[BUSY] A 2019 Book Review Collection

Out of the Dark

Title: Out of the Dark

Brief summary (rephrased): This book follows the story of Nicolas Rodriguez and his sister Elisa Rodrigues as they join a force of justice aiming to expose criminals in Mexico City. In the process, he will find corruption, problems, fear, violence and the dark underworld that has tainted the city. He must also try to stop his father, Antonio, one of the biggest criminals in the country. Nicolas won't be willing to stop until he's put his father behind the bars of prison.

@JamesMerowall,

Props to you on being the first person to request from this book. –evil smile– Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long. Let's get started.

I like the overall style of your summary. However, I do think it is a little of an oversimplification to split the world into good versus evil, unless you are writing a story for a very young audience. To me, the best villains and antagonists usually have a reason or past that the readers can sympathize with, making them extremists, outcasts, but not absolutely EVIL. The concept of a "good" person is also very subjective on the other hand. Something you can consider is to try to replace "good" and "evil" with words of more precise meaning, or writing the sentence in a way that suggest nothing is purely good or totally bad. Another thing to consider is to reveal the identity of the big boss criminal character – the father – in the actual story and surprise your readers. This is completely a matter of preference though.

I like the caps at the beginning of the chapters! It reminds me of an actual printed novel. I appreciate the extra effort and also the sectioning of the chapters to the length of that in an actual novel, if that's what you were going for.

I noticed you began this story with a description of the setting, such as that of the city, infrastructure, and the society. It slows down the pace of the story and gives the reader some background, which is nice. Something to look out for here is that setting description, if written with vague adjectives, can break a panorama shot into segmented images and blur the important details, which makes it harder to pull in the reader's interest right away. Writing imagery that comes alive takes practice. I often have to write many drafts of the same setting description to get it just right.

For instance, in the following example:

"IT IS MIDNIGHT in Mexico City. In fact, it is one of those dark and silent urban nights."

"In fact" and "urban" are both pretty unnecessary here. This sentence means the same thing without "In fact", making it an empty filler that does not serve a purpose here, which deducts points on concision in your story. "urban" is a repeat of information from the previous sentence which already mentions the story takes place in Mexico City. City = urban.

(While we're at redundancy, another pretty obvious one from later in the chapter is "push with strength of arms". I suppose the guy could push with the strength of his body, or the strength of his shoulder, or the strength of his...pinky finger? This still felt a little redundant though and it'd be great if you could reword this part.)

I would also recommend changing the third sentence. In a novel, while questions are great in thought monologues and dialogue, they are a pretty obvious shortcut to telling rather than showing in a narration. Instead of using a question, you could focus on improving the imagery in your descriptions. What makes the reader more curious is a captivating imagery that naturally makes readers wonder about the mysteries within the city.

The plot so far is pretty interesting. The events and characters are creatively introduced and the dialogue is well-paced. However, I have found your grammar and redundant descriptions a little confusing sometimes and I would have to stop several times in a chapter to try to figure out what you meant to write.