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Benito comments on August 2014 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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I found the opening difficult to follow. I really enjoyed the slow opening of Worm, but when I started Pact, everything moved very quickly and I was confused about what was going on.
I'll read it again, as, given the awesomeness of Worm, it's probably an error in me rather than the writing.
I think Worm is better starting at 3.1 and doing 1-2 as flashbacks.
I read the preview for Pact, and felt like it was promising one thing, then switched in the last few paragraphs to something completely different. Similarly, I was skeptical of Worm until the encounter with Lung (I don't know if I would have made it that far without Eliezer's recommendation, but I am very glad I did).
The information in both intros is valuable, and it sets up the theme--bullies suck, "gaaah why wont this
familyleave me alone?"--but they invest the reader in one storyline, then completely pull the rug out from under them. Howard Taylor would call this 'breaking promises to the reader'.(Which suggests the question: how should a writer initiate a story without too much in medias rais[sic] such that the reader knows what they're getting into before the protagonist, but we don't lose valuable information/etc?)
It is a rule of thumb in writing that many novels (especially those written by relatively inexperienced writers) will feel tighter and better-paced if one lops off the first two or three chapters. I find it interesting that it also applies to Worm.
The opening chapter of a Song of Ice and Fire gives a nice big unforgettable hint that this isn't simply medieval politics in an odd setting.
I got pissed off reading A Game of Thrones because the opening led me to expect an adventure story and I ended up with several hundred pages of politics.
I liked the other books much more because I successfully recalibrated my expectations.