[The Judge]

Hi Luke

We don't usually like links in Critiques, but I think in the circumstances it's probably best here.

Re the journal:

wandering through the... forest... getting lost and killed -- as written, this means they all were killed!

before we could unload our last remaining wagon -- this implies that they'd arrived there and unloaded other wagons previously and gone back for the last one. Is this what you meant?

Unfortunately, we lost most of our pickaxes fleeing from the twisted witch Esme (as well as one of our party... ) -- as written this means they fled from Esme and from one of their party. You need to invert the sentence so it's something like "Unfortunately, as we were fleeing from the twisted witch, Esme, [commas needed, by the way] we lost most of our pickaxes, as well as one of our party..."

me and Jeorg -- your narrator is quite well-spoken in his/her writing, so this rather jarred. It really ought to be "Jeorg and I".


Re the pictures:

It's a shame you lost the original layout with the border, as I liked that. It gave it a Noggin the Nog feel!

The colours are a bit bright for me, too -- I'd have liked them to look a bit more hand-coloured, rather than computer-generated.

The nearby village suggests that they're not quite as far removed from people as 182 days of travelling through the forest would appear. Unless the villagers play a part, why not change that to Esme's house in a clearing?

I didn't like the flying green creature, either. You have hardly any birds -- couldn't you put in some more -- a big eagle or something?

All good stuff, though. Good luck when you send it off.