Gemstone Reviews [Closed for Catch up]

Review #20-Talking To The Moon

Disclaimer—This author is EXTREMELY lovely. I thought I should throw that out there~

Title: Talking to the Moon.

Author: OmaimaAkbar

Genre: Fantasy

Rating: PG-13

# of chapters: 5 (ongoing—but the chapters are fairly small)

# of chapters I read: 2

Summary/ Blurb:

 "To hear, one must be silent."

Dumb. Mute. An evil with no tongue. These are the words that are used to describe Ayat Beizeen in her village.

Besides her family, Ayah has no one that she can call her own. From the age of two, Ayah has felt a strange hypnotic friendship with the Moon. She feels that there is someone out there who gives her strength and will to face the struggle that life has offered her. She knows she has a role to play and she wants to be prepared for it when the time comes.

A chance encounter with a stranger in the stables might just be the key that can change her life completely. Is Ayah Beizeen ready for this change?

Review:

Cover:

Your cover is gorgeous! Not only is it mesmerising to look at, but the contrast between the golden lettering and the dark-blue background really makes the title, author's name, and image pop. The font is truly a sight —it's detailed, but not to the point where the title is unreadable, and it looks like something you would write on a cake. We usually associate gold with the sun and silver with the moon, but you've flipped that notion on its head through this cover. For some reason, 1001 Arabian Nights came to mind as I looked at it because it has a sort of Middle Eastern feel to it. It speaks of great riches and prosperity, even though the main character (with reference to the blurb) lives in a village. 

Something tells me, however, that her life is going to change for the better. Good work!

Blurb:

I like the protagonist you've set up already—she's a mute (birth defect?) and hence already has an obstacle she has to overcome on a daily basis, the lack of speech. It also makes sense why the villagers call her "an evil with no tongue" because usually people who live in remote villages are very superstitious and intolerant of those who are 'different'. I wonder whether he family resents her for this disability.

Your opening line, "to hear, one must be silent" ties to the story and the character, something which I rarely see one. Usually, people just include quotes to be inspirational, but don't link it to the story in any way. This already tells me that Ayah is a girl who is very observant, and possibly intelligent because she needs to find crafty ways to make up for her lack of speech. Of course, sign language wouldn't be a thing, but I have to read to find out.

The next 'paragraph' makes the correlation explicit, but it's incorrectly punctuated. "Dumb. Mute. An evil with no tongue. These are the words that are used to describe Ayah Beizeen in her village (btw you spelled it as Ayat here, I think it's a typo)." The full stops create awkward pauses in between the words rather than place emphasis on them. It would be better if you used commas, and then a colon:

"Dumb, mute, an evil with no tongue: these are the words that are used to describe Ayah Beizeen in her small, remote village in (insert location here)" I also thought that making a point that this village is relatively small and close-minded can put her struggles more into context.