Here, Among the Banana Leaves

In the wake of the Castilian conquest of the Philippines, an elderly craftsman is pulled back into the world of war he had hoped to leave behind. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yxn3sCSj2TgeMSYGzVjHzkcRivMaxqvyHNM6vvaQLiU/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yxn3sCSj2TgeMSYGzVjHzkcRivMaxqvyHNM6vvaQLiU/edit?usp=sharing

Had fun with this, hope you enjoy! Hoping to work my way through all of the 3rd round stories, and will certainly return any reads.

(ugh...very embarassed I posted this on the wrong board, and now it's linked...hope my writing is better than my tech skills)

Thank you for your lovely review.

This is quite simply brilliant. I forgot to breathe reading the last four paragraphs, I was so invested in Pira's fate.

In a Euro-centric group, it's great to see another person who ventured into the tropics! (WE HAD BLACKSMITHS TOO GUYS!) 

I think your story overall fits the genre quite well, and your use of Filipino words interspersed with the narrative was great for scene setting. 

My greatest nitpick of this story would be that there seems to be some clunky exposition that could be tightened up a little. I think that's the hardest part of writing hist fic, which definitely lends itself to info-dumps. 

The absolute darling in this story for me is: 

As Calantha says, this was so refreshing. I felt like I was there in the tropics. You really created a world in 3 dimensions. Your descriptions were vivid and concise. All my sense were switched on. I haven't got much to feedback, I love it as it is. Only thing that I found a little confusing, probably because I'm lazy, was the number of names. I forgot who was who! In the same vein, there was a lot of esoteric language that I wasn't sure about, but again that's ignorance... just not sure if it got in the way of the overall effect a bit (only a bit mind you).

Loved 'cleaved from the belly of rich earth' (gorgeous)

No doubt this will score very high. The judges will love it. The very best of luck to you!

This was a wonderfully evocative story, seemingly all wrapped up in one or two conversations. In terms of timing, the whole story isn't more than five or six minutes of chat, but because of the richness of detail you've included, it seems to encompass so much more. 

I loved the description for Pira, I don't think a clearer picture could have been painted of him. You get a real understanding of how much he's seen and how much he's lived and experienced. Like others have commented, I enjoyed the line: It was satisfying to pull dull rock from the belly of earth and form it into something useful and beautiful.

I also liked that the character had real motivation, you gave this backstory of the work he had undertaken, and it made sense why he would not want to return to it. I thought that was really skilfully done.

For me, the only nitpicks would be the perspective hop to Ligaya's perspective when she sets down the drink for Pira. I read through it again to see whether there were any others - I thought there had also been one for the captain but was mistaken - it being the only hop is a little out of place. I also had to read the first paragraph twice as a lot of information is thrown at the reader for background, which is a necessity in a short piece but does make it difficult to parse. 

Overall, real depth of feeling in this piece, and I really hope it does well. 

Criticisms:

I think in a short piece POV changes do feel strange.

For me there were too many foreign words. Im not sure thwy are all necessary to say vs using simpler familiar words like “bench” etc.

This was a great story, and an epic in a thousand words!

Thanks for your comments on my story :)

Great job! Loved the setting in the Philippines - my last story was based there too! Your usage of the dialect really helped paint the picture. I also loved the paragraph starting 'he examined the near perfect blade...'

I personally had no problems with the changes in POV (what changes? it's in third person - doesn't that allow you to explore what each character is thinking? Maybe I don't know enough about writing/reading to spot anything wrong, haha) - so I wouldn't worry too much about that.

All in all, tightly written, held my attention too (I'm not a historical fiction kinda gal normally!)

Best of luck!