Kat Reviews [CFCU]

Dawn of a Thousand Suns | Miya

Author: Akston93

Book: Dawn of a Thousand Suns

Genre: Fantasy

Chapters Read: Prologue - Chapter 4

Kat Tails: 4

This is my first review (ever) so please keep in mind that not all of my future reviews will be like this one. I may have learned a thing or two and will be tweaking my reviewing style (along with the tendency to be long-winded. 3k words is a doozy O.o) ! This review will contain spoilers for the chapters I read. Please be aware of this if you decide to continue.

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Cover: 2/5

Let's start with your cover, shall we? The cover is the first thing your potential readers are going to see. While we all say "don't judge a book by its cover", let's be honest—we judge books by their covers, especially on Wattpad. 

First impression is that your font is tiny. Readers are gonna have trouble seeing that. There's also a lot of empty space in the center. The sky is pretty, sure, but you're going to want the focal point, or what the readers should focus on, to be front and center. Object-based, person-based, text-based, they've all got something for the reader to latch onto. While your cover has a nice choice of scenery, it doesn't give much idea as to the content it's representing.

It's not a bad cover, but it's not eye-catching either. Visiting one of Wattpad's many graphics shops would be a great idea, as there's an abundance of talented designers who could work their magic to give your book a fantastic cover.

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Title: 2/5

Part of my take on your title is my personal preference—I'm not a fan of long titles—so you can take this with a grain of salt. My first issue that I run to is that I'm lost as to which title is your actual title. I would think it's "Dawn of a Thousand Suns" since that's what you submit your book under, but reading the title on Wattpad makes me think it's actually "Arch De Angels", since that's put after Book 1. If one of these is the title of your series, I'd recommend formatting it as: Book Title [Series Title #1] or something similar.

Moving past formatting, I think your title fits your genre. Dawn of a Thousand Suns gives the right epic/high fantasy vibes. However, at first impression, this title isn't going to hook me. I don't get a great idea of what this story is going to be about from the title. It doesn't strike me with curiosity at the start and I've not seen how it relates to the story yet from what I've read.

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Blurb: 2/5

After reading your blurb, there are three points for improvement I'd like to touch on which are: brevity, terms, and streamlining for effectiveness. 

Brevity: The optimum word count for a blurb is 100-200 words; much less than that and you may not be able to encompass all the necessary elements (character, setting, conflict, and stakes), much more and you may be giving your readers too much information, possibly even spoilers. Your blurb docks in at 283 words. My personal opinion is that the necessary bones of your blurb are present solely in the third paragraph. This is where you've introduced character (Lucius, sister, Michael), setting (the words "village" and "townsfolk" give fantasy vibes, though you may wish to include specific names for memorability), conflict (rescuing sister, survive, confront enemies), and stakes (avoid losing selves/becoming monsters). I would suggest cutting the first two paragraphs (110 words between them) because one, they're disconnected from the rest of the blurb and what has been touched on in the first five parts of the book. And two, the density of the info given may be off-putting to potential readers. Which leads to the second point.