imo you need to work on tone, atm it's like you are reading a story aloud not thinking about how it will be READ
tense is also an issue
The Church tell all children how to open prayers and how to respond if the Provider was to talk to them but that was years ago and no one actually believed their god would personally talk to them.
& also you have kinda said the same thing twice there and it's overstating the obvious.
“Yes, my Lord. That is the reason why we hadn’t gone into the city today.”
awkward and ungrammatical
also how is he speaking inside his own head? can't this speaker just pick up on his thoughts? does Generic Farmboy need his own dialogue or can you just describe how he feels while dropping in a bit of exposition?
if he is the only one who can hear the voice and no one actually expects to hear it when they pray, how do his parents immediately know what's happening, asking "What did he want?", and that he's not for example having a seizure? You give a partial response to this question with "He needs me.." sentence from your main character but they seem a bit two-dimensional and blase, you are rushing too fast.
you are expanding sentences unnecessarily in some places & going too informal in others as well as switching too much between the two. (eg That is/That's/It is/it's) Stick to one tone or it's jarring.
They will never be want for food or shelter again.
Braiden swiftly stood out of his chair
Wut?
We’ll just throw the sheep back on the oven to warm it up a little when we get back.
You don't throw anything on an oven. You can throw something
in an oven, but if these are peasants in a medieval setting an oven will not be a common household appliance. I would like to see you fit a whole sheep in an oven anyway...
Without gas or electricity a large brick or stone oven is the only method of oven baking available, apart from the small clay ovens which are not typically used indoors. Historically, bakers or well off people with grand houses and a cook were the only ones who had them, unless you are setting your book in the mid-18th century equivalent or later. To make bread in a brick oven you need a chimney, lots of fuel, a large fireplace, building materials and someone to watch the bread, so out of reach of the ordinary household. Everyone else bought bread from the baker, or used a communal oven, and spit roasted or stewed their meat over a fire. It is also not the norm for everyone to live at home and do their own cooking. Medieval pre-technological society ran on armies of servants. Think 12 servants for every Lord Stuckinthemud. Yet you have a farmer living a few minutes' walk from the centre of town and a hunter living in the city centre. Where do all these servants live? How on earth did he manage to bring a whole elk home let alone cook it?? If the cast iron stove has been invented and ordinary people can afford one, then your whole society is contemporaneous with the age of steam, so I hope your assassin leaves the city by rail.
Also it's called sheep until it dies, thereafter it becomes mutton or lamb.
"Throwing" implies disrespect/a lack of care, things which a poor hungry farm family will not be in a position to do. If times are so hard, how come they can afford meat? Sheep require grazing land so unless they have enough land to let some lie fallow or some spare cash this is a bit odd. I really can't remember how crop rotation or medieval farming works atm, but wouldn't sheep normally be raised for wool and only slaughtered when old? Your poor people do tend to eat a lot of meat. Pigs are historically the only animal routinely slaughtered for eating (rather than when they are too old to be useful) - cheaper to raise and need far less land.
He's an only child? Boring, typical hero fodder. He should be the oldest of about 12, seven living. (Or thereabouts). Anything else makes him 'special'. Especially if he only has sisters so he is the One True Lad by default. (See also Mat Cauthon & Perrin Aybara).
You mention farmers crowding together. Why? The most typical urban growth involves farms becoming part of villages and gradually linking with urban sprawl extending from a city outwards. You say this isn't a large city so why so many people?
There is a certain point at which small-scale farming becomes unsustainable, historically farmers did not own their land but paid their rent in food, so needed to grow more than they needed to support themselves. Who owns the land? How come a guy can just rock up and start farming on the land your family have been farming for generations? You have town guards so presumably there is some rule of law. If these people are fleeing from something, either say so now or imply that something is wrong.
A Will of any god showing up in public would have attracted a large amount of people from nearby villages and even the bordering cities. The fact that the Will of Shadow was making a literal parade of his travel through the city only drew even larger crowds.
Awkward exposition, it sounds like a footnote - which only Terry Pratchett is allowed to do imo. Why do all the gods' representatives have the same title of Will? I keep reading it as Willy and giggling. Why is the god called Shadow? It may superficially sound dark and sinister but in a 'meh kinda spooky way' rather than something out-and-out feral like the RL examples of Mithras and Ereshkigal. It also confuses the reader as Shadow is of course an actual word you may wish to use in future chapters.
Don't say 'literal parade'. He's parading, it's already literal. Your neutral narrator is going sarcastic, not cool or funny. If you are going to mock your bad guy have your hero do it.
"Crowds had gathered from as far afield as Nerdville to the west, and even Geek Bay, a full day's walk away, to see Evil Guy look spooky and weird in person." or "Two-dimensional hero could see many people wearing guild badges from the sailing towns of Boatland and Yachtville. Like him, they had undertaken a long journey up the coast to see Evil Guy in the flesh." are more natural examples. Although shittily written but fuck it I have been up all night.
Things like "Man!", "couple minutes" (as opposed to "Oh no!"/"couple of minutes") etc are modern American English and I would strongly consider not using them as it can seem out of place in fantasy settings. Tolkien, for example, drew from the sentence structure of Icelandic sagas and Anglo-Saxon language, which does make LotR etc feel ancient. I appreciate that is not quite what you are going for here. However your reader will be imagining your characters speaking the dialogue you give them, and if it does not fit the way they imagine the character, then it will not be an enjoyable read. You should look into archaic speech and see if it fits your world. As it's pretty religious that could work. The Book of Common Prayer and various guides to it have a lot of phrases that are still used today which you could refer to. As they are in common use, your readers will understand but the words will have more resonance and meaning.
Why are they saying they're selling old bows to pay off new ones? A hunting bow would usually be handmade if you needed one regularly, it is a skilled trade but not on the level of a clockmaker/gunsmith to justify exorbitant costs and demand. Something like a crossbow would be too pricey though and may not fit your time period/technological stage. Why would a family using hunting bows need better ones when the old ones are clearly fine for both hunting and assassination? Is the guard humouring them by accepting this explanation for having bows, when all the tradespeople, being self-employed, are presumably watching the parade? Is there a reason they wouldn't want to say they are watching the evil bad guy pass by like everyone else? Does the guard sympathise? Explain.
In RL medieval olde times people would not have "paid off" anything as biblically, quranically etc, loans with (and even sometimes without) interest were considered usury, a sin. Since this seems heavily religiously themed this is something for you to consider.
Meatloaf?! Unless your book is set in 1962, rethink this. I appreciate you are looking for a folksy homemade type of food but there is a reason all the characters in fantasy novels eat stew, because you need an oven for meatloaf and again, ovens are not usually household appliances in a low-technology fantasy world. The chimney only started to appear in the 12th century in the real world and was not common until the 17th century. (Although the Romans had them for bakeries, so you could get away with one in a large manor house but certainly not in ordinary homes). You could maybe get away with scrapple if your peasant family can afford a flying pan. Or just some nice sheep's cheese.
Where are they getting pepper from and how come it's affordable at all? Black and chilli peppers only grow in tropical or very warm climates. If their road into town was "weedy" I presume they are not on a major trade route, so since they live somewhere you can find an elk to roast, wtf is going on...?
think stew.
Each armored man held a halberd in one hand and a shield in the other and a golden flame was engraved into each of their chests.
That must have hurt. Think carefully about the words you use - FFXI is a great resource for this tbh - haubergeon, hauberk, brigandine, etc etc. Think of how it will look and google till you find the appropriate item, make sure it fits your setting for example if they can't make good steel then they won't be wearing an item traditionally made from it. Do you mean gilded or embossed flames, unless the armour is made of gold and it's etched in?
The Will of Shadow walked a slow pace
at a slow pace (boring), or paced slowly towards (better).
The banner holders wore black robes similar to the Will’s yet managed to look so much more plain, dull, and unimportant looking.
Managing to look unimportant implies there is a conscious effort on their part not to look important. Emphasise the spookiness of the bad guy, & how it makes them look, eg "yet did not have the aura of power and malice that surrounded him" or similar. While I get that you are heavily hinting at what will happen in a few pages, it's not subtle enough so don't bother unless you rephrase it, mentioning them will be enough to draw them to the reader's attention without going on about it.
The arrows tumbled down as the black blur quickly closed the gap between the Will and Braiden, becoming an unfocused human shape as it shoved its way through the crowd and jumped onto a lamppost, springing onto the rooftop neighboring the house Braiden and his father was on.
“Run!” Braiden’s father shouted as he pushed Braiden back. The black, vaguely human shape leapt onto their rooftop as Braiden stumbled backward just a step away from falling off the roof and his father pulled free his hunting knife.
You have used the phrases "black blur", "unfocused human shape" and "black, vaguely human shape" in rapid succession in this paragraph. They are too similar so it's repetitive. Switch it up. The assailant, or the figure hurtling towards them, or the streak of movement or something. Also, too many Braidens.
a trail of scarlet blood in the air and a gash in his father’s neck.
yes, blood is usually red. unless this is meant to indicate it's human and not a specific green-blooded creature that you've already mentioned (which you haven't), you don't need the scarlet. mentioning the trail and the gash separately implies they are unrelated, try "a trail of blood in the air from the gash in his father's neck". However the bigger problem is that you are writing in the
passive voice, which is hindering the sense of fast paced action you are trying to impart to your reader. look it up.
just before the knife broke through the bones in his chest and pierced his heart
Those are the ribs and the sternum, there is a reason they crack them open in open heart surgery, a knife is not going to go through the sternum and inflict a fatal wound on the heart, it would need to avoid bone and thick layers of muscle. I would suggest doing a bit more research. if this is such a great assassin that it's killing the guy with one stab of a knife it will be efficient enough to go for the right spot.
See also:
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/arch...p/t-91105.html
Why do the Twin Fangs also go by the Blades of Shadow? It's confusing. You also used the word assassins twice in 2 consecutive sentences. You write better in this Marcus part, but you tend to extend your sentences too much. You're using too many commas, instead of breaking things up and cutting out excess.
In his right hand he held his bronze colored, double edged dirk and in his left was the black hilted, broad, silver-bladed knife.
Way TMI. "His right hand held a bronze dirk and his left a wicked-looking cleaver" for example. Why would he be using silver and bronze though? They don't hold a very good edge. If they are purely ceremonial, why make a big deal out of what kind of blades they have? If you are only referring to the colour, don't use words that are also used for metals.
In general you spend too many words describing clothes and armour all at once, too many adjectives.
they didn’t fear dying, they didn’t even feel like it is their duty.
Feel like is modern colloquial present tense American English, feel that or feel as though is better. You have changed tense again, stick to the past tense except for dialogue unless you're James Joyce. Go back and check as you write if need be.
The bit with the family and the roasted elk was just like, what. Like a comedy interlude with no comedy. Pacing all wrong unless the little girl was coming with him, which she didn't? You describe every movement they make; no need. The only impression I got was that the guy needed to hide and he made a guy piss himself. Not cool.
However I don't think it is a bad story. No story is a bad story (except Atlas Shrugged, obv).
Why do you feel the need for a generic hero failing at the start as opposed to a weightlifting hallucinating librarian? Irony/humour? Been done to death, as have betrayed assassins and abused women, so if you need to write about them, make sure it's essential to the way you want your story to go rather than rehashing old tropes.
Please use caution if you are a man writing about abused women, btw, and if you need to ask why then you shouldn't try at all.
Do you need violent death to move the story along? If you are having someone get killed "because he is a bad guy" etc it's probably bad planning on your part. Not saying this is the case now, but think about it.
Peter V Brett painted man/desert spear guy is what this reminds me of with the whole mysterious assassin thing, I have a love hate relationship with that book as it is a pretty good fantasy story spoiled by lazy characterisation, writing in an abuse victim who OF COURSE gets with the hero because he is the only one SENSITIVE enough to SHOW HER REAL LOVE hnnnngh, way too much needless sex and violence, and slapdash vocab. Don't go down that road D: The thing that saved that series (slightly) was the warding, it was fantastic. What is your unique 'hook'?
I would strongly suggest you read some Robin Hobb (assassin's apprentice/royal assassin/assassin's quest) if you haven't. You've got (SPOILER SPOILERS SPOILERS) basically everything you said your book was going to have in there, so learn from the best :D