In My Opinion

Ueberlebensschuld by yume_nikki

Full title: 𝘜𝘦𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘦𝘣𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘴𝘤𝘩𝘶𝘭𝘥 || The Hunger Games AU (ENG) by yume_nikki
Source: Feedback request
Genre: Fanfiction
Subgenre: Action
Fandom: The Hunger Games book series by Suzanne Collins
Mature: N (classism, sexual references, strong profanity)
Status: Ongoing
First impressions: 35/40
Digging deeper: pending
Final thoughts: pending

Clicking the "External Link" button below the "Continue to next part" button will take you straight to the book, or click the link in the inline comments here. →

*****

First impressions total: 35/40

Title: 10/10
Ooh, I love learning new things. And for everybody who doesn't know or doesn't read the blurb, I now realize this means "Survivor's guilt." Could there be a more apt title for a Hunger Games fanfic?

Story description: 8/10
Usually, I prefer blurbs to start with the blurb, but it makes perfect sense for yours to start with a definition and then move into the blurb. The definition itself hooks potential readers, so it doesn't detract from the blurb at all. It's a very logical progression to move from the title to the cover to the definition to the rest of the blurb. And I like the blurb, too. My main issue is with tenses. The overall tense is present tense, but the first sentence of the second paragraph is in past tense. It may be okay, as events that occur in the past when compared with the referenced point you've made the present should be in past tense, but it feels off to me. I'd probably change "came" to "comes" and "had" to "has." Then, in the very last sentence, it should be a comma instead of a semicolon, and use a full ellipsis of three periods at the end (...). And that's it.

Cover: 10/10
This cover has always been interesting to me. It's sort of vague and muddled, but when you sit and stare at it, you can pick out details, like leaves and rocks. It's as ambiguous as the future for new contestants in the Hunger Games. I love the brown color scheme, and the way the title, subtitle, and your name all simultaneously blend into the cover and pop out of it is quite frankly impressive.

First chapter (and everything that came before it): 7/10
I know I left detailed notes for everything when I first read this (apologies about the late review—not sure how I overlooked it), and it's been a while since I could do this, but I can actually copy and paste my overall comment after the first chapter here. I hope that doesn't mean this is an abandoned story. (Come back!)

Okay, you have no grounds to say you aren't a good writer, because you are. This is not the quality of writing I expect when a non-native English speaker asks me to look at their writing. A lot of native English speakers can't write this well. And, when I see a note that a piece of writing was originally a fanfiction between friends that wasn't something ever meant to be serious or read by others, that's usually a warning that the quality of writing may be less than stellar, but not here. Yeah, there are some issues I pointed out - slipping from past tense into present, comma placement, lowercase first letter of the first word after a hyphen, maybe a phrasing issue - but these aren't major issues at all. An editing tool would help you catch all of that and clean this up. Your character descriptions are really good. You pull the reader into Pagan and Jasmine's minds and show us what they're feeling and thinking in a way that's realistic and makes the reader feel and think those thoughts, too. It's too bad for Pagan and Jasmine that they got reaped for the Hunger Games, but I'm looking forward to the story.

*****

Digging deeper: pending