d_s_t_e's Wattpad Reviews

The Fire Within by CoordinatorIza [Unavailable]

After graduating from the academy, Iza is all ready to begin her journey to become the next greatest Pokémon Coordinator. On the night before she is to leave, the egg of a legendary Pokémon is stolen, and Iza's Torchic becomes injured in the fight. Although Iza continues her journey as planned, that won't be the last she sees of the mysterious thieves.

The overall plot of the story had lots of action happening from almost the very beginning, which was good for keeping it interesting. I enjoyed action scenes like the battle with the thieves and Iza's tussle with the misbehaving Steelix in the beginning of the book. I also liked some of the side plots that developed as the story went on, particularly the one surrounding the question of the family gym and Iza's desire to be a coordinator while her younger sister secretly wants to take the gym. I also thought that the mystery and eventual plot surrounding Iza's absent father was a point of interest.

On the other hand, there were a few scenes that didn't advance the plot or the characters and seemed unnecessary, like watching the characters get ready for bed. It seemed like some scenes were included because the author couldn't think of a different way to end the previous scene or was trying to summarize events that could have been explained in the next important scene instead. I also thought that the plot with the Pokémon eggs the girls were given in the beginning was disappointing because there wasn't a big scene around watching the eggs hatch and because there was never any further comment about the fact that Miles was supposed to leave after they hatched. This made the whole thing seem a bit contrived just to get the boy who becomes the love interest to stick around. I also got a little bit confused about what was happening towards the end of the book.

Also, in spite of all of the action that takes place in the book, I have to admit that I wasn't as caught up in it as I think I should have been. The writing didn't seem to reflect the kind of excitement or stress or general emotion that should have been evoked by the events of the story. The tone of the narration was often matter-of-fact, effectively telling what happened but making me feel emotionally distant from the story.

I thought that the spelling, grammar, formatting, and punctuation of this book was a little above average for last year's Pokémon Watty Awards entries, but it definitely could still use some work. The biggest things I noticed were consistent errors with dialogue formatting and occasional switching between past and present tense. There were also misspellings (often seemingly autocorrected to become words other than what I knew you had intended) and punctuation errors with commas, apostrophes, semicolons, etc. All of these were common errors in last year's awards, as noted in my Writing Tips book.

The one thing that stood out to me about this book compared to all the other entries was the way that the author created unique outfits for the characters to wear and described them in detail. Sometimes original pictures of these outfits were included as well, which really showcased the author's enthusiasm.

It seemed to me as though the book was also trying to play up the Pokémon coordinator angle as something new and slightly different. I have seen stories about coordinators before, but it is true that there are many less of them than stories about other types of trainers. It may also be true that there is a niche audience for these kinds of stories who might be interested to find one simply because it is what they really enjoy reading.

All in all, I thought that this book was of about average quality. The plot, the characters, and the writing itself all served to tell the story well enough, but it didn't quite go above and beyond for me.

** Published in April 2017 **