In My Opinion

Of Plots and Mischief by AnaqatRaschid

Full title: Of Plots and Mischief by AnaqatRaschid
Source: Review Shop by TheBlossomCommunity_
Genre: Fantasy

Mature: N
Status: Ongoing
English usage: UK
First impressions: 38/40
Digging deeper: 77/100
Final thoughts: Complete

Clicking the "External Link" button below the "Continue to next part" button will take you straight to the book.

The link to this chapter in the review shop is: https://www.wattpad.com/1474272870-review-shop-katie%27s-review-1

*****

First impressions total: 38/40

Title: 10/10
I'm always up for plots and mischief. Yes.🙂

Blurb/synopsis: 9/10
I have to echo what I wrote for the cover here. This is simply complex. You introduce the main character, the central plot conflicts, and all pertinent details in just a few sentences without extra info that really doesn't matter. Your grammar is clean, and the only thing I can possibly find wrong with this is the missing space between the two paragraphs. It would just look a little better with that. Otherwise, okay, seafaring merchant, naïve prince, political intrigue, personal quests-yep, I'm down.

Cover: 10/10
This is one of those covers that is complex in its simplicity. Just an image, a title, and the author's name. That's all. But it's the perfect image of sea, sky, and ship, and it's the perfect placement, style, size, and color of font, so it all works, and it doesn't need more. It speaks for itself.

First chapter: 9/10
Well, this is a very neat and tidy intro to this world and this story. You managed to give the reader a full background story for this particular time in this particular word without dropping an info dump on them, introduced the main character with a few pertinent facts about family, job, and magic, threw in some political conflict, and topped it all off with an epidemic reminiscent of COVID, without feeling overwhelming or too wordy. It all flows, and it all makes sense. The main character's Gift is intriguing, but it feels natural, and while the reader may question what it is, they don't question its place in his life and in this world.

Grammatically, this is very clean, but there are some areas of awkward or clumsy phrasing. Most commonly, these occur when you have two phrases using "as" in the same sentence, like: "In truth, it had been little over three years that he had come there, but he had frequented the ports in his childhood as he accompanied his father as he went about his work." Finding ways to reword so there's only one "as" removes repetition and improves flow. Also, in that sentence, I'd recommend adding an "a" before little and swapping "that" for "since."

Also, when you have a descriptive phrase following a noun or name, you should generally set it apart with commas on either side. So, for example: "His grandfather, the Sahora Garnvir had taught him..." is missing a comma after "Garnvir."

There are a few missed paragraph spaces, probably courtesy of Wattpad messing up formatting during copy/paste, so, unfortunately, you'll have to go in and fix those manually. Another issue I saw was using pronouns to refer to emotions (plural). You typically use "it," which is singular, and it would be more appropriate to use they/them to match the plural.

And one last thing. Bonus points for using "avuncular" in a sentence. 🙂

*****

Digging deeper: 77/100

Cover & title: 10/10
See "First Impressions" feedback.

Blurb: 4/5
See "First Impressions" feedback.