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Akarshika [Alba]

Book: Akarshika
Author: KanhaiyakiSakhi9112
Reviewer: oraclesighter
Chapters read: 10

Starting off with the blurb, the first paragraph is a great introduction to our protagonist. Your description of her beauty is incredibly vivid and easy to picture, carefully chosen with just the right words. It gives me a clear idea of who we’re going to get to read about and how she’s depicted by the others in her kingdom. I imagine her beauty shall be an important factor of the story?

Moving onward, the oncoming paragraphs set the stakes and conflict of the story, which offers a clear and compelling premise that truly makes me want to find out more.

It has the perfect structure of a blurb, with an introduction, a conflict, and a conclusion. Overall, it’s well done.

And very quickly, I just want to express my appreciation for the cover. It’s incredibly attention-grabbing. The color scheme fits well with the rest of the elements, the font, the background, and overlays… As well as the title.
Suitable for the storyline.

Concerning the plot, it’s a clever premise you’ve gotten across, judging from the blurb. But when I started reading the chapters, things seemed to start off incredibly slow.

The scene where the maid bursts into Akarshika’s room in the first chapter didn’t really make much sense to me? Apparently, from what I can tell, Akarshika has recently returned from a trip — so I understand why the maid may want to be close to her in case she’d need anything. But from the paragraph describing her way to Akarshika’s chamber, I was expecting something more interesting to happen. That perhaps she’d bring forth a message or important news, etc.

Why are you shining so much light on the maid’s arrival, if it was never important in the first place?

Moving onto the next chapters, I wouldn’t say I felt necessarily invested in the story. You’ve got somewhat of a hook in chapter one, but a very vague one.

Queen Arshi lets Akarshika know that she’ll be going on another trip after just coming back home from one — however, what kind of trip is this? Why does she have to leave just because the Pandavas and Kauravas have returned? There’s not enough context as to what’s going on. I get that there’s an air of suspense you’re trying to add, but it won’t be suspenseful if we don’t have at least an idea of what will happen.

In the second chapter, Harsh explains the Pandavas’ past with light information about who they are today— but we still don’t actually know who they are. We aren’t delivered any important information of who they are and what they want.  Are they bad? Are they good? Should we care?

In the third chapter, Akarshika advises Uluka to stay away from them, as well as Uluka wondering how they’ll be treated. This makes me assume the Pandavas are leaning toward the “bad guy” side. But if Akarshika asked for enlightenment about them from Harsh, seeming to not know too much about them, why is she telling Uluka to stay away from them if she barely even knows who they are?

However, when I get toward chapter 6, the Pandavas seem to act more like close family and are celebrated. I’m rather confused as to who these people are and what I’m supposed to feel when I see them. What’s their purpose? What do they have to do with the story? Why is the main character so repelled by them at the start?

Moving onward, there’s no actual hook installed — nothing to keep me reading. I think it would be more interesting if I actually knew what would happen on the departure, why Akarshika is leaving. As I mentioned before, I understand it’s because the Pandavas arrived, but I still don’t actually know what that entails.

In a way, the blurb was filled with so many compelling elements that I was really expecting to get on a wild ride for this story. But things take off so slow, it seems like we’ll never actually get to the inciting incident.

Nothing seems to actually happen other than a bunch of characters meeting each other? I suppose it works as a sort of build up for the inciting part, but you need to hint on why we have to stay, what the inciting incident will be. Get suspenseful, give us a tinge of the main conflict unweaving at the start of the story, tease at us with gripping moments that’ll make us want to read more.

In chapter 10-12, things started to happen. I think it was because of Akarshika’s reflection on her life since she’s preparing her brother to become a future king, including a hint of intriguing backstory concerning her family and childhood. We also got to see Yudhishtir, which was certainly attention-grabbing because we got some romance going on.

I see that this story is still ongoing and it’s not completed. I also saw your note expressing your opinions of readers not sticking around for long and eventually having the reads go down.

I think that your readers leave because they don’t see a conflict to be hooked into. The beginning doesn’t really seem to go anywhere and the reader doesn’t get a single hint of the conflict you mentioned in the blurb. You have to create a hook for the first few chapters, something that’ll guarantee suspense and for your audience to want to find out more.

Moving onto mechanics, I do think you have wonderful descriptions of places and clothing of characters. I can easily imagine what they’re wearing, but I can’t imagine what they look like.

The character guide at the start may help clarify how the characters look like, but even so, they’re too many to keep up with. Which will eventually lead us to forget how they were portrayed as in the character aesthetics page — not to mention that there are readers who totally skip those chapters and just dive right into the story.

I’d like you to give more descriptions surrounding looks, not just clothing. This way, we can imagine more clearly how each character looks. And therefore even get reminded of the character aesthetic just by recognizing their facial features you’ve just described.

And now that we’re at it, I’d like to address the issue concerning character names.

Akarshika apparently has a nickname, which is Indu. Now, this is acceptable in dialogue, having other characters address her by her nickname. However, when you, as the author, start to use both her real name and her nickname in writing, it gets incredibly confusing. We already have such a tremendous cast of characters to keep track of, so you switching between two names for ONE character just adds to the disorientation even further. I’d suggest you only have the characters of the story call each other by nicknames, meanwhile you only use one name for your character.

Other than that, I think you’ve got a pretty good story going. The concept is intriguing, as well as how you present the book — it’s attractive. However, I’d like to see the story become more fast-paced and have stronger hooks at the start of the story.

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