will b reading

OH! This sounds awesome! I'll get to it as SOON as i have the chance =D

And here I was ready to agree with Jay, and then he used the adverb sword *without qualifiers*.  Certainly, using the adverbial thesaurus with every or most speech detracts.  But the over eight year old meme of 'don't be a Tom Swiftly' strikes me as a pet peeve of certain editors (which is certainly important to consider) more than a work-killing flaw.

In particular, building up a character or characters through their actions just needs you to set a few defining characteristics for the reader.  The reader's understanding of that character, especially through that first use of given traits, is then carried over.  You seem to have a basic understanding of this, as evidenced by the name-speaking-verb free sections (A lot of Chapter 1, Tarathon and Eriniel in Chapter 2).  During the hectic council meeting, it feels like the adverbs do work for the scene.

Later in the same chapter though some of the uneccesaries crop up: 'exclaimed' is understood from the exclamation point and 'requested' by the question mark, for example.  Similarly, Diedra is unlikely to blurt all that...the "I'll go" would serve as right before a 'blurted Deidra,' and then continuing her dialogue.  Certain words are borderline between 'said' and the infamous adjectives...'asked' and 'replied' I'm personally ambivalent about and often get mentally bypassed like 'said', but I feel they work as you use them.

One of the things I consider to be working for you is that you are drawing a reader in and pulling them along by not including the wall-of-background-explanation-text.  When you do pull out a bit of background like in the prologue, it takes the form of a character thought, serving both to build a character or characters and slip a bit of information in.  This also answers reader questions, like: "Why is timid minion trembling?"

I'm really looking forward to the rest of what you have coming!

I like the story you have here. It is believable and you are weaving a world I can step into. I like that. I want to be pulled to another time and/or reality when I am reading stories like this. You have done a great job with this. The essence of the story and the character development are very good.

There are only a few items I think you need to improve on the rewrite. One is paring down the sentence structure. You have a lot of adverbs that slow down the pace of the story. They are not needed and actually detract from your story rather than adding to it. Some people do this to increase their word count. It is rarely a good idea.

The other big one (for me) is your use of adverbial dialog modifiers. These typically mean that you doubt you have explained your character's emotions, situation or personality sufficiently enough for the reader to "get it".

I really like the story but the adverbs are taking away some of the joy. I am just a guy who loves to read and write. I would suggest you search out other input for all the adverbs and adverbial phrases. Stephen King's book "On Writing" is a great resource. Here is a website I saved a while back that will give you more of the dialog attributions I mentioned:
http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/said.shtml

Really like the sound of this book. Definately going to read what you have so far

Sarah

I personally like the word council. But it's entirely up to you. Try looking through a thesaurus for synonyms.

That's what they did with Star Wars, it turned out okay. but it was more of the story behind the story.