Please remember that my reviews are just my takes on things, you do not have to take my advice at all if you don't feel it fits the essence of your story. After all, I am only reading a few chapters, other readers might have different takes.
Reverie's Review:
The thing that struck me was your stripped-back writing style. It was very clean and elegant and I genuinely found myself drawn into a minimalistic world which is difficult to do, especially at the start of a narrative. Your action scenes and sentences were of good length to achieve the style you wanted, short punchy and to the point. Your flow disruptions were not major issues and were just due to needing a layer or two of edits. Pay attention to your grammar and capitalisation, it can only help to strengthen your already strong prose.
Your combat scenes were the strongest point that you had going for you. It gave me anime fight scene vibes, which, as an anime fan, I adore, and we must admit that if there is one thing anime, and by extension you, got right, is a good fight scene choreographing. I genuinely enjoyed the way you wrote out simplistic yet elegant combat scenes
However, I do want to point out that the shift from Elyza to just having her named as "The Elf" was a little jarring and kept pulling me out of the narrative. I would suggest consistency with the information that the characters and the readers know regarding base information, such as names. (Unless hidden identity is a part of the narrative in which case please feel free to ignore me)
The prologue is exceptionally strong, I immediately jumped to the next chapter to find out what happens. I resonated with the exhaustion of Alexander, especially in the last line which is very powerful.
Your plot is a solid one, an assassin and an elf form an alliance to murder the Earl. (I did expect him to turn for coin but I am glad he didn't). This part did flag up a point on my end, it would be helpful if we could have some more world context to make the stakes apparent and give us more insight into the character's backgrounds, and therefore, their motivations.
As the narration progresses, I believe you could consider combining the first two chapters for pacing's sake. Publishers tend to only read the first three chapters, so pushing the fourth chapter up might be highly beneficial due to the plot accelerating exponentially at that point. It would showcase the best parts of your work.
Alexander's character arc is unfolding gradually throughout the narrative; his interactions with other characters, such as Elyza and the Earl, provide opportunities for exploration of his beliefs, values, and relationships. However, while Alexander's characterization is strong, I believe there is room for deeper exploration of his emotional headspace, particularly during decision-making and introspection. Take a moment to just delve into your character's head, and bring back that introspective exhaustion we saw in the prologue, I feel it might add additional emotional layering to your work. I would like to have more outside-of-combat interactions with Alexander, perhaps in a slightly more relaxed state of mind for a little longer. It would develop his personality past the effective assassin you have proven him to be.
The sensory and descriptive elements of this story were great. However, while the descriptions of the immediate surroundings were well done, I found myself left with many questions about the larger world. You painted a beautiful scene, now it's time to delve into the setting. I must stress that your descriptives, while gory and not usually my thing, were very well executed given the context. Including details about the history, culture, and geography of the world in which the story takes place can only deepen your world. By providing additional context and background information, you can enrich the world-building and provide readers with a more comprehensive understanding of the story's universe. Explaining a little more about magic especially would be particularly interesting given the genre that you are operating within. History too would be a great point, especially since you have different humanoid sentient species, it would be cool to get more insight into them and their world and histories and traditions.
I am aware that all this is predicated on the first 7 chapters or so that I have read, however even including mild elements of this would help build a more engaging three-dimensional world to not only hook your readers but to keep them hooked for the whole ride!
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