Critics column - 2

Review - 33

User - angelos666

Title: Feral world

Oh well to be honest I’m not really sure if the title goes with the story or not (why this is so is brought to light below) plus since I’m also not aware of the fandom that you’re basing the book on its safe to say that I am unable to comment that much on the title sadly.

Cover:

The one thing that I really liked about the cover was the fact that you kind of put your own twist to the story, you know making the cover all anime with retrospect to the characters was very cool and helped give the fanfiction your own twist of things.

One thing that was a turn off though was the sentence that on the cover for it wasn’t grammatically correct: ‘What kind off surprise when furries evolved.’

Now I’m not really sure what you had tried to mean with that sentence but first thing first that OFF should be OF, and secondly id revisit this sentence cause honestly for now I’m unable to pin point what exactly that sentence is supposed to represent and if I see a grammatical error in the cover I am most likely not going to read the book at all, and as a writer the last thing you want to do is push away readers.

Blurb:

Now remember what I said on the cover about pushing away readers by blasting them at the beginning with errors, errors, errors, well with regards to the blurb that aspect is even more important. The blurb is a place where I as a reader am able to get a glimpse of the story and either be intrigued to read on or not, and honestly your blurb as a reader would have pushed me away instantly.

I am in no way a grammar Nazi but I found myself cringing while reading that blurb cause of the mistakes that really made it hard to understand what the sentences were meaning to portray in the first place. There were a lot of awkward tense changes that kind of made things confusing, and some punctuation errors (though this wasn’t that distracting towards me), and lastly some awkward sentences were also present.

Now what I’d suggest from here is some severe editing so as to make this blurb more appealing, I think working with an editor would help fix the few problems that were in place.

Story:

Well I usually read at least five chapters of a book so as to better understand the plot but sadly I couldn’t get pass one chapter mostly because of so many problems that made it hard for me to understand a thing. I had started helping to point out some things when I realized that you are more in need of an editor, so as to help fix up on some things that I’m about to point out here and even some that I may have not noticed.

First thing that I noticed is that you do have a problem with your tenses. There were few instances where you would change up the tenses all in the same chapter. This is not a good thing because it does tend to leave the reader slightly confused plus it does tend to ruin the flow of the story. What I’d suggest for this is to pick one tense (either past or present) and then edit out the parts in the story that do not correlate with the tense that you picked.

Another thing that I picked up on was you always tend to miss out on conjunctions or that in the end would make some of the sentences look very choppy and to be honest would also confuse me a bit. The conjunctions help the sentences make more sense and when not there I found it hard to connect two sentences together. Apart from missing out on the conjunctions, when you did end up using them they would be placed somewhere where it was not needed, therefore once again making the sentence confusing to the readers.

E.g.

My jeans buzzes as it stopped my walk.

But it should be more like: My jeans buzz, stopping my walk.

Or you know something around those lanes.

There was also a problem with your punctuations, most of the first words in your sentence didn’t start with capital letters and you did miss out on a couple of full stops. This is a problem that I too face most of time but it’s nothing that a quick edit wouldn’t fix.

Another that I’d emphasize on is your spacing. Mostly some of your paragraphs were kind of squashed together and although that wasn’t confusing in the reading sense it did tend to ruin the layout of the chapter and didn’t quite make it look nice. Another thing on spacing would be on your dialogues, some of the dialogues would end up being in the same paragraph and that not only in my opinion doesn’t make the layout look nice but it tends to be confusing as well.

E.g.

“I’m feeling very hungry today,” I said my stomach threatening to swallow me whole. “Well why don’t you eat then?” My brother asks.

See forgiving the weird sentence and the probability my punctuation may be off the dialogues would have looked much better if they both the dialogues would have been given their own paragraphs.

E.g.

“I’m feeling very hungry today,” I said my stomach threatening to swallow me hole.

“Why don’t you eat then?” My brother asks.

See how much better that looks.

Another part that I did notice was the randomly jumping into scenes. I don’t know if it’s just me but I do enjoy a natural entry into a new scene instead of just being teleported there out of the blue. You know if the MC maybe was at a beach tell me (even subtly) on how she/she was able to reach home safely so I am able to create a better picture in my head of the whole situation. There was also the multiple POV changes in the same chapter, I do enjoy different voices in a book because it gives out different sides of a story but about five different POV changes later it kind of gives me this clustered feel and makes the chapter kind of awkward to me. This is not me saying that you should not do chapter changes, just that a lot of them in the same chapter can be kind of distracting.

Lastly another crucial part that I’d emphasize on is showing more than telling. Right now, from the brief parts that I was able to understand, you were telling more than showing and that is never a good thing because I as a reader am supposed to connect with your characters and either empathize with them or hate with them, you know stuff like that. And for me to be able to nicely do that I need to be clearly shown their frustrations, happiness, anger… all in all the emotions that they are going through during the playing out of the circumstances that they’re in.

Oh well that was it for me I hope that some of the stuff I pointed out will be able to help you out in the long run, most especially during your editing whether with an editor or not (though I’d strongly recommend one) and because I was unable to fully divulge into your book I’d love to do another review of your book after editing so as to give out more detail on the plot and other aspects of the book.

Other than that, I do wish that what I have stated in this review does not discourage you in your writing and actually helps in the long run. Thank you for giving me a chance to review your book and good luck.

By - Epicadrenaline