Jan 16, 2026
And this is why I held off on giving my thoughts until after reading this. You're well aware of many of the critiques of the story such as Ran's lack of inclusion in the first half. One notable thing you didn't cover though is the chess.
Chess was primarily the main draw for me towards this novel, so naturally that was going to be the area where my expectations would be at their highest. I'll acknowledge this is mostly on me as while chess is prevalent in the story, it's not the main focus of it. That being said, I do think you need to rework quite a few of the games.
Most of the time, you do leave things up in the air, leaving readers to have to guess as to what moves were played out to reach a certain point in the game. In some of these cases, I was able to find viable lines, but other times, things just didn't make sense. To help with this, I'd recommend documenting the PNGs of the games in a word doc or txt file. Then for writing the games, split the screen between the chess engine and the word doc so it's easy to follow along and know when and what moves are being played.
Another thing I noticed with the games is that they, or at least the ones I could fully follow along, never went over 20 moves with the exception of the Immortal Game reenactment. I totally get why you'd favor this approach, though I'd still recommend having some longer games in the rewrite. I'd also recommend exploring more unorthodox gambits, especially the Frankenstein-Dracula Variation. They don't need to be Bongclouds, but there's plenty of things like the Danish, Latvian, and of course, the Halloween Gambit. I wouldn't say this is essential for the rewrite, but it would definitely be a welcomed edition.
And with that, I think that's everything. Overall, I'd say things are solid with exception to Ran's late introduction and some of the chess games being too vague to follow. Good job on finishing this. Looking forward to the rewrite.
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