Mephobia Review Shop

6.|Aragons

REVIEWER - DrakeRTodd

Aragons - earlfangs

Blurb - 4.5/5 

Language, Grammar, & Flow - 9/15 

Plot & Characterization - 16.5/20 

Original & Creative - 9/10 

Total - 39/50 

 Review: First off, I want to say that I love this story being told in the present tense, as I mostly read and write stories written in the past tense. I think it gives this story a certain uniqueness that can only really be felt when a story is told in this way.

 Starting with your blurb: It is compelling and does work to make me curious about Raia's story, but I think it could benefit from being reworded or even just rearranged slightly in just a few places. This would help it be not so wordy while still ensuring that it is drawing people in. 

 While your language and grammar are quite good, with only a couple of really tiny problems here and there that I noticed, the one thing I have noticed the most is that flow seems to be a consistent, but still mostly minor problem. From what I have seen, it's just little things here and there that are serving to take me out of the story for even just a few moments. Things like the awkward description placements, or Raiden just suddenly having a leaf for seemingly no reason in chapter 2. This is a minor problem, but it does happen enough to be notable and potentially leave someone coming out of the narrative enough to be a problem. However, the most egregious moment of this is the chapter 5 lore dump. I appreciate a good lore dump, and I feel they are necessary when weaving an elaborate fantasy tale, but the timing is always key to whether or not it feels clunky, and unfortunately where this happens does feel a bit too much like the main story has completely halted, where having it later, during a moment to breathe, would have felt more natural.

There are some things with Raia that bother me here and there, at least in the beginning chapters that I read for this review. She doesn't seem to have much, if any, empathy, open-mindedness, or warmth to her character, and the way she talks sometimes doesn't feel natural. All of this makes her feel unrelatable. If this is the point so that she grows and becomes a better person as the story goes on, this is great, but not having her show even a glimmer of empathy or understanding, even when something is explained quite clearly to her, can make her seem extremely standoffish. I understand going further into it that she there is a reason, but that doesn't take away from her attitude at the beginning. 

 That said, this is a very unique use of the "protecting humanity from the supernatural" type of story, and I do love the direction the overarching story is going, and I do also love how the action scenes are written and handled. It calls to mind anime action scenes, things like Dragon Ball or Castlevania, which is great, and I am able to entirely visualize these scenes in that way. 

Please feel free to contact me via PM with any questions you may have, or if you want anything clarified.