All Comments on '48 Hours on Blue Bayou Pt. 42'

You are a talented and beautiful writer. However, it sadness me how everyone seems to receive a lighter sentence and perceived happiness than our heroin Julie. She has guided and trained the others yet - Niamh seems to have captured everyone's heart in addition to being able to setting her own conditions and terms.

I feel as if I have spent so much time invested in Julie. Feeling anger when I believe she was treated harshly, cheering her on as she guided others and sharing her insights and yet Niamh seems to have stolen the show and seeks to gain everything that Julie wanted. Neither willingly signed up for this life and yet Niamh seems to be slowly gaining what she wants out of life. In all honesty - I feel cheated that have stayed the course and investing in her story to see her byline missing and all her efforts going unnoticed.

I hope you will find a way to bring Julie in to a more prominent role and receiving some of what she desires. Just MHO.

a loyal reader - findingmyway (sorry having difficulty signing into my account)

I've been a bit quiet on the site lately (work has been crazy busy), but upon seeing another chapter of this story I put it as top priority. As always the writing is great, there's some skilled (and well researched) world building, the characters are believable,and everything flows well. I also much appreciated the nicer tone to the chapter, having gotten a little jaded with some of the previous story arcs. Overall a really enjoyable chapter.

But ... I too dislike the removal of Julie from the byline and her sidetracking in the story, especially after her repeated mistreatments. Lets be honest, she got punished in a massively over the top way for thought crime despite being a perfect slave girl, and has never been rewarded for her behaviour, to such an extent that she's being pushed out of her standard story progression.

Now I love Niamh, and think she's a great character I'd love to explore, but she sort of feels like she's been given everything much easier than Julie (and note I disliked how Julie was treated), and if that's the case then Julie needs an even bigger reward to balance it out (which at this point would probably be being declared god-empress of the world if you really wanted things to be fair between the characters). As a reader I'd prefer for Julie and Niamh to go back to getting their own chapters, and the avoidance of the weird 3rd person tone that sometimes occurs (it's not how the story started, and knowing what people like Martin say or do is jarring).

Now the last two paragraphs probably sound pretty negative, and I really don't mean them that way. In fact, I loved this chapter. I had a little annoyance at Master Hari not fighting more for Niahm, and felt that Martin jumped too heavily into the relationship with Niamh too quickly. But, I loved the party and Niamh's begging to Martin for it. I loved that the characters actually got rewarded for their behaviour. I loved that we got an explanation behind what Sally (and Pat, and Anne)'s permanent slavery actually meant. I loved that we got a really good sight into Martin's reasons for having slaves, and why he keeps them in silly jobs that aren't economically feasible (though maybe he could treat them better too :P), even if I'd have preferred that to be a conversation to Julie or Niamh. Heck, I really loved that like with the sailing Niamh chapter, that we finally got to see Martin as something other than this robotic and enigmatic 'master' role.

Overall I loved it, and hope that you can maintain the less depressing tone that you managed to capture so well in this chapter. Keep up the great work :D

5/5 stars

Thank you so much for your kind comments on the story.

As Carole has mentioned in her somewhat cryptic end note, J Spe has been unable to contribute to this Part of our saga.

I did not want to pre-empt anything he might write about his girl, Julie, so I have concentrated on Niamh. I can tell you, though, that there are good things in store for Julie, but you might have to wait a while. We sincerely hope that J will be back for the next part.

We began to use third person as Julie's and Niamh's stories became intertwined, to avoid having each lady tell basically the same story.

Best wishes to all readers. Your author, Taliesin1