Astania Reviews

Kae | The Temple Unleashed

TITLE: The Temple Unleashed

AUTHOR: Avid-ReaderOrWriter

GENRE: Fantasy

CHAPTERS I'VE READ: Four (all available chapters at the time of review).

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This review details my opinion. At the end of the day, this is your story, and you know it better than anyone. My opinion is merely that, and it is subjective. I perceived it a certain way and you do not have to agree, since it mostly comes down to my preferences.

Plot

The plot follows a logical flow, and I liked the way it starts out with the temple. I feel the writing style in the prologue shines. However, it feels tonally different from the rest of the story. The prologue is very lyrical, pulling me in, but it doesn't seem to fit with the characters and the more middle grade tone of the following chapters. As well, I think you could start later in the events of the actual plot—with two POV characters to balance, this may be harder, but I feel like it would benefit the story greatly. By the time I'd gotten to the temple, it seemed like it wasn't the focus anymore. And for Kat, I would say it isn't. Her focus is more on what happens to her mother; even with that, though I think it takes a longer route to get there than it should. When she gets the phone call, consider if you can get there (or as close to that hook) as soon as possible. Kat's mother leaves the letter, but she also gets into an accident: both events here could potentially be combined, even, in order to both elicit the reader's interest as soon as you can and create a sense of unease and urgency. Charlie's POVs kind of have the same thing happening, where I'm not really sure what he wants and why his POV is given. By clarifying their motivations and keeping up the tension, the plot might flow a bit easier.

Something that also makes it harder to follow is the dialogue between characters being on the same line as other characters' actions. It's difficult to follow the linear chain of events when I'm not sure who is saying what, and keeping track of it means I often lost my sense of where I was in the plot/action, as I was spending time trying to decode the structure.

You do a great job of giving information about the world slowly, and that's a good pace for this style. As a reader, I learned along with Kat, and I think that's a sensible way to weave in detail without veering into too much information.

Characters

Kat: I think you've done a good job of balancing a relatable character with one that isn't relatable to me specifically but is still fun to follow. Like, I don't relate to her liking math (or being rich, hah) but I can still see that she has passionate interests. That's something you want from a main character. I do think her motivations could be made more clear, and you might be able to strengthen her active-ness in the story by having her make the choice to go on the trip despite what's happening to her mother. Even though it's a school thing, if she already knew about the accident, and chooses to process it later, or go anyway, or focus on her friend... that tells us more about her. And I feel like I do want to know more. Right now, it's great that we know some basic things about her as readers, but bringing forth more of the specifics, where necessary, may be a good idea. Like when she orders a drink or has to find her way to her seat on the plane. What kind of drinks does she like, and why? While going to find where she's sitting, does she stress about sitting next to someone unfamiliar? There are times when the telling over showing sacrifices some smaller (but still significant) character moments. And the smaller beats are where you can really define your main character as fully formed. It doesn't have to be all of the time, as sometimes the little things are not ultimately necessary, but in a novella where specificity can be evocative, you want to try to do so as much as you possibly can.