[ PI ] Entropy Into Chaos - FirstChapter - 2861 words

So this was an interesting piece with a lot of good description - you've clearly built a world here and your characters have a place in it. It's clear you're setting up a political direction for the story, either explicitly or implicitly, and I was personally excited by what's going to happen, but I'm kinda a sucker for characters who have to go through something to learn how to be great leaders ( even if they turn out evil ). 
 
 That being said, the reason why I chose another chapter over yours was that as great as your descriptions were, they tended to tell the reader about the world/characters, and not show them it. A good example of this was the part where you describe the mother's control of her rage, and the voice she used when she was angry. As the reader, I can understand that you're telling us both about the mother as a character, and about the situation developing between her and her son, but you could accomplish this much better without all the description. This is especially true for a first chapter. 
 
 You can just describe a narrow eyed glare, the rising heat of the magic, and the tenseness of the situation / the mother's attitude, rather than delving into the reminiscence of the childhood. As the reader, we can guess that the mother is the person you describe because you show us how someone like that would act in the scenario. Even if we are n't 100 % sure, we're certain enough that we will look for other hints/signs of that character's personality. I'd even say that if the reader is 100 % aware of everything, the plot/narrative/characters lose some of their allure. Remember, we've just met these people, we want to get to know them, just like with real people - as we get to know them, we learn about who they are. 
 
 At any rate - this is sorta a problem that is goes through all of the writing here. There's a lot of good description that tell us a lot, but it's too much or a bit too explicit. I guess I'm saying that the characters become a bit overshadowed as you concentrate on providing exposition, so while we learn a lot about them, we do n't really connect to them, and we do n't really get a sense of the living world that surrounds them. 
 
 On another note, I liked the steam engine idea being heated by the magical heat, which at least answered my question as to why/how they could have a steam engine in an automobile in any way. Also, though this did n't change my vote as it's just a formatting error, but you should have dialogue start as new paragraphs so it's not so blocky and text-centric. It breaks up the writing a bit visually. 
 
 Anyways, I hope this helped. I guess the biggest suggestion I'd offer would be to show not tell - you can find some great guides on the subreddit about that as well as more generally online if you google. Hope this helped, and let me know if you have any questions about it or anything. 

