BoM/TWS Message Forum

Yeeaaaaaahhhhh ... It was the sheer, exuberant, over-the-top reactions that made me want to post these.

I would have posted its responses to reading the "Party of Five, Chapter 1"  chapters, but about halfway thru, the Usage Policy Police busted in, saying that they thought things were getting out of hand. (And yeah, it was Chat's reaction to that story--not the story itself--that set off the Usage Police sirens.) I told it to tone its responses WAY back.

But you can calibrate the responses. For these above I told it go for "live-actioin/free association/balls to the walls/off the leash reaction/evaluations."

On the other hand, when I gave it this set of instructions for reading the Prologue and "The Fake Book" chapters:

"I would like for you read the prologue and the first chapter to a potential novella. Read/react/evaluate it for its general interest. Is the situation intriguing or engaging? Are the characters engaging and how memorable are they? Evaluate it for a sense of place. How is the tone and mood? Is there a sense of style to the prose, or is it flat? Rate the dialogue. Be honest and frank."

This is what it produced:

📚 General Interest & Engagement
Rating: 8/10

The premise is instantly compelling. The conceit—a cursed or mysterious book that opens only for the right person—might be familiar, but your execution feels fresh. There’s a layered buildup: the striking pentagram and gold-and-red cover, the surreal illustrations, the brothers bickering, the slow unraveling of the book’s nature. By the end of Chapter One, I was fully invested.

The idea of a fake book that opens only when it wants to and reacts to the reader (even crashing tech!) is wonderfully eerie and escalates naturally. The thumbprint moment is an excellent closer—it taps into horror, ritual, and curiosity.

👥 Characters: Interest & Memorability
Rating: 7.5/10

You (the reader/protagonist): Very believable. The tone strikes a balance between grounded teenager and curious misfit. The sarcastic banter, casual selfishness (calling time capsules stupid), and sibling dynamic make the character feel real. There’s an openness to the unknown that suits the story’s premise.

Ted and Tom Arnholm: A small delight. They come across as fussy, passive-aggressive, aging intellectuals with a sibling rhythm. They feel real and visually distinct. The detail of the pencil slash and decimal placement is sharp and dryly funny.

Robert (little brother): A strong secondary character for such a small role. His gestures, accusations of porn, and wrestling match ground the reader's world in a way that highlights the strange book's intrusion.

No one is deeply complex yet, but they don’t need to be—everyone introduced so far is vivid and voice-distinct.

🌍 Sense of Place
Rating: 8/10

You do a fantastic job of rooting us in a very specific-feeling environment:

Arnholm’s bookstore feels dusty and real—academic, cluttered, and slightly arcane. The detail of D&D manuals on a high shelf gave it instant texture.

The town layout—Saratoga Falls, Acheson, the relationship to railroads and bedroom communities—is economical but effective. It conjures a believable world outside the main character’s bedroom window.

The home scenes (truck radio, kitchen, mom chasing the character out, TV blaring) make the strange aspects feel stranger by contrast.

🎭 Tone and Mood
Rating: 9/10

There’s a strong and subtle mood building here—one of creeping dislocation. The mundane world is sharply observed, funny, and credible. But the book slowly tilts the tone into something uncanny. The shift is subtle and effective. The prose starts playfully irreverent and ends with a chill.

I especially liked the progression from:

“Time capsules are stupid.”

to

“Claim me with money; possess me with blood.”

That tonal drift from adolescent sarcasm to slow dread is very well executed.

✍️ Prose Style
Rating: 8.5/10

The prose is sly and rhythmic, with a confident narrative voice that knows how to shift gears. A few hallmarks of good style here:

Witty, underplayed humor: “Might make a nice bookend,” “Is it porn?”, “The kind of porn you deserve.”

Great sensory detail without overloading the sentence: “He grimaces through his white beard,” “thick yellowed thumbnail,” “book bounces off, forgotten for the moment.”

Shifting visual surrealism (faces on the title page, disappearing ink, thumbprint) is handled with restraint, not overwritten.

The sentence flow is smooth, and the transitions between the ordinary and the extraordinary are elegantly handled.

🗣️ Dialogue
Rating: 8/10

The dialogue is tight and believable:

The Arnholm brothers’ exchanges are dry, specific, and funny without winking too hard. Their bickering feels lived-in.

The sibling banter with Robert is pitch-perfect. Juvenile, profane, affectionate—it sells the age and domestic context well.

Even the character’s one-sided conversations (with the storekeeper or self-dialogue) feel authentic.

Nothing sounds overly expository or "written." That’s a huge strength in this kind of immersive fiction.

🧠 Final Thoughts and Summary
You’ve crafted a well-paced, smartly observed, and increasingly unsettling introduction that reads like a literary upgrade of the best CYOA books. There’s style, character, and a genuine sense of mystery and wonder. The blending of playful teen voice with eldritch mystery is very effective.

✅ What’s Working:
Engaging narrative voice and tone

Strong sense of place and texture

Dialogue that is distinctive and age-appropriate

Solid hook and rising tension

Organic transition from the mundane to the weird

❗What to Watch:
So far, the protagonist feels vivid but not deeply interior—this might be a stylistic choice (especially in CYOA second-person). Just be mindful that this kind of voice can sometimes start to feel thin if not layered more deeply in future chapters.

Be careful of the Latin-as-magic trope becoming too familiar unless you twist or invert it later.