Carte Reviews (Closed)

Juliette: Blood of the Empire

Reviewed by Dragonrat703

Author: QueenOfSecrets1308
Title: Blood of the Empire
Genre: Historical Fiction/ Fantasy

Cover 5/5

The cover is very beautiful. Its artwork is old-fashioned and nostalgic, which helps with its medieval theme, and the person in battle armor on the front signals the genre and tone of the story immediately. The font is very beautiful as well. Excellent job.

Blurb 5/5

Your blurb is excellent. You have a great hook, and you explain the world well without info-dumping. You end on some great questions. No improvement needed.

Title 4/5

It describes the book well and conveys the genre excellently, but it's not very distinctive. It feels generic, and I didn't feel excited by reading it. However, it does fit the story, and should be fine.

Plot 7/10

The plot was very well done and complex, with complex motivations and relations. However, it was slowed down considerably by an extreme overdose of exposition. For example, during the fight scene, Nila explains about the swords and what they mean, which is interesting information, but not necessary to the scene. It slowed down the fight scene and grew a bit boring, which is a bad thing to do before your readers are invested in the plot. When the king was dying, Nila also broke off into exposition, which killed the otherwise grief-stricken mood. Try to save exposition for when it's absolutely necessary, and never do more than a couple of paragraphs before getting back to the plot. You have a brilliantly crafted world, but sometimes it's best to keep those details hidden until later, for the sake of the plot. That said, I could tell you worked very hard on the plot, and you paid off with a very complex world.

Character development 12/15

Your characters are nicely developed and have clear motivations. I like that Jua isn't completely evil and you mentioned that his actions are partially caused by the king's death. Nila makes for a strong character, and the others are interesting as well. However, Nila was supposed to be close to the king, but she seems to get over his death much too quickly. She shows extreme and raw grief while he is dying, but then afterwards never shows much leftover grief or sadness. Losing someone so close to you would have lasting effects, and I would recommend tying this into the story more. Also, you have a habit of telling us characters' feelings and motivations instead of showing us. For example, "She was visibly upset at teh change in character she had just witnessed." Instead of saying this, you could describe her face and emotions. Instead of informing us that a character is bitter or angry, show us through their body language and actions. And as a last critique, your dialogue felt clunky and robotic in certain parts. You were trying to make them sound formal, but they ended up sounding unnatural and unfeeling. Try reading the dialogue out loud to fix this. That said, the relationships between the characters are very well done and I like how the way Nila presents herself changes depending on who she is talking to. It makes her and her relationships feel real. Good job, overall.

Spelling and grammar 9/10

There was two instances where you used "her" instead of "I," but other than that your spelling and grammar were spotless. Reading through can help you catch the mistakes.

Overall 7/10

It has a great premise and an interesting plot. Cleaning up the dialogue and cutting back on all the expositon will help make it even better. Excellent job!