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Review by Lina: The Lost City

Title: The Lost City

Author: AdityaKhazanchi

Reviewer: linalagosya

Summary: 1.5/5

Your summary should not be in your voice, but in a third-person present voice. Although you do not want to give too much of the plot away, you need to let readers know what they are getting into. Who is the character, what is his goal/obstacle, who is the villain, what kind of world are we in?

The details you are providing are not the ones we need. You start off with a year that means little to a reader who doesn't know the world. The information about the counties also doesn't matter to a reader yet. It's too specific and we don't know enough about anything else. Your second paragraph is doing a better job of engaging potential readers, I would suggest starting there.

Instead of telling us who the main protagonist is, just jump right in:

Tyler, a soldier of the Bearsk province and a smart and sensible man, joined the army to get revenge for his brother's death. But because of his skills, he gets pulled into a place of leadership he's not ready for, and a mystery about the true origins of the fight that's more than what he bargained for...

See the idea? It should be longer and a bit more in depth than that, but you're looking to clearly state the who, what, why, and potential conflict of the story for your readers so they can decide if they want to read further.

Grammar: 4/5

Overall the grammar was pretty good! There were a few typos and some verb issues ("everyone were" should be "everyone was," for example) but the errors weren't super common. There were a couple of times where you slipped up in your dialogue formatting, but you did it right most of the time so I'm willing to bet those were just typos. You slip into present tense a handful of times, watch out for that as well.

A note on the dialogue - you often have all of it smashed together in one long paragraph. Make sure to start a new paragraph when introducing dialogue and always start a new paragraph when another person starts speaking.

Character Building: 2/5

There was a lot of good character potential here, but I don't think it's coming through as clearly as you want it to. A part of that is that we're not getting to see the character development. This has a lot to do with the "show, don't tell" advice that I'll go into more depth in under the Writing Style section. But here, we open with Tyler killing everyone. And then suddenly he says he's sad about what he did, but we never actually got to see him feeling remorse or showing that he had doubts. All we see is killing. And then suddenly he's saying something completely different than what we just saw.

You need to let us into Tyler's mind and feelings more. You need to show us through scenes that he's upset or remorseful. You can't just tell us and expect us to go along with it. We have to "see it with our own eyes," so to speak. So before Tyler says he's regretful for his actions to the General, you have to show us that. Maybe after he's killed everyone - he has a moment where he looks at the destruction he's created and he cries? Or maybe he tries to go and help some of the families and they shun him away, only furthering his guilt? Maybe he doesn't feel anything until later, when he's home and he starts having nightmares or thinking constantly of the people he killed? You need to show us these things in scenes so that we can be along for his emotional journey, not just told what he thinks after the fact. Hope that makes sense! So all that to say that I think a troubled soldier character is really engaging, but we don't really get to see it.

As for the other characters, the only other one that seems to have any depth is the General. He's arrogant and his flaws quickly cost him a lot. I'm not sure where you're going with that character, but I liked his weakness. It made him more dynamic.

I think the friend characters can be built up a lot more. A part of the fun of reading is getting to know the characters and see them interact. We don't get to see a lot of that here. Show them going out for drinks together, making plans, joking around. We get a snippet of conversation here and there, we need to see more of that to really understand these characters. How are they different from each other? Right now they seem interchangeable. 

Writing Style: 1/5

So I don't normally give out this advice, as I feel people use it so often it's almost lost meaning. But I think it's still useful for beginning writers. And that's "show, don't tell." This was my biggest issue with the story, and it made it a lot harder to engage with you. You don't show, you just tell. You can't just have a character say "I feel badly about this." You have to show us through his actions, his dialogue, his thoughts, his emotions, his body language, his tone of voice. You give us the motions of a character's actions, but little else.

You want to be careful of your writing quickly turning into a list of actions. "He does this. He does that. Then he does this, then he does that. He says this. Then he says that." Try to break up these sentences with description, emotion, body language, tone, sensory details. You had such little description that I couldn't picture the world or characters at all. But this is a fantasy world so that's part of the fun of the genre! You get to make this world whatever you want, so play with what it looks like, what kind of world it is, what kind of people are in it.

So here's a random example from Ch. 4:

"At the military base, Tyler and his comrades were doing their regular drills. After the drills, John and Stuart inquired about the reason that made Tyler change his mind when he met the king. Tyler replied, "I don't know what happened to me there, but it seemed as if there was someone else in the room."

What kind of drills are they doing? What does the military base look like? Are the friends worried about Tyler? Do they think it's funny that he changed his mind? Why not have the conversation play out during the drills, to make it more dynamic? Does Tyler feel hesitant to share what he felt? Does he have a hard time putting it into words and his friends have to question him more? It's like we're watching a scene from a movie from afar, and we can barely see or hear it. You have to let us in more.

My final note is that I think you could slow the story way down and bring us into the world more. The pacing is a bit rushed and we move through huge military tactics and changes very quickly. Might be fun to take more time with it!

Plot + Originality: 3/5

I thought the plot was fairly interesting! I like the idea of having the plot primarily revolve around military tactics but in a fantasy world that's not our own. The tactics are still the same, but applied in a different way to a different country. It was interesting to see the kinds of plans they made and how the politics worked. I would just suggest you slow it way down and dive in a little deeper to the scenes and some of the tension. It all went by so quickly. They win wars with entire counties in just one or two chapters at a time.

I think there are a few moments where you rush through something and it makes it feel illogical. Like when the MC and his friends are captured but then they are able to do all these things like blend in with the people in this country (even though they've never seen them or been there before), and infiltrate and then escape at the perfect time. It all seemed a bit convenient. I would look at that again and make sure that it seems feasible/makes sense for your world. This is such a technical military story that I think it's important for you to nail the details of this.

OVERALL SCORE: 11.5/25

Overall I think you have a solid premise and some interesting character ideas. Both need to be built up a little more, but the foundation is there and you have lots of good ideas! You just have to keep writing and practicing your writing style until you find something that's more dynamic and engaging and works for your story.