Rookywriters Book Reviews

No. 19 The Fall of a Priestess

Introduction

¤ Book title and author - The fall of a priestess by Alecia_Always
Genre - science fiction

¤ First impression - The pace of the story is really slow and steady.

¤ Weakness - Well, you don't have any obvious weakness so far. Except for a few grammatical issues which will be pointed out.

¤ Improvement - When editing watch out for words that was repeated twice in a paragraph and use synonyms or try rephrasing the sentences.

¤ Strengths - Good diction. Good description of locations good, engaging writing style.

Body

¤ Opening - Nice opening to the story. Good description and world build in the first chapter.

¤ Conflict - Because of the slow and steady nature of the story, the main conflict took longer than expected.

¤ Plot - Don't just start chapters with conversation, try telling what is happening and give a brief intro of what the characters are doing before starting the dialogue.

From chapters 13 to 18 there is more dialogue going on than the actual story telling. Fill up the chapters with the story line so readers can get what is going on.

¤ Setting - Settings of the story was properly described. The location of the temple, the forest around it, the sky condition was well written.

¤ Characterization - Good relatable characters. Good background story for Alecia and Booker.

There is something about Alecia as a character, maybe the writer chose for her to be like this, but in most of the scene she barely does nothing expressive, except flicker her eyes and nod and speak so calmly and all.

Explore more on her, sometimes I don't know if she's acts like a matured woman or a young girl, there's need to show more of her body expressions, her real feelings about a situation, her pure reactions, what makes her angry, what makes her happy, her night routine and other personal attributes about her. Since she is the main character.

¤ Dialogue - Good dialogue within the characters. Just one thing, when a character asks a question,for example, it will be advisable to use dialogue tags that conveys the emotion.

Example in chapter 15, there are some instances,

"What's happening outside?" Ruth said with a worrisome face.

Ruth asked, sound better.

"There's an alien ship." he said.

There's need know if he is happy about the alien ship, or surprised seeing the alien ship or reporting that he saw an alien ship.

Said is good, but in some cases, dialogue tags can be used to show how the character is feeling at the moment.

Research on words that can used in place of said.

¤ Point of View - The story is written from third person pov and suits the story perfectly. Writer did a good job there.

¤ Show versus tell - There is a good balance between showing and telling in some scenes. It means the writer is quite experienced in the knowledge of writing.

¤ Format of the text - Paragraphing was done properly. Chapter length is normal.

¤ Grammar and spelling - There were instances where certain words were repeated twice in a paragraph.
Example in chapter one,

The windows of the temple has images of a brunette woman around her torso, along with an armor around her body.

Around is repeated twice.

The ceiling above shows the reflection of the waters that danced within the fountain, the light within it helps drive the effect.

Within is repeated twice

In chapter two,

Alecia slowly walks her way through the forest, and continues through any untouched pathway...

Through is repeated twice.

Also the word 'flick' and 'flicker' is overused in chapter three and chapter 18 and some other chapters. It seems the writer is obsessed with the word or something. And only Alecia's eyes is allowed to flicker in the story. Is it because she's a priestess?

Other words that can be used instead of flicker are:

Widened, drooped, narrowed, gleamed, twinkle, burned, blazed, glowed, rolled etc.

Take note of that.

Other words that can be used instead of said in the box below:

¤ Style - Writing style is quite subtle.

Conclusion

Comments - The fall of a priestess is really a catchy book title. Looking at the book cover up close, I think it's really cool too, except make the fonts larger and bolder so readers can see it clearly.

You did a good job with the world build and description of the characters. Take your time to edit and work on the grammatical areas that need correction.

I enjoyed reading your book.

Thanks for letting me evaluate your book.

Any comments or questions about any confusion just PM me or hit the comments.