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Review by Sunshine: Hocus Lovus

Title: Hocus Lovus

Author: topherdreams

Summary: [NO SCORE GIVEN – WILL NOT BE INCLUDED IN FINAL SCORE]

I couldn't give a score to your summary (the one in the description, anyways), simply because it was difficult to score. You've chosen a rather unconventional summary, in that it's a poem that's quite vague but intriguing. While I can't really score this, I can say that some people will be captivated by it but some people might not be. Just another joy of writing – it's so completely subjective! 

Grammar: 3.5/5

The story was pretty easy to follow with minor interruptions due to grammatical errors. However, there were two things that really stuck out to me that need some polishing.

Firstly, semicolons. A semicolon is used to separate two clauses that can work perfectly as sentences on their own, but are strongly interrelated. A semicolon can even be used to replace some conjunctions. Let's look at an example from your work:

"Some topics seem to blow his gaskets to oblivion, mostly anything related to their father; the callous, selfish powermonger."

In this example, the semicolon is inaccurate because "the callous, selfish powermonger" does not function as a sentence on its own. I would suggest a hyphen instead of the semicolon.

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:

"Shut up, Rarity." Annabella snaps.

The above example is inaccurate. The "Annabella snaps" is a verbal tag that directly refers to the words, as they are snapped. So it should be:

"Shut up, Rarity," Annabella snaps. 

Character Building: 4/5

There are lots of great things happening here! Your dialogue is wonderfully engaging, occasionally comedic, and always easy to follow. You show emotions well – especially by using figurative language to show the reader how the character feels. The character interactions are great, and we can see depth in each character as they continue to grow.

Another great thing was that the characters felt very unique. Perhaps it was the writing style that gave me this vibe, but some characters, like Slater, felt as if they had a badass but philosophical edge to them. That's not an easy thing to achieve – so well done there.

My biggest critique would be the overwhelming amount of characters introduced. In the first chapter, we meet: Vicker, Aisha, Osiris, Slater, Batiste, Mr Mihir, Erin, Annabella, Rarity and Ababio. That's a total of 10 characters in a single chapter. Can you see how this can be too much for a reader to take in? Too many names, too many introductions – it is quite overwhelming for a reader. Please remember that the reader doesn't know your characters as well as you do, so try keeping the characters purposeful and consider introducing them only when they are necessary. Mind you, having 50+ characters is perfectly fine for a story, but you can't introduce too many in that first chapter. You need to let the reader sink into the story. 

Writing Style: 4.5/5

I don't have much to say here except praise. Your writing style is incredibly unique – it is this strange mix of poetic writing and snappy, witty and almost cynical writing. I'm struggling to describe it in words, but whatever you're doing, keep it up! It's so refreshing to see an author write so descriptively, so well done to you there.

I also loved your manipulation of sentence structures. Seeing those one-sentence paragraphs were wonderful and a great juxtaposition to your bulkier paragraphs. I am also thrilled to see that you're really exploiting those literary devices – I'm a sucker for metaphors and personification.

My one critique would be that some of your word choices felt a bit... extra? Sometimes, it got to a point where I had to look up several meanings of a single word because some words simply did not make sense in some settings. For example:

"Just let it go already." Vicker protracts.

I looked it up, and protracting means 'prolonging' roughly, so this made very little sense to me. There were also some other words that seemed out of place, such as senectitude. I can appreciate you are trying to extend your vocabulary, but keep it relevant. It's best to stick to familiar language for a reader to connect with the writing. If you're going to use a sophisticated word, make sure it fits and make sure you don't oversaturate the writing with complex, hard-to-understand words. 

Plot + Uniqueness: 4/5

I have to say, I haven't read a story like this before! While I admit that the school-ish setting isn't exactly different, the writing style, characterisation and magical themes made it stand out very much. It was also very interesting to see our own pop culture woven into this story as well. Very, very intriguing! The story reminded me a bit of the Shadowhunters series in a way, but perhaps that's because that's where I was first introduced to warlocks.

There were some little twists and snippets of information that left me genuinely surprised and even had me rereading some sections to make sure I wasn't making things up – so great job there! Osiris getting married? Whoaaa.

It was hard to score plot since there really aren't too many chapters, but I can see the story started getting wheels by chapter two – which is wonderful. I encourage you to keep things purposeful, especially those descriptions. Whenever you want to write something, make sure it will contribute in some way to the overall plot. 

OVERALL SCORE: 16/20

Great job! You have a beautiful writing style. All you need to do is work on your punctuation and word choice, and you'll be good to go! I hope this review helps.