Edena,
Your stories were very interesting. Good job! While no literary great myself, I never have a problem critiquing the works of others.
The first story seemed like you wanted it to be a ‘fish out of water’ story, but you as the ‘fish’ could have as easily been a 1st level commoner, and thus not a ‘fish’ at all. Your second story read better because the otherwise extremely confident and capable knight was unable to function in his new environment. In the first story, your ‘fish’ was unable to function as well but only due to physical limitations, not because the environment was new. You communicated your theme well enough, but the Story would have read better if you had made yourself extremely confident and capable in the real world, and then thrown for a loop in the new environment.
Your third story was good as well, but stories involving extremely powerful characters tend to bore me a tad. A less powerful Edena that used Edena’s Halloween Special (great spell by the way) and luckily managed defeat the brigands in an interesting way, would have been more amusing to me than All-Powerful Edena simply choosing to use the Halloween Special to amuse himself. I found myself saying “…. brigands that can cast Hellball? Those are some brigands!“ That’s just me though. Weak Edena facing five brigands is more engaging to me than Powerful Edena facing fifty. Also, I am not sure that this story was the right vehicle for your theme (actually it seemed like there were a couple of themes jumbled in there, but the main one seemed to be about Edena re-evaluating what was important in his life). Perhaps, a story where he was close to achieving something that was ‘professionally’ dear to him, but choosing to go on the date instead… Just a thought.
I hope this doesn’t come across as harsh, because I did really enjoy your work.
Looking forward to reading more,
John
