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Review by Sunshine: Vlad the Impaler

Review by Sunshine: Vlad the Impaler

Author: TheDarkProdigy

Summary: 4/5

Your summary is pretty good! I love the way it introduces one character at a tiem, and the way you emphasise their conflicting motives. The summary has everything required – it introduces the main character, it shows us a bit of context, and it leaves us wondering what the outcome may be. It certainly doesn't give too much away, so well done there! I did, however, have a few pointers that I would consider polishing.

Firstly, your use of semicolon. You used a semicolon in the summary, but it wasn't an accurate use of one. I would have used a hyphen instead – but I'll get more into that in the grammar section of this review. Secondly, here is sentence from your summary:

"She doesn't care for fabled prophecies making her mate to the most evil tyrant to ever walk the earth which does not make sense in itself since a union between a vampire and elf will result in a curse that would wipe out both races."

That is one long sentence, especially considering there is no punctuation in the middle. I would have a comma before the word 'which'. In fact, I would consider removing the second half of that sentence entirely – I know you're trying to emphasise the stakes, but there is already enough conflict in the summary without it. That part about wiping both races could be a twist introduces in the story, perhaps?

And finally, you use rhetorical question well at the end of your summary, but please ensure that those questions end with question marks. 

Grammar: 3/5

For the most part, your grammar was pretty good! Most errors that were there were tiny things that could easily be skipped over. But, alas, I don't like to skip over these things, so here's a little breakdown on some rules that could use polishing.

Firstly, as mentioned in the summary component of this review: semicolons. A semicolon can be used to join two independent clauses that are heavily intertwined – meaning that they are very closely related. I've been told that a semicolon can even replace a conjunctive. However, the clauses must be independent. That means that if a full-stop was used instead of a semicolon, both sentences would still make sense. For example:

"Erinna gave an involuntary shudder; his very presence seeming to drop the room temperature by a few degrees."

That is in inaccurate use of a semicolon, because the clause, 'his very presence seeming to drop the room temperature by a few degrees' would not make sense as a sentence on its own. However, this if you were to change the word 'seeming' to 'seemed', it would be:

"Erinna gave an involuntary shudder; his very presence seemed to drop the room temperature by a few degrees."

That above example is accurate, because the two sentences are heavily interrelated (she shuddered because his very presence made the room temperature drop) and both clauses are independent.

Apart from that, you also have quite a lot of run-on sentences in your chapters. Another issue was dialogue and punctuation. If dialogue is followed by a verbal tag (such as 'he said', 'she whispered', 'she exclaimed' – or anything referring to how the character says the words), there should be a comma before the closing inverted commas. If it's anything else, this comma should be replaced by a period (or a question mark for a question and exclamation mark for an exclamation). For example: