Whisper of Blade (T)

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Whisper of Blade written by MiyaHikari

Whisper of Blade written by MiyaHikari

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i. COVER & TITLE

Although I love your cover, at first glance, it does come off a little dark. That's a part of the fantasy vibe you have going, of course, but it was just a tad difficult to make out the subtitle even when I enlarged it. It looks professional and beautiful, but there is potential to lighten it up just for ease of reading.

'Whisper of Blade' is a pretty unique title, and I like the ominous nature behind it. I get the feeling it has a decent significance that will come into play even from reading the blurb. However, with that being said, the term 'Whisper of Blade' is a little odd grammatically. Perhaps that makes more sense for the meaning that you've put behind it, but in my mind, I think 'The Whisper of the Blade' flows better? I'm not entirely sure, but I do get a little confusion over what the title is really trying to tell us. But with that in mind, 'The Whisper of the Blade' sounds a lot like every other fantasy SJM book with so many extra 'the's and 'of's. So maybe just 'Whisper of the Blade'? I think that would be the best recommendation I have. Both your cover and title present a great initial impression.


ii. BLURB

Your blurb is definitely good, but there's a lot going on in it and it's very long. I think it lacks a little bit of organization. For example, we get the big 'Do you deserve mercy' question, which connects beautifully to the cover and subtitle, but then we also get that run-down of the characters at the end. I think it's better to end with the big subtitle question and leave readers at that. But that brings into question how you tell the readers about the enemy prince and the goddess of justice. My suggestion would be to rewrite the blurb entirely and include those extra two characters somewhere in the overall explanation paragraph. I'd rewrite it to show you what I mean, but I'm not sure how those characters fit into the story yet, so I'm not able to do that at this point.


iii. PROLOGUE

Your prologue has great writing and a captivating story. The only problem is it starts us off right in the middle of confusion. We don't know who these characters are, we don't know entirely what is going on, and more and more information is given to us without explanation. Now, I understand prologues are often supposed to be confusing, but I think the problem is that yours is very long. There is a lot of information that we are processing--which is fine in main story fantasy, but because it's the prologue, the reader has no stability to hold onto yet. We haven't met the main character when she's older, and we haven't been introduced to the world in a situation where conflict isn't already happening. First, I find myself wondering what this fever is, then I'm trying to understand what happened with the fire and if that means Edina has some sort of fire-welding power. Then I'm trying to understand the relationship, what's going on with Minevera's eyes, then what happened with Minerva's mother and brother, what this shadowy thing is, and so on.  Personally, I think your prologue would be less of a problem if it were a published book. If I bought it in a bookstore I wouldn't simply stop reading because I was too confused. I would be discouraged, but I wouldn't throw it away. But on Wattpad, people are more likely to stop reading because of the little things. I recommend shortening the prologue or chopping it up and putting it between chapters. 

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