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Review by Sunshine: The Prince's Heist

Title: The Prince's Heist

Author: _Gavriella_

Summary: 4/5

Okay, so some fantastic things are happening in this summary. I like the way you separately introduced each character and showed how they all merged as one. The ending line was captivating, and your one-sentence paragraphs were fantastic and executed effectively. Great job! I definitely do feel like I want to read more. However, there are some things that need polishing:

You first introduce the prince as the prince of the poorest nation. Then, in the next sentence, you mention he is seeking closure. I think you need to add a sentence before that to make the transition more seamless. Exactly what is he seeking closure for?

Also, I think I caught a typo in the following sentence:

With his smiles and cheerful attitude, he seek nothing but the well-being of his highness.

I think you meant 'seeks' instead of 'seek'.

Also, in the end, when you do your powerful, 'join the protagonists as they...', your tensing isn't quite right. I know the rest of your summary is in past tense, but it doesn't make sense to tell the reader to join the protagonists while you refer to the events in past tense. Why would the reader want to join something that has already happened? You can only join something as it is happening. So, it should be:

"Join our protagonists as they trace the path the journal laid for them and infiltrate nations to steal valuable..." 

Grammar: 3.5/5

For the most part, your story was clean and easy to read. There were definitely a few minor things that occasionally came up, though, and I thought I'd bring them up here.

First of all, I noticed in your summary that tense needs work. The story itself also had some odd switches between past tense and present tense. For example, in one sentence alone, you had switches tenses midway:

"They dropped their sabers to the soft green grass of the palace courtyard and head languidely to the nearest silver bench."

"They dropped their sabers..." [dropped = past tense]

"... head languidly to the nearest silver bench." [head = present tense]

There were also some awkward phrases that need revising. For example:

"Remembering the good times brought tears on his eyes."

The phrase is actually, "... brought tears to his eyes."

Also, throughout the story, you would switch between saying 'your highness', 'Your Highness', and 'Your highness'. Just a note: you shouldn't just uppercase the first letter of the first word. Since 'Your Highness' is used as a title, both the 'your' and the 'highness' should be capitalised. It should always be 'Your Highness'.

There was another capitalisation error I found. Sometimes you made this mistake, but other times you didn't – so I'm not sure whether you know the rule. But let's look at the following sentence:

"You missed me darling, didn't you?" He said.

The word 'he' does not start a new sentence. Rather, it is still a continuation of the dialogue. Therefore, the 'he' does not need to be capitalised. It should be:

"You missed me darling, didn't you?" he said. 

Character Building: 4.5/5

Where to start?

First of all, the dialogue is fantastic. The characterisation oozed out of the dialogue – we could easily see Marius' charm, Quentin's determination and Maddie's wit. It also made the character relationships very clear – we could see how stilted Quentin's relationship was with his father, we could see the playful banter between the friends – it was all executed very well.

Now, I LOVED Marius. I thought he was an adorable cinnamon roll. I loved the way him and Quentin seemed to contrast each other. And then I read the most recent chapter and his betrayal broke my heart. Like, dammit, when he was loading that gun, I should have suspected something was up – but, like Maddie, I just thought he was dead-set on protecting his 'best friend'. Ouch. My heart still hurts.

But that was a great moment! Because the smiley, charming Marius completely juxtaposed the person we saw in that moment. Well done ripping my heart out!

Overall, the perspective switches were easy to follow, distinct and clear. I think Maddie's voice was my favourite to follow – for me, it was the most engaging and also the most natural.

Just a quick note on characters: when you introduce them, try not to break away from the story to describe what they look like. For example, when we met the King, you wrote:

"The King of the Sovereign of Europe has a pair of fierce and strong dark eyes."

Avoid breaking away from the story to tell us this. Instead, try weaving these details and descriptions into the story. Tell us that the King raised his fierce, dark eyes towards Quentin – that way, the story is still progressing as there is movement, but we also get a glimpse of what the character looks like.

Writing Style: 4.5/5

It was so nice to see the way you seamlessly wove in descriptions of your setting into the story! You didn't bombard the reader with too much information, but also gave us enough to envision the scene. Well done there!

I also loved your manipulation of sentence structure. Your use of short, snappy sentences was incredibly effective – particularly when Quentin got shot. We could feel the panic Maddie felt as she tried to help him, and that made the moment more fast-paced and exhilarating to read.

Just be careful to avoid redundancy. There were some moments where you would narrate what was happening even though it wasn't necessary. For example:

"Some kind of formula..." The lady decided to share what little things she noticed. "This is a DNA sequence over here..."

You don't need to tell us that the lady decided to share it with them. We can see that for ourselves. 

Plot + Uniqueness: 5/5

This story is incredibly unique! I don't often associate 'royalty stories' with science-fiction, but you've done a fantastic job at combining all these elements and genres into one! Yes, we have princes and balls, but we also have smartphones, tubes, chips, decoding... I don't think I've ever read a story like yours before. Great work.

Overall, the story kept evoking questions and slowly gave us answers. It was very satisfying reading about the characters finding the answers for themselves, and it was so nice learning about the world and technological background about serums and chips as the chapters progressed. 

OVERALL SCORE: 21.5/25

Overall, a great story thus far that has just reacted an incredible climax! Make sure you work on polishing up a few tense issues, but otherwise, you're doing a great job. I hope this review helps.