Rebel Town Reviews [OPEN]

Shadow Rise (Epigraph - 3) @Solidarity_

Shadow Rise (Epigraph - Chapter 3) by Solidarity_

Reviewed by AmyMarieZ

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Overview: Shadow Rise is an action-packed fantasy sci-fi story, with a huge helping of humor on the side. The story follows the main character Johnson, a veterinary assistant by day, illegal arms cartel worker by night. However, Johnson might be destined for something else, if the opening few scenes of the story are any indication. The story has some fantasy/sci-fi elements going on, and as Johnson runs into trouble with the cartel, it seems like there might be some intervention from other forces about to lead his life in an unexpected direction.

Structure/Aesthetics: The presentation of Shadow Rise is extremely professional and aesthetically pleasing. The story begins with a brief Author's Note, and then there is a short Epigraph, followed by a prologue titled "Then". The next part of the story is a graphic image of a note from an unknown person to his child named "Eric". From there, the story begins with chapter 1.

Throughout the story, scene breaks are presented with stylized images that give the text a clean, professional and polished look. Text images are also used at the beginning of each chapter to present the title and chapter number.

The cover of the story looks like it belongs on a printed book. The title text is professional looking, and the color selection is eye grabbing and nice to look at.

Grammar: The grammar in Shadow Rise is nearly perfect. There are no typos or mistakes in the text. However, there are a few oddities in the writing style that are grammatical.

The story is written in the first person past tense. The nature of the narration is that the narrator is telling the story directly to the reader, at times breaking the fourth wall. Therefore, it is natural that some of the story is in the present tense, because it is current or ongoing states that exist at the time the story is being told. While most of the tense shifts flow naturally and make sense with the style and narrative voice, at times the switches in tense come across as abrupt or do not seem to fit. A focus on consistency with each idea/subject and a consistency within sentences or paragraphs could help reduce the abruptness of these tense shifts. Additionally, focusing on what truly is a current state of the narrator and what is no longer current could help. The exact location where abrupt tense shifts were seen have been pointed out with inline comments in-story and will not be rehashed here.

Another interesting grammatical choice is sentences frequently beginning with the word "and'. In general, this seems to be a stylistic choice and expresses the voice of the narrator. While the use of "and" at the beginning of a sentence is not jarring itself, at times "and" is used to begin a sentence when it doesn't quite relate to the preceding statement. Cutting down on the number of sentences that begin with "and" might help improve the flow of the story, as well as make the times when it is used shine more, because at some points it works extremely well.

Pace: The pace of the story is well done overall. Each chapter presents exciting and new action. The balance between action, dialog, and description allows the story to move at a real time pace, making it easy to visualize. The plot progresses at a rate fast enough to keep the reader's attention, but not too quick where anything feels rushed or unclear.

One thought about the pace of the story is that after three chapters, there have still been no hints about the fantasy or sci-fi elements the story will include, with the exception of the first "prologue" scene called "Then" and the epigraph. Drawing some of these fantasy/sci-fi elements into the story soon could help to tie the epigraph and prologue in with the current action, and get the story moving forward. A consideration could be leaving subtle hints through the beginning of the story before hand to suggest the fantasy elements to come. However, having not read the rest of the chapters, it is difficult to tell if this would be appropriate or beneficial to the story.