The REALM OF CRITIQUES

The Towered City

Author:

@EchoSagal

Cover:

Very professional looking and a striking image to catch a reader's eye. The word 'Towered' is a little hard to read at first, but I actually like the arrangement to make it look like a tower, and could possibly hint at the unorthodox and twisted tone of the story. Nice one.

Blurb:

It sets the story and the world up nicely, without giving away too much or not enough. The colossal tower and the ravaged earth make for an interesting dynamic, especially with two people from either place as the protagonists. That's some good contrast. It would be nice to get a sense of why they need to unite, what the danger is, what the stakes are, and the obstacles in their way. Something along the lines of: 'they need to _ in order to _ but _ will happen if they don't succeed.'

The note about the story's slow start is understandable, and in an ideal world we shouldn't have to 'warn' readers about this, as even slow starts should be compelling enough to keep a reader going. Not everything has to start with action and magic and explosions. I'd recommend removing the author note, as it might even put some people off if you tell them that 'it doesn't get good until chapter 5', but let them read the story and decide for themselves if it's to their liking or not.

Prologue/ Chapter 1:

Same for the author note before the Prologue. It should ideally not be necessary to tell a reader that a chapter can be skipped. If it's not that important then it shouldn't be there. But I've a feeling that it is more important than you make it sound – overarching story elements included - if you've chosen to include it.

Scene setting descriptive details like 'sitting in a small bar on the fifteenth level' might not tell us as much as you think. Better to describe the atmosphere of the bar, and then mention that it's on the fifteenth level (of what) if it's important to the scene.

Generally I enjoyed the prologue, it set up the world well and gave a good glimpse into the characters and their lives. I didn't get a strong sense of the POV character however, or what his thoughts/motivations were. The small info dumps were well placed, and it didn't feel like we were being spoon fed large chunky paragraphs of background. The interactions between the two main guys ended up flowing really well and I enjoyed their talk by the end of the chapter.

There were a few run-on and overly lengthy sentences that were a bit hard to follow, so trimming some fat and streamlining some parts would be great. But that kind of thing comes with more passes. Also a few spelling errors or extra/missing words would be cleaned up too (along with some minor points like repeating the same word close together or two or three times in one sentence).

The instances of capital letters felt a bit strange. Maybe italics would work better to emphasise words?

Overall it was an interesting read and sounds like a very creative and detailed world we'll be exploring. With a few more polish passes this could be a strong piece of work.