CC, now that I'm back after grades and a lengthy vacation out of state, I was all set to analyze everything you'd done in the parts since I last posted--only to find that Vicki had said almost everything I wanted to say. So, ditto her comments.
Yes, the plot was wonderful; the characters delightfully in character; the dialog so good that, were I a sociopath like Tempus, I'd kill to be able to write that kind of sharp, witty, humorous dialog. Your balance of introspection and scenic development in the second half of the story was excellent, allowing us enough view inside the main characters to make them utterly real without making the pacing draggy. You also quit summarizing important events and decisions in introspection and let us experience the action with the characters, so it definitely flowed smoothly. You used deep POV deftly so each character's voice was distinct from the others' and so the details in the narrative were entirely ones that the POV character would have noticed. Your story was funny, dramatic, exciting, romantic, and deeply emotional. And finally, you have a wonderful voice, fresh, lively, and appealing.
I am so jealous.
However, as much as I loved IABP, there were a few other places you might want to look at. The scene with Lois, Clark, and Silas in his office dragged a little (the only place I noticed that the pacing was less than excellent). IIRC, it was during one of the multiple distractions or interruptions that kept Silas from finding out that L&C were the original L&C.
A few of Madge's explanations struck me as off. For example, when she said that L&C couldn't be tracked in the present because Utopia wasn't wired for it, I came to a screeching mental halt, trying to imagine how the Utopians had managed to wire every location in the world in all of history. Similarly, in your little rewrite, you had Madge thinking about going back before Tempus was killed and thinking of it as resurrecting the dead. She seemed to think that was a horrible thing, and yet, it was basically the same thing that happened when she and her team went back in time to observe L&C's first meeting. Lois and Clark were dead, so going back before their deaths was resurrecting them--at least as much as going back to an earlier time with Tempus would have been. I realize the Utopians went back to watch rather than change, but I think that's still missing the point Madge needs to make.
Okay, so why did you say I was off-target
here when I said Silas was Clark's current incarnation? After you said I missed the target, I was ready to accept that Hank and Elise were the L&C incarnation of that century--until you had Silas and Petal replay L&C's first conversation in part 18. So, yeah, I missed that Silas was going to be this century's Superman, but that doesn't have anything to do with the current soulmate incarnation, does it?
Finally, I know a lot of people were disappointed that you had a memory reset, but I was delighted. Madge was right; L&C couldn't have functioned knowing how much of the future of the world rested on what they were going to do. Besides, your reset means that this adventure actually happened to "our" L&C. It is, in fact, the reason that the night-time rescue of Prometheus was followed by a daylight return to the Planet. I know it doesn't matter to any FoLC other than me, but thank you, CC.
