Overall comments: Awestruck at your way of writing the prose and your re-imagination of perhaps England's worst, cruelest of courts- The Tudor court.
Cover:
10/10
Honestly speechless because the cover was just that good.
Description:
10/10
No grammar mistakes in the description, it's perfect with how much information it reveals to the reader while, at the same time, it's intriguing enough to make the reader want to open the book.
Basic plot:
10/10
It's an excellent plot. Ever since I've read about King Henry VIII , I've always wanted to somehow teleport myself into the past and kill him. Reading this book, or at least the first few chapters, was like having my dream being written down and recorded.
Of course, the fact that I love Anne of Boleyn is just another character trait I share with your main character. (P.s Katharine Howard is still my no. 1)
Apart from that, it's very interesting that instead of having a king in the mix of those 3 wives at the start, you have just them and their kids working for the throne. I've always believed that queens have the ability to be more rational, and at times infinitely more ruthless, than a king especially when kids are involved. Not to mention Anne of Boleyn is a part of the lgbtq community in a time where lgbtq was most definitely not respected.
So yes. Chef's kiss is in order.
Grammar:
7.5/10
Again, very minor grammar mistakes but even though I've read just 4 chapters overall, I have 19 pictures worth of grammatical mistakes that I found on the first reading of the chapters. However since most of them are in the Prologue, I suppose it was just pre-writing jitters that got to you.
I'd suggest that you either proofread the book yourself or have it done from someone with a sharp eye for such things because it needs rather minute editing. I'm correcting some of the major faults here myself so as to give you an idea to where you are and, in the future, might go wrong. Unfortunately I'm on a deadline or I'd have corrected the rest of it too.
There's a comma missing here and some words that you may/may not add but I think they'd look good. You're supposed to write:
My arrival at the Hampton Court Palace, where the king resided with his queen and the rest of his court, is no different.
So there's a comma encasing the entire "where the king........court" part. That's because those commas are used instead of the traditional parenthesis. It's extra information given for emphasis. It's a Palace, it's obvious that this is where the king resides and if this was where the king resided, it would also be obvious that it's where his queen(s) and the court would reside too. So when you're giving something for emphasis like this, or simply to make a sentence look more impactful, use double commas encasing what you're emphasizing as you would do if you were using a parenthesis instead.
Here, I'd suggest you use this statement instead of this:
"The first is of wonderment; of whether I really am whom they suspectof my being"
Now you don't need to change the entire statement, really. You can choose to or not to use a semi colon. It's just that I'd prefer reading a statement like that in a book like yours. A semi colon, in my opinion, is never really necessary but you use it anyway to add dimension to a statement, a sort of depth. Moreover, the usage of "whether" and the repetition of words like "of" after the semi colon, really give you an air of British sophistication. That's what I feel anyway. Feel free to take or not take my advice on this one.
One thing you must change is the usage of "what" to "whom or who". I feel that that should be how the statement should go because it's a person saying the statement and so whom or who would be more fitting as compared to what.
The main mistake here is the usage of "is"
This is how you can rephrase this instead:
"I eye the gift she has brought, curious as to what it might be"
Feels fair? Take the suggestion if it does.
So these are the kinds of really minor mistakes you've made. Missing commas, incorrect grammar etc.
Phrasing/Tone + Voice + Tense
9/10
One major problem that I've had with your phrasing was the overuse of the phrase, "I daresay". Repetitive usage sounds really awkward once you've done it more than twice in a single chapter. Now if it were meant to be, say a catchphrase of sorts, something that your main character- the assassin, uses all the time, it would've been okay. A funny element at the least. But here, I feel like that's not what it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be menacing and awe-inducing, correct me if I'm wrong.
So instead of using daresay at the end of a statement every time, you can instead maybe use "I bet" or the typical British substitute "I'd reckon" or something fitting but a bit wordy like "It's never to be doubted at" or something along the lines.
Another thing is, I think its Catharine of Aragon, not Katharine of Aragon. So it's a "C" instead of a "K".
Overall score:
46.5/50
It's a good read.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
