Gemstone Reviews [Closed for Catch up]

Review #15-Hayden Mackay and the Forgotten Kingdom

Disclaimer—This author does not accept constructive criticism. So if you value your life, I suggest that you don't say anything other than 'It's the best work I've read in my life!" 

Title: Hayden Mackay and the Forgotten Kingdom

Author: jyothi89

Genre: Fantasy

Rating: G

# of chapters: 20 (ongoing) 

# of chapters I read: 2

Summary/Blurb: 

What if your parents were murdered instead of you? What if you find out your parents had a dark secret and you come to know all about it only after their death. Hayden Mackay was one such person. After his parents death he become aware of the fact that he is master of a gemstone providing him supernatural powers. Also he is not the only one in America. He comes across eleven others who, like him, possess a stone, parents dead, have mysterious powers and above all, they all had connection with The Forgotten Kingdom in the other country, India.

This is a story about the group of twelve, each called by the name Samagraha, who lives in an academy run by a Doctor. He trains them, looks after what's best for them but he has this motto- nothing comes for free. He gives each of them a job in return to live in the academy. Hayden was also given one-the deadliest one and in the process he finds out the truth behind their possessing the stone.

Review: 

Cover:

A big fat nope. This doesn't cut it for me—even I could produce a better cover than this and I'm hopeless with photoshop. You basically just copy pasted the image of the elements and the silhouettes in line with one another to indicate the hero's respective powers and then chose a random (unreadable) font for the title over a, once again, random background color (orange is terrible). The author's name isn't even on it. I suggest that you get yourself a new cover asap because there is a ton of material out there to make this more eye-catching (so many movies about characters with elemental powers these days).

The title also sounds like something out of a cartoon. Like each new episode has the main characters name and the adventure of the day. "Episode 3: Hayden Mackay and The Forgotten Kingdom"/ "Episode 234: Hayden Mackay and The Return of The Angry Grandmother." 

Overall—A steaming pile of 'nope'. 

Blurb:

"What if your parents were murdered instead of you?" You should change your opening line— In every superhero story, it's the parents/guardian that die (Batman: both parents killed by a mugger, Superman: whole damn planet exploded, Spiderman: lost his uncle...) and of course, the future hero survives. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a story!

The next line: "What if your parents had a dark secret and you come to know all about it only after their death. (there should be a question mark instead of a full-stop)" Again, not attention-grabbing. Of course, the parents withheld a life-changing secret from their child...it's always like that. Both of those lines are generic and have been seen a million times—it's not a very good introduction to your blurb. I suggest that you open it with the death of Hayden's parents and his discovery of his supernatural powers (because I also don't see the correlation between his parents 'secret' and him discovering that he's a master of a gemstone).

"He comes across eleven others, who, like him, possess a stone, parents dead [...]" This sentence is way too long, and the information within is redundant. When you said "like him", I already understood that it meant that they also had superpowers, lost their parents, yadda yadda. But in addition to that, I don't particularly like the wording of "he comes across". What does this mean? That he was walking down the street one day and ran into them? In the following paragraph, there is a mention of an academy, where Hayden and the others get trained. Does he meet them there? You need to make this clearer and eliminate this repetition. The name of the group also sounds "Hindu", even though all the characters are American. Is the "Doctor" from India? At least the last sentence is kind of a hook (albeit worded awkwardly)—it makes me want to find out what this "job" is.

Final suggestion: Don't clutter your blurb space with random (un-referenced) comments. It's alright when it's one or two comments, but you have eight—most people won't even read them. (Also, because there are so many of them, it may give people the wrong idea: that the book sucks and you're trying to make up for it with a couple of comments from your friends.)

Overall—The blurb doesn't follow a proper order, the information is a little all over the place. Also, cut down on the advertising. 

Now for the story!

First Impression:

The first paragraph was awkward to read, I found myself having to re-read it to understand what was going on. It's hard to picture the setting because the information you gave me on it wasn't very coherent. I'm thinking that the season is winter, so the trees' branches are bare—how don't they make light filter through? Then the main character suddenly walks into a cave, but then clarifies that he "snuck in". Those are two very different images in my head. What did the guard do the whole time Shourya was sneaking in like that? Twiddling his thumbs? It's like you threw out details without realistically picturing the setting.

The rest of the chapter was hard to understand. I was thrown into a scene without ANY backstory whatsoever (something tells me that this is supposed to be some sort of prologue). I had no idea why they all met up in a cave, what's the importance of the location, etc. Then, I was gunned down with random characters, one after the other, without being given a reason as to their appearance, nor as to their role in the story. They were all just names to me, not even faces.

The dialogue was also a little strange because they kept referring to the information ambiguously—obviously they know what they're talking about, but me, the reader, has no idea what the hell is going on. It's also unclear what the relationship dynamics between them are—I'm assuming there is some sort of social hierarchy, with Shashi being the leader.

Your aim here was to shroud the scene with mystery, or at least, that's what you attempted to do. But instead of acting like a hook, to spur me to read on, for me, it did the opposite. I suggest that you include enough information to place the story (which actually seems to be very interesting, from the bits and pieces I managed to understand) into context, without giving away any information you want revealed later on in the story.

Overall—Needs more info to place the action into context.

Writing Style:

A lot of grammatical errors in the first chapter, but it's not as bad in the second chapter. In fact, the second chapter is a lot more engaging than the first—things are more clear-cut, and the only thing that had me second-guessing was the random greyhound that attacked people on the streets. Unless it was a magical greyhound, the event wasn't very realistic (maybe it is a magical greyhound, who knows). The writing is simple, but I haven't seen any repetition stemming from a lack of vocabulary. There is some sentence variation, but sometimes the author reverted to the "I did this [...]" set up, so I'd say to watch out for that. More work needs to be done on the characterisation. 

Characters: 

Shouraya— A messenger of some sort?

The guard—Stood guard outside the cave. Not sure if he has a name and if he has another role besides that.

The brutal man—Is brutal.

Shashi—I think this one is the boss. Of what, I have no idea.

An old lady—Zarina. What are you doing in a cave surrounded by psychopaths? You need to go back and bake cookies or something. It's pointless of Shashi to threaten to kill you—you have one foot in the grave already.

Hayden—Lost his parents. Fights a greyhound while he's drunk, don't know how he does it. Maybe he's secretly Chuck Norris.

Crazed Greyhound— Greyhounds are naturally gentle dogs, so the one in the story is based on the myth that these animals are cold-blooded killers. They're not. 

Creepy dude—Sees a crazy greyhound running around but just stands there with a weird-ass smile on his face. I think he needs to get a life. 

Diamond rating ♢ (1—10): 6

You had a rocky start, but sort of redeemed yourself in the second chapter. There are still a lot of plot inconsistencies and grammatical errors, so I suggest that you polish them up. The story was completed a while ago, so it's about time you do some editing. Good luck!