"The Risk Book"
CLOSED
All feedback contained here is pure opinion; some of these opinions have changed over time as the reviewer has since received professional training, but this book remains posted for the authors to look back on. Use discretion...
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Title Your title is nice. It makes the reader have many questions, which is good.
Cover I like the cultural picture a lot, and I hope there's a scene like it in your story (maybe there still will be sometime?). I must wonder about the dash before your title, though. I would understand if the text had been surrounded by dashes for a decorative effect, but there's only one. I would either add another dash at the end or take out the one at the front. Did you mean to make it appear like dialogue in retrospect? This adds a pretty crazy element that I frankly like (a lot). ;) Also, I would make the text bigger so that the readers' eyes are drawn to the title (and therefore the author's name).
Blurb You mention a lot of new concepts in the blurb (places, government, people, etc.) and it's a bit hard to keep up. This takes away from the readers' initial interest in your story. To avoid this, either explain a lot of things or generalize them ("a government," "his village"). I would recommend the generalization, but you do what you think best.
Also, over half of this material wasn't even mentioned or gotten to in 23 chapters. That's...slow. I'll talk about this more at the end, so we'll postpone this chat for now.
That being said, you idea is unique. I've never read or even heard of anything like this, and it sounds interesting. Good job with that! +1 point!
*since your story comes in 24 parts, I'll be reviewing four parts at a time, coming to around six portions of review*
But first, the prologue (although you call it a prelude, as in the musical term).
"Prelude" Why do you call it a prelude?
I have the same comment for you that I had in the blurb. You introduce many things, and that makes it hard to follow. In this case, however, you would need to elaborate a bit more. Since you never want paragraph after paragraph of explanation, I would suggest that you make a map (at least, I'm fairly certain that this place isn't part of our world). A great site that I use is called Inkarnate (check out one of the maps I've made on my story, Piper!). I'm consistently confused and craving clarity. -1 to make your total zero.
I do like the context, though. It's very well thought-out and realistic. It reminds me of America's 2nd Industrial Revolution. +1 for the connection!
On to the actual story!
Chapters 1-4 I know that you want the look of the dashes for dialogue (and I know you've heard this already), but quotation marks are generally required for English-language writing (aside from older pieces like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes that use single quotes rather than double quotes). That being said, if you're a really well-known and accomplished author, you're allowed to get away with a lot. If you can make it work, too, and not have confusion, then fine. However, I'm sure you've found that people find it confusing and consider it wrong. That's the last thing you want to happen. I, for one, find it very hard to tell when the dialogue stops because there's no dash at the end to tell us readers. It took me some rereading to figure out that it was dialogue. This one thing could be a major turn-off for many of your potential readers. If you're fine with losing them, then I suppose that's okay. I would suggest that you either change it or find a way to make it clearer that the dashes signify dialogue. Otherwise, it's just too confusing. You should also make sure that you always connect the dialogue phrases. You shouldn't have one character speak a line, indent, and then have the same character speak. That's just too confusing, especially with this formatting and especially without a dialogue tag. If you really need the dashes, perhaps explain your different style in the "prelude" and tell why you use that style of dialogue. -1 point for the confusion across the board and your total is zero.
