Summary of Bone Jack: A Tale of Landlocked Pirates
I’m in the second-draft round of edits for a novel.
It takes place in a massive prairie traveled on with sailing ships. The prairie is called the Razorgrass Sea. It’s impassable, for various reasons, except by sailing ships on wheels, and it’s an immensely profitable areas to have a controlling stake in the area, and so it’s contested over by various civilizations in the world, who are also constantly in conflict with the local population.
The protagonist of the story is Itzal Dantzari. He’s recently graduated from a school that trains orphans to be civil servants of a particular degree of expertise. They’re called Bone Jacks, and they’re remnants of an older order from a more mystical time.
Itzal would like nothing better than to become a librarian. Books sound the ideal thing to occupy him for the rest of his life. The Bone Jacks are an obsolete order, or so the world seems to think, and so he does not feel like devoting to the energy to correcting.
He’s on his way to begin this occupation when he meets an old teacher of his, Maledict Lilywhite. Lilywhite’s been away for several years, for which absence Itzal tries not to feel resentment. They were good friends before.
During their conversation, they’re interrupted by pirates. The pirates knock them out with blow darts covered in neurotoxins.
When they wake up, Itzal and Lilywhite are tied up and being taken as hostages to a dock at the edge of the Razorgrass Sea, for reasons having to do with local politics and Lilywhite’s recent adventures, and Itzal has no taste for knowing about it further.
Lilywhite and Itzal collaborate to escape. After their collaboration, Itzal is on his way to freedom — or as much freedom as one can hope for in a world with gravity. But Lilywhite is still in the captivity of the pirates.
Which leaves Itzal a choice: Does he attempt to rescue his once friend — possibly still friend — and old teacher, or does Itzal become a librarian?
Would anyone like to see some chapters? Offer some feedback?
I’d welcome feedback on this novel. I’m working on second-draft edits, like I said. This is one of the first times I’ve been at a stage to do a serious second-draft rewrite of a novel. I’m a bit lost for my way. I think I’m good at editing, but I know that my skills for editing my own stuff need honing.
p.s. This isn’t a project I’m working on instead of The Wandering Cycle. I’m working on them both.
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