Our review book. All winners in our contests will have their books reviewed in this book. Not for requesting. To be reviewed you must win one of our competitions.
First, we'd like to publically apologize to Arya563 for how long this review has taken. We also want to say congratulations for your first place win in the Villain Banner Competition.
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Blurb:
A boy. An Evil Queen. A Book. A destiny.... When the army of the powerful Evil Queen Celestia Ebonywood, attacks a small village, and kills many of the residents, Ermon Maggwyn a young boy, is been taken along with others young children by the army to be trainned as a Warrior in The Army of the Evil Queen. years have passed and Ermon has become The Leader of The Warriors' Army. Queen Celestia,t sends Ermon in a hard, top secret mission; Go to the magical Forest of Morc Woods and steal The Book Of Life, from The Dark Elves. Ermon has to fulfill this mission no matter the cost. But are The Elves as Evil as they consider to? Will Ermon fulfill the mission or will he become one of the Elves?
REVIEW:
Title: The title feels very mystical like I'm about to open a book on a vast amount of lore. The title makes me want to know what Dragonia is and what's special enough about it to warrant a book. I think your title is intriguing and definitely something, that if I had heard about your book based on the title alone, that I would be interested in checking out.
Cover: That is one striking image. I mean, goodness, that dragon is terrifying! Part of me thinks the dragon is evil, but with the way it almost seems to be protecting the book in front of it, the other part of me thinks the dragon is just a very fierce looking protect of what is no doubt a precious book. I think the cover ties in well with the title. I wonder if you'd consider enlarging the title, right now the title is kind of an afterthought for the eye and I'd like to see it as a dominant presence along with the dragon.
Blurb: Your blurb does have a few grammatical errors, but nothing that a quick read through and run through something like Grammarly wouldn't fix. Other than that though, you've got a pretty decent blurb. Pretty much everything you need to know is there. I would like to know a bit more about the Book of Life. What is it and why is it so important to the Evil Queen? Also, where do dragons tie into the story? Since the cover features a dragon and the name of what I presume is a kingdom is Dragonia, I would have expected a mention of dragons in the blurb. What is the importance of dragons in this story?
Characters: I can't believe that Ermon had to witness the slaughter of his parents and entire adult village at such a young age. That's such a heartbreaking and truly damaging thing for such a young character. The only bright spot is that he has his friend Willem with him. Hopefully, Willem is a character that stays with him as he grows up. Ermon has already proved himself to be quite the handful, but he's still too young (and I'm still too early in the chapters) to get a full understanding and appreciation of his character. From what I've seen I'm starting to wonder if he was chosen to receive the Book of Life because he becomes the best soldier or because he causes the most interruptions in day-to-day life (i.e. causes the most issues), perhaps both? Meira and Theodwyn (I immediately thought of Theoden from LOTR, though their personalities don't quite match) are such a hopeful couple. Meira proved herself formidable and I loved her speech she gave to Theodwyn about the possibility of her death and how she would love him even after death, should she die. You'd think that I would've seen her death coming, but since the chapter was written in 3rd person limited with the focus on her (and since she seemed like such a vital figure) I didn't see her death coming. I honestly thought Theodwyn would be the one that would get killed (especially once he got the cut across his stomach). The ending of their relationship is very sad, but I'm eager to see how Theodwyn handles the kingdom and how Aenwyn fares without her mother.
Plot: The plot is easily identifiable and easy to follow. Your blurb does a good job in outlining what to expect from the story and each chapter contributes to following along with the outline of the adventure in the blurb without any deviations or distractions.
Overall: Getting some Eragon mixed with Lord of the Rings vibes going on, which I'm loving. I just have two major suggestions that I think will really knock this story out of the park. First, make sure you're proofreading your chapters, even if you just give each chapter a quick glance over, that will help prevent glaring grammatical issues. Likewise, running your chapters through Grammarly or a similar website/app may help you catch any errors, or hire an editor/beta reader from here on Wattpad who can help clean up some of the grammatical issues in the story. Second, the age-old advice for all writers: show don't tell. You do a lot of telling in your story, which isn't an awful thing. Sometimes telling is useful, but only for a couple of lines. Most things should be shown to the reader. Show us the setting, the characters. What do the emotions of fear, anger, panic look like or feel like or sound like? All of my writing professors tell me to really dig in deep and use sensory details (i.e. touch, taste, smell, sound, see) to help make the world more realistic. Show us the characters running, the wind blowing through their hair. Tell us what the village smelled like on the day of the festival. Capitalizing on sensory details really brings a story to life and this is a story that has so much in it already, adding vivid details would only serve to make it better. Good job!
Congratulations on your win and we hope to see you in upcoming competitions!
