The Alien Review Shop

Opposites Attract

Title: Opposites Attract

By TJMaguire

Reviewed by RowanCarver

Cover

The font of your cover is great. This is a bias because I hate face claim covers, but the three clip art people threw in there is not a good design to me. I would recommend finding some artwork for your cover or something more creative than some copy and paste people with bad Photoshop lighting and blur effects. But keep the font though, that's cool.

Blurb/Hook/Premise

Aha, I like this.

"The supernatural live in secret among us."

Starting out with your premise and your hook. This is a common trope, but I'm curious to see how you will tackle it.

Shifters v Vampires, definitely a common trope once again. But your wording makes it interesting.

Anything that's like "ancient, powerful, mysterious Kings" I'm into. Kudos, this read looks like something that's right up my alley.

And then the "it'll be dark, it'll be violent, it'll be bloody" part I was like "hell yeah this book was made for me."

Conflict

Shifters v Vampires

Character Analysis

Zamorra is a silver wolf who has a lot of power. She has abilities both in her human and wolf form that others don't have. This makes her stand out from her clan. She also fights back against the oppression of her werewolf people, which makes her unique and makes the reader root for her from the beginning. She's a fighter and a determined character, very likable, I think your readers will connect well with her throughout the story.

Opening Chapter

17 minutes is too long for an opening chapter on this platform.

A great way to cut down on word count is to take out all of these telling sections. I like what happens in your opening. I like what happens. Zamorra runs from other werewolves and fights them off. But it's hard to get invested in this fight scene when the author pauses the action to tell another fact to the reader. "

"Female werewolf shifters were somewhat of a rarity..." that's interesting information, however, I want to go back to the action. Is there a way you can weave this throughout the story and focus solely on the plot of the first chapter? Telling sections are fine for a first draft since you're getting your book together. But when you come back to do rewrites and craft your second draft, I would look into taking these sections out and shortening your first chapter so that it only has the parts with the action and the conflict between Zamorra and the other wolves.

Plot

Alright, so the plot takes off right away. Zamorra is a werewolf shifter on the run from her own kind. She is a rogue shifter who is on her own. She constantly runs and fights Cade, her alpha, who tries to steal her back. And along the way she is caught up in this war between vampires and werewolves.

Other than sprinkling in too many telling sections, the author does a good job of keeping the focus on this overarching plot. Her mechanics are well developed and original, so the plot doesn't read like a typical Twilight vampires v werewolves sort of thing. It's definitely fresh and for someone who's looking for a good supernatural read, this is a great choice.

Worldbuilding/Setting

Conflict expands much farther than simply werewolves v vampires. There are corruption and dissension among the clans themselves. Werewolves oppress one another, particularly females, where they are farmed by the Alphas. It's messed up but it's a great bit of societal world-building and showing inner conflict for MC's own people. It makes you wonder who to root for.

The author went for the trope where wolves and people are separate entities as one. It's fun to see Zamorra talk to her wolf as a different personality and to see how they help each other out.

Once again, the way the author built her societies is strong. That's the best part of the world-building here. The werewolves are corrupt and serve disgusting sexist alphas. The vampires serve an ancient and mysterious King. Our MC is caught as an independent werewolf in the middle of it all, and using her to navigate this dangerous and hostile world with inner and outer conflict is a great way to get to know how all of this is set up.

Summary

I've always been into vampire/werewolf stuff, I mean, I went through that Twilight phase. Not gonna lie.

This is a really fun read and very intense. It's a fresh take on all those vampires v werewolves tropes. I appreciate the time the author put into the world-building and systems with her societies. I like how it focuses on a character who doesn't want to have anything to do with the conflict between werewolves and vampires, someone who just wants to be alone, but she's forced to be a part of it anyway because of who she is.

The writing is sound but there are some grammatical issues. I would recommend looking up filter words and editing them out. Run-on sentences are there as well and the author struggles with action v telling sections. It's hard to be invested in the plot when it is paused for the author to tell you a fact about the world they are building or another werewolf mechanic/creature mechanic. All of this is fine for a first draft since that's what first drafts are for, but I would recommend finding ways to show and not tell/interweave all this information throughout the story with your second draft.

See you, Space Cowboy...