Halomae has lived all 17 years of her life on a continent that is divided into different Terrains. She feels the pull of the strange Eukar magic tied to the land, as it points away from her family, her home, and her peaceful Terrain - towards the unknown. As she meets strange people, suffers heartbreak, and unravels conspiracies, she will discover just how sheltered her life really was. One thing's for sure, she will never be the same again.
This review contains spoilers for the Prologue and Chapters 1-5 of The Unsettled.
Dear womanofsand,
Thank you so much for submitting your story. I deeply apologize for the lateness, but I hope that this review will be valuable for you nonetheless. Thank you for your patience and for giving me the opportunity to read this story!
Grammar
For spelling, there's a mistake every couple of paragraphs. From Chapter 1, you used "snug" instead of "smug", and "essentialy" instead of "essentially", for example. Grammar is almost perfect.Taking some extra time (or finding a beta reader) to comb through these finer details would be beneficial to your story. Overall, good job!
Formatting and Punctuation
The first thing that jumped out to me in the prologue was the inconsistent capitalizations of terms. For example, "Terrain" is capitalized. By extension, I would also expect terms like "mountain people" to be "Mountain people" (or even "Mountain People"), just like you capitalized Marshes and Fields.One recurring punctuation problem is the use of ellipses. There should be a space after it. There's also a few missing commas here and there. From Chapter 2: "his word against...well no one" should be "his word against... well, no one".
Story and Characters
Let's start with the story. In the first parts, I felt like the plot was moving along very quickly, with tons of exposition and very little breathing room. We're given backstory on the Terrains, a fight scene of Halomae as a child when she realizes her connection to the Eukar, and then we immediately jump into a fight scene/confrontation, followed by an escape. You tell the reader lots of important information about the location and society, but there's very little time spent experiencing the world in those first parts. It would be nice if you could spend some more time describing the surroundings and have some "quiet" moments—as in, moments that aren't action packed, and focus more on immersing the reader in the story and environment. Alternatively, consider this: if you want to keep the prologue exposition-heavy, relay the details through a poem or song! It could be really interesting to start things off with exposition through the form of a poem.That being said, things improved a lot when Anneah arrived in the story, both in pacing and descriptions. It was honestly pretty surprising, because you often see the quality in writing drop off on Wattpad, but your story got stronger. So your prologue and first chapter are weak, but the writing after that is better quality. Much better, in fact.
I struggled to understand the exact properties of the Eukar, as well as its role in the world. My ignorance is not necessarily a bad thing: for all I know, how the Eukar works will continue to be revealed as the story goes on. From my understanding, it's magic that can both possess and give strength to certain people (but not everyone). One thing I couldn't quite understand is why the Eukar is so important to the people, and why it has such a powerful hold on the protagonist. Is it a religious thing? Is it an entity? Does it have some sort of consciousness? How much can it control the characters? Is it a gift, or a curse? As the reader, these are questions I hope will be answered as the story develops!
Let's move onto the characters, and start with your protagonist. While Halomae (cool name, by the way) is an independent character who doesn't let herself get pushed around by the characters in the story, it feels like she is being pushed around by the plot. Despite the fact that she's a self-directed character, she is simultaneously robbed of her agency by the mysterious force that is the Eukar.
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