Alcingeria: Prologue

A prologue to the book Alcingeria.

Alcingeria Volume One

A Novel By Ryan David Henderson

 

PROLOGUE: The year is 1690 In the land of Alcingeria. Alcingeria (pronounced Al-sin-jair-ee-ah) is divided into five provinces, or Provinces, as they’re commonly known. Someone who does not belong to, or has deserted their home Province is called an outsider, or a deserter. Each of the five provinces is approximately the same size, this fact was gathered by the greatest mathematicians in the land, each of the five rulers of the five Provinces requested that they have their land measured, and each Province received relatively the same amount of land, this was done to appease the five rulers. The first Province is called Relin. (Pronounced Re-lin.) The Province of Relin is ruled by Queen Mycta. (Pronounced Mis-ta) She is a great and fair leader, she was elected and put into her position by her subjects. The second Province is called Fel. (Pronounced Fell.) The Province of Fel is ruled by King Bunsen. (Pronounced Bun-sen.) King Bunsen is a good leader, he was elected as king by his subjects, but he is known to have a short temper, and punishes outlaws, criminals and things of the like accordingly, and sometimes a little to excessively. The third Province is called Yutsa. (Pronounced Yoo-t-sa.) Yutsa is ruled by King Desmond. (Pronounced Dez-mond.) King Desmond was elected to be king by his subjects. He is a leader noble to his people, and is very weary of outsiders. He will do what is right, no matter the cost to himself, or others. The fourth Province is called Vulrock. (Pronounced Vul-rock.) Vulrock is ruled by Queen Yuka. (Pronounced Yoo-ka.) Queen Yuka is a tyrant. She uses fear to control her subjects rather than using trust. Queen Yuka is known to be a fearful, malevolent person. The fifth Province is called Delron. (Pronounced Del-rawn.) Delron is ruled by King Lucias. (Pronounced Loo-sh-us.) King Lucias is a tyrant, much like Queen Yuka. King Lucias always gets what he wants, whatever, or whoever that might be.

Author's Note

Please tell me what you think!

Reviews

[C. Rose]

I hope I'm not overstepping, but because the readers need to keep this information at the beginning, it is important to cut out repeated information. The following is your prologue, though I merged repeating information. If the information is more straightforward and concise, then it is more likely the reader will take the time to read the whole thing.

The year is 1690 in the land of Alcingeria. Alcingeria is divided into five factions: Relin, Fell, Yutsa, Vulrok, and Delron. Outsiders and deserters are those without a faction. The greatest mathematicians in the land divided Alcingeria so that each faction received the same amount of land.

Relin is ruled by Queen Mycta. She is a great and fair leader. She was elected by her subjects.

Fel is ruled by King Bunsen. He is a good leader and was elected by his subjects, but he is known to have a short temper. He punishes outlaws, criminals and the like accordingly, though sometimes to excess.

Yutsa is ruled by King Desmond. He was elected by his subjects. He is a leader noble to his people, and is very weary of outsiders. He will do what is right, no matter the cost to himself, or others.

Vulrok is ruled by Queen Yuka. She is a tyrant. She uses fear to control her subjects. Queen Yuka is known to be a malevolent person.

Delron is ruled by King Lucias. He is a tyrant, much like Queen Yuka. King Lucias always gets what he wants, whatever, or whoever that might be.

[C. Rose]

Perhaps this prologue would be better suited as an Appendix. Or perhaps you could keep parts of it like the year the five kingdoms and their rulers and the deserter bit and some of the who's who with tyrant and such. While I like how organized you have this, and I appreciate the pronounciation guide, I believe it would be better placed at the end of the book as reference material.

[Ryan Henderson]

I'm glad you like the way it's set up, but it can't be at the end of the story because it contains information that is really important later on in the story. thanks for the review though :)

[Xavier Lee]

I'm curious about what the story will be. You've certainly revealed the setting. Though I can't help but feel that it lacks something. You repeated lines a lot, I.e "...was elected and put into her position by her subjects." the information is fine, but you didn't have to say it for each leader. In addition, "Each of the five provinces is approximately the same size, this fact was gathered by the greatest mathematicians in the land (Did they need be the greatest?), each of the five rulers of the five factions requested that they have their land measured (It makes sense why, but that probably would've been done anyway, countries often do. So saying that it was requested is redundant), and each faction received relatively the same amount of land (I thought you said they were approximately equal?), this was done to appease the five rulers. (Why did they want it? What do they gain from that information? And again, part of a country's development is measuring the land, it didn't really have to be requested by the rulers as though it wouldn't have happened otherwise.)" Also, Is this actually relevant? Why do we need to know that the lands are relatively (or is it approximately?) the same size?
Overall I think sentence structure and selective information just needs a bit of revision. With those being the only faults, I say excellent work. I like your character names, and I can't wait to see how they behave and develop. Your setting is interesting and I echo KeithKVH when I say that there is obviously going to be a lot of world building and I love that in writing.
A prologue is supposed to introduce either the world or the main plot or conflict, you went with the world so I repeat myself, excellent work.

[Ryan Henderson]

Thank you for the review, I will change the 'relatively' to 'approximately' that you for pointing that out! I will be going back and doing an editing run in a little while, and like I said for your last review, I have taken down the revision suggestions that you have sent me and I will implement them when I go back and edit. I will definitely be editing my sentence structure, thank you for pointing that out!

[Ryan Henderson]

Oh, and as for your questions:

where I said that the politics were elected into their positions, I did that to give the reader some kind of incentive on what type of a ruler the person is, as I did not want to write five separate chapters for the rulers. Since the main characters will journey to all of the provinces eventually throughout the story, I think that it is valuable information to have before hand, so that you can predict how the characters' experience in the province will be.

The rulers wanted equal amounts of land so that no one ruler had more land than another, as this would displease the rulers. (You may think differently about this, which is fine. This was just the reason I had for writing this information.)

`Again, thank you for the awesome review, it helps a lot! :D

[Xavier Lee]

I understand why the rulers did it, but country's always measure their borders for mapmaking, it's part of the process and so redundant to mention. You could have simply stated that the borders of each province are exactly equal and omit the fact that the rulers made sure of it.
I suppose you could have said "To appease each ruler, map makers were sure to make each province approximately equal in size." Poor grammar in that, but it's only a suggestion. As with the information on how the rulers were elected, the information of the provinces being equal is fine and I'm certain that it's important. All I'm saying is that you spent a little too much time explaining it.

[Ryan Henderson]

Okay, fair enough. Thank you for the input :)

[Xavier Lee]

Thank you for taking it.

[KeithKVH]

It has me interested in what it's going to be about. It's a bit different from a usual prologue though, I think what it lacks is some foreshadowing of your story. From reading this I'm clear on the place and the characters that were introduced, but the state of things is not really clear. I think generally you can get an idea about whether there's some kind of conflict going on or fast approaching, or cast some hint to there being some special person or hero. If one of the characters mentioned was supposed to fit that, it wasn't very clear.

It's still informative, I get the sense there will be a lot of detail and world building, so I look forward to more. I find the names interesting, I know people have been commenting about Luscious, and I must admit my mind immediately jumps to the name Lucias. When I read about Queen Yuka, my mind immediately jumped to a character from something called the Touhou Project, Yuuka Kazami. She's one of my favorite of that series, and while I'm sure it wasn't intentional, Queen Yuka's personality just makes me think of her all the more.

[Ryan Henderson]

thank you for the review! I have never heard of the Touhou Project, so I guess it was coincidental!

[David Ung]

Well, this is amazing. One thing though, luscious is not pronounce like that. Other that that I think this is really interesting and I want more.

[Ryan Henderson]

Thank you for the review!

[Hanif Centre]

Just a couple of things,
First off is that this is very informative to anyone who plans to read more of your book/story, the only downside is, this is not a prologue. Rather than an introduction to the story this reads much closer to something like a information sheet for the world's politics.
Another thing is that the name King Luscious should probably be changed. I understand that you have it pronounced here as Loo-sh-is, however the actual word luscious is read entirely different, which may prove to be confusing. A good alternative would be something along the lines of Lucias (Lu-sh-us), which is an actual name.
Other than that though, this piece has already introduced quite a few characters and themes that your story can use beneficially, just don't introduce too many too fast, or people will start forgetting names and who people are.

[Ryan Henderson]

Thank you for the review! I will be sure to change King Lucious's name!