Hi everyone! I've been watching the feedback build for
The Feast and wanted to address some interesting things one reviewer mentioned.
She left this review (I'll quote her and leave my comments in between):
"Make an interesting TV series."
Thank you! I can see that, too. Hey maybe someday...
"I can't believe this author has no grammar checker for a short story! Use it! To figure out if you need to say "Riley and I" or "Riley and Me" just delete the "Riley and" part of the sentence. Would you say "She smiled at I" or "She smiled at me?" It's a no-brainer, especially since every word-processing program on the planet has a grammar-checker. You have to manually modify the program to say "I want to sound stupid." The uneducated phrasing took away from the story."
I tried to write in a way that let the conversation flow from Elira's head. She hasn't had proper schooling, just conversations with her Mom, so because I was writing in first person, I wanted it to be imperfect. However, it's been the only complaint people have mentioned, so I am going to fix it so that it doesn't cause some readers to stumble.
"Aside from that, my first reaction was disbelief. Not that I don't think humans would eat other humans for food -- I do. But humans are incredibly expensive to raise compared to rats, dogs, pigs, etc. Gestation is too long, and time to market is too long (even for veal). The story does say that food animals got sick from eating tainted grain, but there are plenty of wild critters that would have been raised instead. The auction makes sense, but it would be like the Hunger Games or The Lottery. And why bother with filling the teeth of your lunch meat?"
The government was already raising disease-free crops and animal meats, but they didn't like that they were left out of a black market that was lucrative. Consider human meat the "filet mignon" of the steak world. It's something more expensive. You'll find out a little more in book two and three about why the human population is still eating human flesh.
As for the teeth - the human herd is well cared for - they have to be able to eat - but with Elira, remember she's on a platform as the "face" of the herd - so they take extra care of her.
"There's the question of language. Supposedly, the humans are told not to use language, so subsequent-generation humans would not speak. But we know better from parrots, cats, dogs and horses -- animals try to emulate sounds in order to communicate. A more realistic option would be to remove their toungues at a young age, and pickle them for sale."
I love the idea of the pickled tongues! How gruesome and wonderful would that have been? But it would be hard for the characters to communicate in my story. Plus, the Hunger Games had the tongues cut out so that might be too similar. I do have a use for tongues later though.
"Intriguing, but too much is out of sync to make sense. I didn't enjoy the grammatically incorrect writing at all, though I liked the fact that the girl in the story has little problem with accepting that she's meat."
I'm glad the reviewer enjoyed the fact that she doesn't have a problem accepting her fate. I wanted people to "get that." It makes sense when it's all you've ever known.
"A suggestion: Maybe read first-hand accounts of concentration/death camp survivors. See what their mental attitude was, especially if they were children or observed them. Kids might not be able to compare a life they don't know to the life they do. I wonder if PETA would object to humans being raised for food, or if they exist in this future. I bet they would support it; perhaps they would have been in charge of the original humans-for-food plan (in conjunction with Tyson and ADM, perhaps)."
On the first part - exactly. On the second re: PETA - that is answered in upcoming books.
Love getting inside the minds of the readers! How fun :)
Tiff
