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Review by Sunshine: Revenant Reborn

Title: Revenant Reborn

Author: Blue_Kiwi_777

Summary: 4/5

Good, captivating summary! It introduces the main character, the world and a bit of the conflict – so well done there! I love the dramatic snappiness of those sentences the lead up to the end. There are a few things that need brushing up, though. The sentence:

"And now to top it off, she's going..."

It needs an additional comma. It should be:

"And now, to top it off, she's going..."

Also I'd take away the 'FBLE aka' and just reveal the full name of the organisation. Otherwise, great work here. 

Grammar: 3.5/5

It was mostly pretty easy to read because of minimal grammatical errors, but I can't say it was perfect. For one, there were these random spaces between words and punctuation, as well as weird gaps between the punctuation and closing inverted commas? Probably just typos, I assumed, because they were inconsistent.

Another thing was punctuation at the end of dialogue. If dialogue is followed by a verbal tag (such as 'he said', 'she whispered', 'she exclaimed' – or anything referring to how the character says the words), there should be a comma before the closing inverted commas. If it's anything else, this comma should be replaced by a period (or a question mark for a question and exclamation mark for an exclamation). For example:

"It's something you wouldn't know about," he poked my sweater.

Because the "he poked my sweater" has no relevance to how the words are spoken, and does not verbally show us how the words were spoken, there should be a period instead. It should be:

"It's something you wouldn't know about." He poked my sweater. 

Character Building: 3.5/5

I'm going to start by saying there were a lot of amazing quips that Starr had when she narrates. I love her sarcasm and wit, and her tone is quite conversation – which is a great thing!

However, there was quite a lot of info-dumping about the character in that first chapter (excluding the prologue). It felt like a 'this is how I got here' sort of thing, and was actually quite detaching because it was too much telling and not enough showing. My suggestion? Find a way to introduce it slowly by putting her in a situation that forces her to introduce everything. For example, if you want to introduce a monster and what they look like, how they are created and all that jazz, you would put a character in a fight with them so that, in between the action, there are subtle snips of information about the monster for the reader to understand.

Also, there was quite a lot of name dropping. In your situation, it was fine, because most of the name-dropping was from a list when they were partnering people up. However, when you do introduce characters, make sure you slow down the pace for the readers to get a proper glimpse of them and ease into the story. Otherwise, all the characters will begin blending into one another.

Writing Style: 2.5/5

As I mentioned before, lots of telling instead of showing. For example, in the prologue:

'I was in the woods.'

Show it to us. How does she know she is in the woods? Are there withered branches surrounded her? Is the mud rutted beneath her? Can she smell the damp leaves? Really use some figurative language to flesh out your story, ground the readers, and add richness to the writing. Literary devices are so helpful.

I also encourage you to manipulate sentence structure more! Be playful! Try using dramatic, one-word sentences. Or even one-sentence paragraphs. They can add a dramatic flair to the story and heighten tension even more. 

Plot + Uniqueness: 4/5

Very hard to judge plot when there are only three chapters, but I love the concept! I love the ideas, the worldbuilding and the prologue was amazing. Really great work there. I do think you can weave in the worldbuilding more subtly, but I understand how difficult it is to do – so props to you with everything you have so far!

Biggest suggestion for your chapters and future chapters: keep the writing purposeful. Make every sentence have meaning. If the reader doesn't need to know something just yet, don't tell them. Keep them wanting more. If some moments won't contribute to the overall plot, don't include it. Keep everything as relevant as possible.

OVERALL SCORE: 17.5/25

Overall, a very promising start! You've got a wonderful idea and a captivating prologue! Just make sure you work on the punctuation rules and characterisation, but otherwise, you're good to go. I hope this review helps!