Cutthroat Reviews - Can You Survive the Challenge?

Off the Grid

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Author: M-St.
calmingfire

THE TITLE:
Fits, catchy, and sounds pretty badass. No complaints here.

THE COVER:
Freaking awesome, and looks professional. Yay!

THE BLURB:
Ok, sounds super interesting. Transnational organized crimes, invisible cults, questionable incidents, and clashing personalities--sounds like my kind of party.

By the end of it, everything does sound quite complicated, but the whole idea behind the story seems complicated, so I can't really say that this is a bad thing. I think it represents what your book is all about, without giving everything away, and--despite just a couple grammar hiccups--it's well written and not too long. I'll give it a pass.

THE FIRST PART:
I read: Prelude and Chapter One
So, I haven't seen any of the TV shows mentioned in your author's note, but I was still pretty pumped to start reading. And the mature content warning got me even more excited ;) And YAY FOR DIVERSE CHARACTERS, I applaud you, sir.

Soooo, when I started reading the Prelude, my immediate first impression was: Your sentence structure is extremely repetitive, especially in the opening paragraph. You have nice description, but it somehow seems robotic. You do this thing when being descriptive, it's hard for me to articulate because 1.) I don't have a degree in English, so I'm not so sure about all of the correct terminology and such, and 2.) I'm not a professional editor either, so I'm not entirely sure how to give the proper advice to fix this. Let's see, maybe an example will help? So, here is a short paragraph (not taken from your work, but mimicking your sentence structure):

"Dirty rags hung from thin and shaky limbs. Trembling fingers reach for a golden, shining doorknob. An old man steps through an empty doorway."

See how the sentence structure repeats itself? When writing, it's important to create a certain level of flow, which helps the reader follow along with what is happening, and also helps hold a reader's interest. When sentence structure continually repeats itself, it's easy for a reader to lose focus in what they are reading, and then they lose track of what is going on, and then they possibly lose interest in the story. So, here is a way you could possibly mix up the example paragraph:

"Dirty rags hung from thin and shaky limbs. With trembling fingers, he reached for the golden, shining doorknob. The old man stepped through the empty doorway."

Can you see how this paragraph flows a little better? It's easier to follow what is going on, and it's easier for the reader to picture the scene in their head, without losing any of the nice description.

This criticism may sound harsh, but this is the first part of your story that people are going to read, and therefore it should be as polished as possible, because this is the first impression that readers will have of your writing. I know you have a warning about your descriptiveness in the author's note, but this is different. This is your sentence pattern and flow. And it's a little awkward to read.

That being said, the Prelude was still very hook-worthy, in my opinion. The dialogue has an amazing flow, and a naturalness that the descriptive sections lack. Bringing up all the proficy-type speeches, and mentioning the importance of "She" creates an air of mystery, and brings up many questions that (in the reader's mind) are begging to be answered. By the end, I was interested to read more, and that's a good thing!

Next, Chapter One, first impression: "Eye of the Tiger," as her workout playlist? How original!

No, I kid. What I really felt was: Within the first ten or so paragraphs, I could already conclude that Iris is freaking awesome. She's a strong person, who knows what she wants and knows who she is. I'm already interested to see what kind of trouble is going to come her way, how she's going to deal with it, and how it might change her as a character.

On a more negative note, however, is your tendency to drone. I appreciate detailed description as much as the next person, but what you have here is a little less "imagery," and a little more..."detail." Yes, being descriptive means including detailed imagery, but just listing off a bunch of details that don't necessarily pertain to the plot does not mean that your story is more believable or well written. Yes, Iris is awesome, she does awesome things. However, listing off the details of her morning beauty routine doesn't really seem that important or a way for me to learn anything about her. Maybe there are some parts here and there that would be cool to include, but I don't feel that I need to know what she does step-by-step when she does her makeup.

I can totally see how you're trying to include some of experiences of what it's like to live with and take care of curly, afro-styled, textured hair, and I think that's totally awesome! However, there are a few too many details thrown in between so that it all gets lost in this runny, detail-soup, and the subtleties of Iris' character become hard to follow.

Overall, I was still intrigued by the end of the chapter, and I still wanted to know what was going to happen next. It see,s to me that what you have here is a great story idea, fantastic characters, a passion for writing, but maybe just a need for a little self-editing. Sometimes, as writers, we feel like it's super important to keep things in our story that might not necessarily help further the plot or character development. But, I think if you take the time to stop and reread your story from a reader's point of view, as someone who is coming to your story without any idea of what your story is actually about, then it might help you get a new outlook on your story and see the things that might benefit from some editing.

THE RATING: *HOOKED*

Be glad that you have a killer plot set up and an even more killer main character, otherwise I might not be so enthusiastic about this story. This book could use some polishing style-wise, but it has awesome bones underneath and I can tell that you've put a lot of thought and effort into it. Just judging by the beginning, I think it will definitely be worth the read by the end. Good job!