Think that's bad? One time someone found out I had googled equine erogenous zones. I swear to God it was research for my story.

lol thats funny, you know thats one of those situations you might as well just say "ya its exactly what you think" because no one will believe you no matter what =P

if he is changing to third person perspective then the narrator is describing everything. i thought he mentioned that he was not gonna do first person perspective. if he does third person then there is no voice for each individual character until the dialouge comes into play. if its first person with multiple view points then it sounds like its gonna be a head ache trying to voice each person differently.

Read the First Law books be Joe Ambercrobie if you think third person pov can't give each character their own voice.

My copy showed up yesterday, enjoying it quite a bit so far.

Hoping to get in some real reading time tonight, if the office gods are kind I will get out of work before a horribly late hour lol

well Amazon emailed me again today, telling me my booked shipped and I should have it on on the 1st

Amazon says I should have my paperback copy Oct 3rd, really looking forward to it

Always happy to give my two cents on what you write if you want

I think a well defined set of rules is very important.

It makes it feel more real, more thought out.  Random spell casting without a good system comes off as cheesey to me.  If you want magic to mean something you need to make sure what ever system of magic you use is well defined.

One of they key things to making your own magic system is figuring out what its limitations and costs are.  Once you know what can reasonably be done you can work back and come up with spells that fit within your system.  You dont want magic to become a fail safe to get characters out of every dangerous situation they get in.

Also with a defined system you can make stronger/weaker magic users fit where they belong better.

Molly and Harry are two very different grades of wizard but we would not know that if Jim didnt define it. Instead of just having two magic users that use different spells, we have an understanding of what both are good and bad at, and we get to watch them grow.

So I think the best thing you can do is really flesh out a system that fits your story, then stick to it.  There is nothing I hate more than random magic, but that might just be me.

Ill pick these up this week somtime, they look pretty cool