Probably one of the things that bothers me in movies, books and sometimes in serial's is that details are presented without history. Now the story series that defied this (in my mind) was "Discovery of Witches". The screen presentation did an excellent job of dialing in the necessary pieces of the plot and history of each item, without overdoing the background.
I would like to do that as well. But.
The coming chapters cannot really define what is working without the characters of the Sprites. Knowing more about them gives you closer visibility as to what they contribute in later chapters. Seeing the association of Dragon, Dragonet, Gargoyle, and the lowly "Sprite" gives you a better understanding of the sort of missions you have for each.
In WWII, the PT Boat was a light, cheap, fast piece of ocean going recon platform. Yet it became the seeing eyes of the Philippians, the Marshals, and the Solomons islands. They saw, they heard and they reported.
Never underestimate a Sprite.
I am sorry folks, but I am struggling with too many themes, and too many possible stories in the world of Hank. I admit that choosing one (or more) and sticking onto it is probably the greatest challenge I have ever had in my life. We have European intervention (again), We have Creature adoption (for a lot of them), we have the merger of Scientific growth with Magical activity, and I want all of it to be believable. As a engineer actively working with folks at PARC and Bell labs in Chicago during the development of the Cell Phone, and early AI development at PARC, working to capture that Magic of that era in a book that is a Fantasy is a real challenge. I was there for some of it. And I was amazed at how a Paper printing company consistently missed the boat on the development of home computing. And on the development of the Internet in America. The world of forty years ago didn't have any of the elements we take for granted today. And the work of "injecting" the magic into the mainstream of computer development that PARC did boggles the mind. Look it up on Wikipedia some time and get a real shock of how much came from such a small space.
It was magical.
When ever you try to write a story, you have to first decide the context and the environment of the place where the story occurs. Then you have to craft the background, and make it detailed enough to fill all of the facets your readers expect while not getting bogged down and losing them in the details. Unlike some authors, I have to struggle with this, because it's a balance of what you want to get the reader to see and focus on. One of my favorite authors (Contemporary, as in alive today) is Deborah Harkness. Her All Souls Trilogy is a masterpiece of detail. Too much sometimes. But the director and cast that brought that story alive is unmatched in the world today (In my opinion).
Still, reading much of her work you find you spend a lot of time seeing the scenery and not the people.
Other authors are a different take. R. A. Heinlein is probably the best example of a First Person Author of the last century. His characters come alive. The likes of Michael Connelly and Matthew Scudder do character development in amazing style, but you do loose something sometimes in things that they forget to present. In Science Fiction, one of my favorites is James Haddock. And who can ignore Kim Harrison? And from SOL we have Jay Cantrell (an amazing author) and Rollie Lawson and Colt 45 and DA Porter. And of course the man I am doing the follow on to, Reluctant Sir.
All of these people are amazing wordsmiths. And I have followed them since 2001. This place is a Heck of a place to read for free. And there are good people here. And they work hard.
But readers here are the entire gamut of good to sniping ankle biters. I have to smile a relate to the simple fact that this is a Free to Read Space and some people don't appreciate the work that goes into writing. They want to make themselves larger by making the effort of the author smaller.
It would be nice if they could Write something that We authors could look at and provide our own Critique. But they don't. It's a sad case where the Art is detracted by the Critics who themselves could not pick up a single brush to stoke a single line in the context of the painting that the author tries to project.
I have read the VERY LOOSE rules about this board and I have tried to follow them carefully. One of them is the issue of Inflamed speech. Such as political speech. Rather than waste time or energy with a response, I simply delete.
Enough said.
After listening to all of the pundits, and comparing what my work is to others here, I decided to take some time and go back over 201 and 301 and make the corrections that I can see myself. Things that I should have had done before I posted this story.
I don't expect to get everything. There are too many sharp knives (Sorry readers) here to let me ever think I will get all of the errors caught up.
But I do think I can manage to clean up my act here a bit. I"m sorry if It disturbs the two or three readers here who actually like my stories.