Title: Lovelace 1/2
Author: Eric Burns-White
Rating: M
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pairing: Unknown
Fandom: Original
Words: 30.000
Status: WIP (Part 1 Complete)
Link: click!

Summary: Lovelace 1/2 is a novel about a young woman named Andi. She’s an expat Brit going to a private school in America. And, right up to her Freshman year, she’s been a completely normal person. She prefers sports to studies, she has friends, she likes to watch television and do not much of anything. Then, her brain- function changes drastically.

Comment: I've already introduced this webserial to the readers of the "Other Fandoms almost recommended"- thread, but the last chapter kicked the action up several notches and made me think that a wider audience on DLP would enjoy the story.

The main character is a sympathetic teenager who is thrust into an literally mind- altering situation. Her teachers, peers and finally even her very distant parents confront her, raising the tension with every chapter. The technical writing is perfect, the plot seems solid -if undecipherable- and the featured "superpowers" don't break immersion. I eagerly await the updates, which occur regularyly on wednesdays.

5/5

 

Has there been any action yet? I kept up with the first six chapters, but pretty much nothing had happened in that timespan. Andi had gotten her powers, went to school and met some Faerie type woman, but it just bored me.

Tell me something interesting has happened since then and I'll give it another chance.

EDIT: Because you know, Worm started out with Lung.

 

Indeed, that's what I wrote in my comment. There has been *action* in the newest chapter.

Maybe we have a different understanding of "action/adventure", but being overwhelmed by a superpower and suspected of cheating by a conference of your teachers is tension enough to keep me interested.

Check this out:

Spoiler

The female android moved faster than any human Andi had ever seen. There had been no telegraphing of her movements, either. She turned, slapped the phone from Dean Forrester’s hand, hard enough to break the handset and make the Dean cry out with pain, and thrust her other hand forward, dead center on Dean Forrester’s chest. The force of the blow caused the Dean’s chest to audibly crack as her sternum and several ribs were broken, and she was thrown back into the wall, hard—

We had that discussion, not every good story needs to start with a fight to the death. (though I like it if it does)

 

I suppose I'll give it another go then.

Also, it's not about having a fight to the death. It's about having a good hook. Jim Butcher mentions it in his blog; a starting action sequence draws in the reader better, especially when we're talking fantasy fiction (he basically ripped the opening from the Lethal Weapon for the start of Grave Peril because it works so well). In Worm we had Lung. Here we have detention.

 

Yeah? I thought in "Lovelace" we had this:

Spoiler

Andi looked at the people in the room, feeling the walls closing in on her a touch. “What’s going on?” she asked. “I think you know what’s going on,” Mister Charlton said, opening a folder and dropping her test on the coffee table.
Andi breathed out. “Look, I blew the test. I know that. You know that. What did you expect? I’m terrible at math.”
“What did I expect?” Mister Charlton snapped, clearly angry. “I expected a little honesty. Or at least be a better liar!”

If this isn't a hook I don't know what a "hook" is. You have an interesting character, a girl who's in boarding school and not good at maths, a girl who doesn't understand what's happening to her, and in addition authorities in "punishing mode".

 

That's not much of a hook. That's an angry teacher.

 

Chapter 11 and 12 are where you first see a proper hook.
4/5 for bland protagonist and mediocre pacing. Otherwise excellent.

 

(x-11)(x-10) simplifying this in a second is not exactly a work of genius. Interesting story. Well written, though bland in the beginning. Let's see if it gets better.

 

The math teacher needing a second to do that definitely struck me as a little slow on his part. Education in America these days ...

And yeah, it was a slow start but to be fair

Spoiler

once it escalated it escalated way more quickly that I expected it to. A month ago I was thinking it would be like chapter 25 before we had random acts of superviolence exploding into the narrative.

 

Am still reading worm, so, only read the first few chapters of this, so, one question before I continue this:

Is the 1/2 in the name some sort of reference to Ranma 1/2? Because I kinda keep expecting that the protag will start changing gender but I don't think that's it.

 

As far as I can remember, any Ranma relation has been denied by the author specifically but there have also been a lot of evasive answers on what the "1/2" means exactly. No genderchanging of any sort has occurred yet, nor any other overt signs of the Ranmaverse.

 

This is what the author said in an author note:

Also, I find the story interesting, if somewhat bland at times. The writing is decent, but not as strong as Worm (imo). The last two chapters were a serious jump though in tone. Pacing is a little off, but I'm excited about where it's heading at least.

 

Love this. It's 5/5 so far.

Worm has spoiled me though. Lovelace 1/2 only updates once per week and the chapter lengths are far shorter than Worm's. Can you smell my sense of entitlement?

I want to walk away and come back to read this in a year's time.

 

Caught up with this as well. It may have been a mistake to read this immediately after reading Worm, so, I will not make any comparisons, it would be unfair to do so, seeing that Worm is nearing its end and this has just started.

Yeah, this is rather interesting, with a decent protag so far, interesting abilities that she has and the situation she is in. Especially like how they deal with people of authority here as it seems to break a mould. Can't really remember the last time I have seen this.

But at the same time, it wasn't as gripping as it could be and I can't help but feel the short chapters are at fault for that. It really is over far too fast and I don't want to be mean, but it seems like a Dan Brown trick, to make purposefully short chapters that end on a cliffhanger in order to create more tension. (Aware that he wasn't the first to do so but he overused it more than Lucas did special effects)

I hope that is not the case and I am just severely mistaken on that one.

So, overall, liked it so far, am excited to see where this goes but not so hooked that I will probably forget about it at some point and find that it has advanced 20 chapters in the meantime, which might not be so bad.

 

No, the short chapters aren't a device. Worm is an outlier in terms of chapter length - all of the other such series I've perused have had similar or far shorter chapters. (i.e A grey world.)

Wildbow just writes way too much, way too fast. I wonder if/when he'll get into traditional publishing. He'll probably be putting out 2-3 decent books a year or something.