Book Reviews ||CLOSED||

Lies and Damnation

As mentioned earlier, this book has been reviewed based on the following criteria:

♠Title
♠Cover
♠Blurb
♠Grammar
♠Point of view execution
♠Story pacing
♠Writing style
♠Punctuation
♠ Character introduction

It also contains comments and ways the writer can better their work. If the review makes you want to read the book, go right ahead.

Title: Lies and Damnation

Genre: Mystery/thriller

Writer: Anyone187

Review

Title: From the first five chapters I read, I can see a kind of loose connection between the story title and what's going on in the book, at least for the 'Lies' part. The 'Damnation' part also fits if I'm to look at it from a different context.

Overall, the title's pretty good. Intriguing is the word I'll use here. Good job.

Cover: The cover is not bad. It doesn't really catch attention at first glance but it's suitable for the genre. It subtly passes across the message or at least kind of relates with the title though I'm not sure it gives off any real imagery (in my opinion though). Someone from my team described it as 'soulful'. So yeah, I guess it's okay.

Blurb: I'm not really sure if I could call this a blurb. It's just a sentence which gives a basic summary of what the story is about. Now, while you're not meant to give out too much about your story, you're not meant to give out too little either.

After reading the blurb, the questions plaguing my mind were: Who is Nicholas? Why should I care about him? Why should I even want to know his story? What are the stakes?

There are no answers to these questions so if I were looking for what to read on a normal day, I'd just scroll by because for all I know, you might not actually have a story that's worth reading.

Grammar: The grammar was neat. It has to be the best I've seen so far because I don't remember seeing any mistakes. I had just one problem though. Pronouns exist for a reason. The use of the name 'Nicholas' became a bit redundant at a point. Apart from that, this was pretty good.

Point of view execution: This was a bit problematic and wasn't pulled off as smoothly as the grammar was. I noticed a switch between the third person omniscient narrator and the third person limited narrator.

The introduction of the name 'Milo' for the first time felt wrong for a few reasons. The first chapter was written in third person limited and for the name to be introduced without a hint from some other character or Milo himself giving an introduction (although this was done later), it could only mean the story was written by an omniscient narrator.

A limited narrator (which would actually just be writing from Nicholas's point of view while using third person pronouns) wouldn't have known Milo's name before he was introduced. An omniscient narrator on the other hand, would be able to know this.

Throughout the story, certain parts felt like it was written by an omniscient narrator but the lack of filter also made it read like it was written by a limited narrator.

The difference between the two types of narration is the presence or absence of filter. An omniscient narrator is an external body, a third person observer who probably isn't a part of the story but has unlimited knowledge about what is going on in the story.

It has different kinds, the objective and subjective narrator. Because I really don't want to dive too deep into explaining this, all I want to say is that if you intended to pull off a third person omniscient narrator (which would have to be subjective in this case) then the major problem you had was not giving your omniscient narrator a distinct voice (one which would have been easy to tell from the character's voice).

If you had intended to use the third person limited instead, a suggestion (for the part of Milo's introduction) would be to not mention the name 'Milo' before Milo introduced himself. It would have still worked out. So instead of:

Then, tentatively, he reached his hand up and touched his right eyes, as if seeing Milo's grey lens. . .

It should have been:

Then, tentatively, he reached his hand up and touched his right eyes, as if seeing the boy's grey lens. . .

Another suggestion would be to decide which POV you want the story to be told in and then maybe try rewriting the story in this POV.

Story pacing: Did the story ever feel slow to me? No, not at all. It didn't feel as if it was rushed either so here you'll get an A+. You did a very good job with the pacing.

Writing style: Permit me to gush over your writing style. For most parts I liked the description, the imagery was clear and it's obvious that you are a good writer. There was a tad bit of a problem though.

When Nicholas realized he was in a basement, there wasn't enough real description to show this. Just brick walls and stale air. This might have been the problem or perhaps it was the fact that he was quick to realize that he was in a basement.

For someone who just woke up from unconsciousness, a characteristic should have been slowed thinking. That might not really be the case but I still feel that part is worth revising.

Then I'll also like to talk about the use of adverbs. They weren't too much to the extent it became jarring or laborious to read but just like we've all been told a million times, mostly they weren't necessary.

Here's an example:

Nicholas craned his neck to look at Milo, his brows furrowed questioningly.

The sentence could have been just fine without the adverb. It actually made it look like telling, defeating the whole showing (brows furrowing and all).

Punctuation: I didn't have a problem with this. You pretty much observed most, if not all, the punctuation rules.

Character introduction: Apart from Milo's introduction (which I addressed earlier) the rest were just fine.

In all, this was a pretty good read. Really impressive and I could only hope you keep up the good work.