Astania Reviews

Azia | A World Of Shadows

TITLE: A World Of Shadows

AUTHOR: pinkcherry104

Review

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that everything in the review represents my opinion on what could make the story stand out more to who I think is your target audience. However, you know your story and your audience best, so no matter what is written here, please stay true to yourself!

Thank you for applying for my review shop! Overall, I can sense a lot of potential in your story, but there are key writing problems in your story that hinder the readability of your story. I believe a good, thorough edit of your prose can help greatly, and I'll try to detail in my review what you can start with.

Description: Your description has great ideas, but it needs some restructuring to make it stand out more. For one, you start your description off by describing the world your story is set in. However, it is way more impactful to start with the characters. You should always prioritize characters over the world, as the characters will be what the readers care about first. So I suggest restructuring your description such that you start with Prince Asher and his troubles. Lead with his unhappiness with his princely obligations, and then follow it up immediately with this new guest giving me new powers.

Original: In the kingdom of Serenadia, a land shrouded in mystery and magic, secrets awaited to be discovered. Prince Asher wandered through the halls of the palace, burdened by the weight of his obligations. When a new guest shows up in the castle and shows him power he never knew he had, he has to decide what do with it.

Suggestion: Prince Asher never wanted to be the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Serenadia. Burdened by the weight of his obligations, he spends his life wandering through the halls of the palace aimlessly. But when he chances upon a mysterious guest up in the castle, he is shown powers he never knew had. Powers he is not sure if he should even wield.

I hope you can see what I did there with the restructuring. I also rephrased some of your sentences to make them more focused on Prince Asher's POV.

In your next paragraph, you talk about another character, Kinsley. I assume that this character must be the second main character, so I suggest restructuring this paragraph to mirror the new first paragraph. This way, readers can clearly see the character arcs of both main characters, and how they juxtapose each other.

Original: Meanwhile, Kinsley, a young woman with a spark of defiance in her eyes, toiled under the watchful gaze of the oppressive government. Her family's secret puts her life at stake and she has to go into hiding.

Suggestion: Kinsley never wanted to be a fugitive in the Kingdom of Serenadia. Born with defiance in her nature, she has always toiled under the watchful gaze of the oppressive government. Unfortunately, her family's secret puts her life at stake, and she has to hide. Even if she has to hide in her enemy's lair.

Again, I hope you can see what I did there with the restructuring. I also added an additional sentence at the end to give the paragraph a stronger ending. The details might not be accurate, so feel free to tweak it as you deem fit.

Finally, the last paragraph of your description is very vague. After giving all the details about Prince Asher and Kinsley, I don't see how their stories come together, and how they relate to this storm brewing over Serenadia. Your description is missing a very important factor: what is the conflict of your story, exactly? 

Because I do not know anything about the conflict of your story, I am unable to give a proper suggestion for your last paragraph. But please add a few more sentences talking about the overall conflict, and how Asher and Kinsley contribute to the solution of the conflict. Don't be afraid to dole out details and potentially spoil your story just a little bit—they will be what pull readers in!

Tags: You only used 15 tags, which is severely underutilizing the tag systems. Tags are an essential way to be noticed by readers, so you should maximize it! I suggest adding more genre tags like #sci-fi (it should work since your story is set in the future), #post-apocalyptic (assuming it is), #romantasy, or #royalromance. You can also add more tags about your story elements like #magic, #darkmagic, #slowburn, #strongfemalecharacter, #betrayal, etc.

Chapter One: Overall, the chapter starts by giving us an introduction to Asher as a character. We see the way he interacts with the castle and the people around him, which tells us a lot about his personality. I'm personally not a fan of his woe-is-me personality, but I know he has the rest of the story to grow, so I'm not too upset about it.

The chapter changes pace when Asher stumbles upon a rebel. While running away, he enters a secret room. The chapter ends with him wanting to leave behind the room and its secrets, which is a decent hook. However, a character finding out a potential secret and then quickly leaving it behind is not that great of a hook. If you can drop an even bigger reveal in the chapter, or have something more drastic happen to Asher, it'll make the hook much better. For example, Asher could skim a few books in the library to see the content and realize it is vastly different from what he was taught. Or maybe Asher could fail to run away from the rebel and get injured badly before managing to escape into the library.

Next, there are a lot of small inconsistencies in the chapter. These aren't plot holes that would ruin your story, but rather, small details that readers may notice and be taken out of the story. For example, when Ivy was whispering about not wanting to be fired, Asher could hear her. It didn't make sense to me that Asher could hear what Ivy was whispering about so clearly, especially when the topic was really something that needed to be whispered about. Instead, maybe Asher could hear a few words like "scared" and "fired" and then ask Ivy if she was worried about being fired.

Another example of what I think is a character inconsistency is the entire section when Asher sees the rebel. The guard is huge while the rebel is small-sized, so I think you were trying to show how awesome the rebel is in going against the guard. That is also what came into my mind the first time I read the scene. However, the way you described the scene makes both the guard and the rebel look incompetent. Like... the guard is just grabbing the rebel's arm, which she easily slips off from soon after. Does he not have any weapons? Is there no better way of holding her down? A guard should be more well-trained than that. On the other hand, you reveal through the dialogue that the rebel has been here three times, showing that she has been caught three times. And all three times the guard did not succeed to capture her. So, the rebel is incompetent at being secretive, and the guard is incompetent at his literal job. The awesome idea of a cool rebel going against a much stronger guard is dissolved by this point. Therefore, I think you should add a lot more descriptions to this scene to make sure the characters—especially the cool rebel—actually do come off as cool and intimidating.

Lastly, there are a few small grammatical errors in your chapter. (1) Your tenses are inconsistent. You use present tense most of the time, but occasionally, you slip into past tense. (2) You have some occasional dialogue tagging errors. For example, you should not add a comma after a dialogue when it is not followed by a dialogue tag. Also, after a person's dialogue, you should not follow it up with another person's thoughts or actions. Instead, it should be a brand new paragraph.

For example:

Original: 

"I have a list of secret passageways in case of an emergency... and just because it's fun," I saw the list one time and three of the passages lead to my room. There were about twenty more to my brother's room, and I don't know how many were to my parents'.

Suggestion: 

"I have a list of secret passageways in case of an emergency... and just because it's fun," Dallas says.

I remember seeing the list one time. There were three passages that led to my room and about twenty more to my brother's room. I don't know how many were to my parents'.

I hope you can see how I corrected the dialogue tag, corrected the tenses, and added a new paragraph for Asher's thoughts.

Anyway, that's the end of your review! I hope these notes are helpful in your future journey of edits. The story has a lot of potential, so definitely polish it up to make it shine! 

Good luck with the rest of your writing journey.

Ending note: As per my rules, please share the review in your message board, tagging me (AziaElga). Thank you!