Status: Open
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Looking for a place to get a personal review for your story? Well, step in.
A workshop initiative by @TheSavantGirls since 2020
cover credits: @devianmisfit
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Warning labels: The book was deleted once by someone who has beef again...
Aletheia Halcyon, an intelligent and fearless fourteen year old girl lives in the realm of Annora, a land of magic and sorcery. Her desire is to figure out the truth behind her unknown mysterious past. She is made the princess, and heir to the throne, but she doesn't want that life. She starts seeing visions about prophecies and war. She becomes a female leader of the warriors of Annora and she goes to battle against the evil Nyxalderians. Then along the way she figures out she's a Selenian, a prophetess with powers, said to be a messenger of the gods. She allies with Arawn of Annora who is a Selenian who can control darkness and Evander of the land of Medeastora who can manipulate illusion. Together they must unite the nations, find the truth about their pasts, uncover the dark secrets of a cursed enchanted weapon, and find what caused the Selenians to be lost and forgotten millennia ago.
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Disclaimer: While I was reading your book with my best effort to stay unbiased, I might not catch your intended style for your characters, storyline, or purposes. By the end of the day, you control its narrative. I was just passing through, exploring around, and giving a deduction.
Overall review: A unique title name and an amazing cover, props to the designer, though the font could use more work. Put a border around those white letters so it's easier to read. I would suggest that the font has a classic feel. Although the blurb is direct and clear, all except the last sentence are told as if it's a news report.
First of all, I was thoroughly invested in what's happening in chapter 4 and how the story progresses. The plot has something of a twist, plenty of potential, and I like it. There weren't much of infodumps and I appreciate the attempts of expositions through dialogues instead.
However, there's a lot to take in about your writing that I even had to list down below.
1) 1st person POV issues. A lot of writers using this POV make these mistakes when they're not used to it. First small example, "My cheeks are tinted with red." How could she see her cheeks blush? The second big example is excessive first-person pronoun. I like when Alethia is confident (despite being brash), but too many 'I' was used to the point it made her look self-centred. Ironically, I felt her narrative was detached because I don't think we would think I, I, I, I frequently. Be in touch with your MC's feelings and thoughts. Not much space was given for another component, and this brings me to the next point.
2) Lack of depth in descriptions. I'm not a fan of long-winded, unnecessary descriptions unless they serve depth and substance, so I understand why you mostly wrote them short. But 'mysteriously', 'intelligently', and those alike weren't good descriptions while 'softly' and 'sweetly' can be good. Learn to balance their frequency because there's little emotion in this story from too many adverbs and very few intense facial expressions, body sensations, etc. Also, vary your sentences' length more because many flows were abrupt with short stops. An example, "The man uses his sword and stabs it straight into the king's chest. The king screams in agony and his men stare in bewilderment. The king falls to the ground. Then lays motionless as his assassin rides away." It could be like this, "The man uses his sword, and he stabs swiftly and straight into the king's chest. The king lets out a bone-chilling scream, in agony as his bewildered men stare at the freak tragedy. He then falls to the ground and lays motionless while his assassin rides away without remorse." A certain depth was only felt during chap 3 and onwards.
3) With that, I couldn't connect to any characters. I wanted to with the prince, but their romance felt short and quick due to the reason above. The pacing was fast.
4) Errors. A few times, you switched Everest with Evander in chap 2. If you truly intended that it's Evander, there was no introduction of him. "This can only end badly. Remember contestants..." There was no quotation mark to separate her inner monologue and the announcer's dialogue. I found an action beat as a dialogue tag. A stray quotation mark and missing commas. Please re-check the book again. No misspellings as far as I noticed.
5) You used plenty of adverbs since every spoken dialogue had tags or action beats, which I assumed you didn't want to lengthen their descriptions. Actually, not every dialogue has to have tags and beats. They can be just dialogues when only two characters are talking. The dialogues themselves should've shown enough feelings of the characters, so don't worry about it. For example, "I certainly don't give a crap about what the hell you have to say," I say angrily." No need for the tag and 'angrily'. We knew who was talking and the words already showed anger.
Again, this story has big potential and the story is interesting! But I suggest reading 1st person POV books first. Definitely not books from this platform since we are all amateurs here, but traditionally published books. They helped me shape my 1st person POV writing and they would help yours.
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