Reverie Reviews

review #9.S3 Prince of Dawn

Title

Author: jachinthebox
Reviewer: LadyInLostYearn

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SYNOPSIS

ON THE DAY OF RECKONING, THE REBELLION WILL MAKE ITS MOVE.

To achieve immortality, King Diablo plans on performing a ritual that will sacrifice every soul in the Capital. Decan Lancaster, his own son who is unable to perform the magic of jynx, takes up arms and starts a rebellion to stop him. Decan may have been at a disadvantage, but he perseveres and manages to stop his father's ritual and save the city. However, King Diablo lays waste to the rebellion and, in a fit of rage, brands Decan as a traitor and executes him.

But in a twist of fate, Decan is reincarnated 112 years later as a baby boy named Ilias Payne. As time passes, the lines between Decan's past and Ilias's present become blurred.

Will our reincarnated hero make the most out of his second chance at a normal life? Or will he choose to embroil himself in yet another growing conspiracy, this time one that concerns the fate of the world?

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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:

Nice cover and title, but there's no hook to capture potential readers if they scroll down the wattpad page. The blurb is clear and informative, though it seems like another common fantasy story. In the second paragraph, you could add the hint where Decan still remembers his past life since it's breaking the usual notion that a person forgets their past life after reincarnation. It can intrigue the readers.

Grammar-wise, there's no problem as far as I noticed, except where you made two mistakes with an action beat as a tag in chap 1.1: '"Good," I ruffled her hair', and a missing comma in chap 1.2: '"Bury them" Salazar ordered.' I really like how you didn't weave so many flowery words into this story—a fantasy story no less—and tried to make it concise. But it worked... half of the time, creating an unvarying tone mostly.

One of the reasons is the severe lack of descriptions of body expressions, mannerisms, and sensations. This caused the characters to be formless, talking ghosts and only took shape whenever actions were involved. It didn't help when little to no appearances were portrayed. An example, 'I was about to scream at Salazar, but when I turned to face him, he seemed as if he was having a harder time trying to keep it together.' Should've emphasised how deeply affected they both were. 'Seemed as if having a hard time' didn't fully capture the intensity and depth of one's character. Unfortunately, this included 1st-person POVs. I felt nothing for these characters except Valentine and Salazar one time during his POV. His thoughts and hidden turmoil made him somewhat alive among his inner monologues of explaining what's going on. Decan was too but not enough. There were a lot of events in the plot, it left little development for characters. Their dialogues alone weren't sufficient, so elaborate more on three things I mentioned in the beginning, like a stinging pain, the brow scrunches up, lips curl downward, a dull ache, a soft smile, the forehead crinkles, the eyes twitch, the feet shuffle side to side (to show hesitance), a swing of a punch, anything that makes them human and grounded. I peeked into later chapters, and Ilias seemed livelier. The surrounding characters too. I'm unsure why the chapters before didn't follow this.

Another reason is sceneries. Although they were described in a clear sense, it's too literal. I didn't feel any fantastical about them in a world of magic. Write something symbolic, oddities, or non-literal in between.

I noticed the tone shifted when this came in. "...as blood squirted out of his head. Half his brain was gone as the other half must've stuck itself onto the rock that tumbled into the water below. His eyes rolled back..." Dynamic, since it's out of the ordinary and was fully described. This kind of instance was found in certain parts of the story, but not much.

Big texts of dialogue and long exchanges between characters often appeared, and it made me forget who's talking about what. You break them up once in a while with more action beats and dialogue tags. Some brief exchanges should too. Example from chapter 1.3, where Decan asked the remaining soldiers. "We do." That alone didn't feel enough. "We do," the men chorused. Another example from the same chap, "D-do you really mean it?" Could've added this or something along the lines: One of the men almost moved forward but remained lingered. "D-do you really mean it?"

I assume you didn't want to drag out its chapters longer, hence asking me to review its pacing. The thing is, you didn't wanna infodump the worldbuilding, so you sprinkled it in one at a time as we readers read along the way. But with this genre, it's difficult to do because you have these high-ranking people's names, the names of made-up places, the magic system that wasn't clear cut, and high stakes all in one. The pacing was good, you pulled it off. Character depth was the cost. To re-balance this, it's okay to write more chapters for character development and cut down the made-up names and places that aren't vital to the story. By then, the pacing is still good. Balance concise and flowery words, so it won't sound too robotic or too pretty yet hollow. Other than that, the plot so far was pretty neat and intriguing when Decan remembered who he was.