The Ragwitch - Beginning

A few days ago I started editing The Ragwitch by Garth Nix, who I almost typed as "Darth Nix" by accident.

Page 1: I'm already nervous. The first line is: "Come on, Paul!" shrieked Julia as she ran down the dune, the sand sliding away under her bare feet."

Come on Paul is fine, but why waste so many precious first-line words on Julia's bare feet and what they're doing in the sand? I might want to know about this Paul and this Julia. Maybe why there's sand. But you already told me with "dunes" that there's sand. Are you trying to be romantic and child's adventure-ish with this talk of running bare feet? My gut is saying red flag.

The first chapters are very strange and my frown got deeper and deeper. Here's the story so far: These kids find a huge midden--man-made pile of shells by the seashore--and walk around on it, and find a nest with a big black ball of feathers. Julia digs in it to see what she can find. Suddenly, a giant shrieking crow attacks, and her brother Paul fights it off. Julia notices nothing, and in the featherball find a truly evil-looking doll (I get real annoyed real fast at how many times this doll is described as "evil." Soon I will also get annoyed with how many times the doll cackles evilly.) They walk home, and clearly Julia is hypnotized by the evil doll. At home, the parents can't see the doll. Paul checks in on Julia in her room and finds her in a trance, possessed; she keeps saying the doll wants her to go somewhere. Then a witch's voice starts cackling in Paul's mind, and tries to make him march away, and so somehow he breaks from the spell in a panic, and goes to his own room to bed. Which annoyed me, because jeez Paul, your sister's possessed by an evil fricking doll. But, he's a kid. Fine. So he sleeps, and then wakes up at 6:00 in the morning, and then hears...the door close, as Julia leaves the house.

So...the doll waited all night long to take her somewhere? Until 6:00AM? When it was light again? Right when Paul wakes up? I don't buy it. This seems like a case of the author clumsily puppeteering the characters, trying to be convincing until he can find a way to get back to an action scene.

So Paul runs down to the shore after Julia. It turns out she and the doll have fused into a human-sized, repulsive, evil creature. Presumably Julia's spirit/consciousness is trapped inside. The Ragwitch uses magic to paralyze Paul, supposedly for eternity as a curse. She does some magic and disappears. Paul miraculously unfreezes and repeats the spell she just did in order to disappear.

Wakes up lost in the woods. Okay, fine. But then we go on for PAGES AND PAGES with all this "I'm lost" and "oh no my sister's been taken" you know, reviewing the plot to distract us from the useless woods-wandering scene that goes nowhere, and a few backandforths of "I must save her, it's the only thing to do" and "I'm only a meek little boy lost in a strange wood, I can do nothing, woe is me" and then finally I think he falls unconscious.

He wakes up in a hole, tied to a bed. Let me guess--captured by Wookies/other friendly forest magical creature that is totally benevolent but innocently suspicious to an extreme of human wanderers. The only point of this kind of scene is for the author to get warmed up to his own woods/quest setup he's managed to create, and distract us with a false-alarm kidnap or unconscious thing so we feel like we have to be concerned for Paul, but we don't actually.

Surprise--Maydancers. Wookies. (By the way, all the chapters from here on in have two titles--"The Maydancers/The Sea Caves"-- I guess one for Julia and one for Paul, and this bothers me. Just make it 2 chapters.)

We go to Julia's POV and just to confirm: yes, her consciousness is trapped inside the walking doll Ragwitch; yes, Ragwitch is evil; yes, still cackling.

Also, tromping around on some mountains/caves.

Back to Paul. He is freed of course, and stumbles across a nice shepherd who takes him to a town, where they talk to another shepherd. They're planning to take him somewhere mysterious and significant called "Rhysamarn". Paul falls asleep on a sheep and growls evilly, supposedly confirming for the shepherds the need to go to this Rhysamarn place.

Hm. Okay, now I'm a little more interested. Paul somewhat evil, but only when asleep? Something living inside him? Maybe that's why he's so good at resisting the Ragwitch's magic. Huh! Well done, author. Let's see how you do tomorrow.