong in believing this. Magic existed across all planets, whether uninhabited (like Mercury and Neptune,) or habited, like the planet where this tale is told. This planet resides somewhere beyond the Milky Way, Earth's location. Unlike the latter, where magic had died during the early Victorian era, this planet is magic still thrives.
The planet is known as Theo. It was plunged into war long ago. Magic, like on Earth during the time of Jesus Christ, was being held by the highest of officials – Romans on Earth, the Kaemas on Theo. The empire of the Kaemas had united the world of Theo under their banner and maintained their rule by arresting all sorcerers that did not answer to the Kaeme throne.
Restricting magic was a mistake on the behalf of the Kaemas. A rebellion was formed. An uprising had begun. The Kaemas were not aware that their commander, Kaema, would be assassinated by a lowly peasant and our protagonist, Yaleb Amelin. Following this, a new commander was chosen, his name becoming “Kaema” and magic used to blank his mind of all but his loyalty to the Kaemas. Each Kaema had once been a peasant, desperate for food and money to the point where they would allow this kind of alteration.
The chosen Kaema succeeded in war. Curfew was placed upon citizens, the highest ranking insurrectionists detained, interrogated and altered to join the Kaemas voluntarily.
Yaleb was not detained, but exiled in the mountains, the plan being that he would eventually break down and return to be either enslaved or altered. This, however, never happened, the true events documented in this story, a recording of Yaleb's own journal, kept until his death no less than two hundred and seven years after the events of this story.[/quote]
I have up to a second chapter done, although I'd rather keep that privat for now.
There's not much to critique here. It's just a wall of text explaining what happened, almost like a synopsis of the actual story. Some of these details are irrelevant, like all the references to various aliens, or the state of magic in the universe. The last sentence is a little wonky. First, I think it can be split into smaller, shorter sentences. It also has a disturbing lack of verbs. In my opinion, you don't need that last detail either.
A whole lot of this can be revealed to the reader more organically through other devices.
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