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Review by Sunshine: Under My Wings

Title: Under My Wings

Author: NathanRound

Summary: 4/5

Your summary is pretty fantastic. You briefly introduce the protagonist, the angel, and their purpose, you introduce the context and setting with a bit of history, and you also emphasise the stakes at hand. I Great work! I loved the use of rhetorical question. There are, however, a few things I noticed:

"One long angel, embarks on a mission..."

If you read that sentence aloud, naturally, there isn't a pause between the words 'angel' and 'embark'. I would take away the comma. It's unnecessary. Secondly:

"Or will war finds it's way out of Hell..."

It should be "its", not "it's".

And, finally, I suggest breaking your big paragraph into smaller chunks. While everything flows rather cohesively, your summary is sorted into parts in a way, and I think these parts should be split up a bit for the sake of fluency and even a bit of drama. I, personally, would split it like this:

"The angels of Heaven have turned a blind eye on the human world ever since their father has vanished. For thousands of years, Heaven has remained at peace, for their enemy has long been defeated.

However, a storm is brewing. Dark Ones have begun to pour out of the darkest corners of the world.

One lone angel embarks on a mission to stop them from finding an ancient artefact, which may very well open the gates of Hell. As a result, Earth will perish, Heaven will soon follow.

Will the angel succeed in preventing a hellish cataclysm? Or will war find its way out of Hell and to other worlds beyond?"

That way, the chunk is split, easier to read, and just a tad bit more organised.

Grammar: 2.5/5

Okay, so there were a few things I caught, so I'll break them all down here. First of all, tenses. It can be incredibly tricky working out how to reference the future when you're writing in past tense. Let's look at an example:

"The singes all over reminded him of that but, given time, they'll heal."

The above sentence switches from past to present tense. Let's break it down to show that:

"The singes all over reminded him..." [reminded = past tense]

"... they'll heal." [they'll = present tense]

It's a bit tricky, but "they'll" is basically a shortened form of "they will". The word 'will' is used in present tense, and if you were writing in past tense, you would replace 'will' with 'would'. So the sentence should be:

"The singes all over reminded him of that but, given time, they would heal."

There were also minor errors throughout your story – you wrote "eye's" instead of "eyes", and your story contained quite a few run-on sentences. You also used semicolons inaccurately. A semicolon is used to separate two clauses that can work perfectly as sentences on their own, but are strongly intertwined. You have written:

"Taking a moment, he bite against his bottom lip, realising his once most beautiful feature was now disfigured; leaving him mortally wounded in the process."

That use of semicolon is inaccurate because the clause, 'leaving him mortally wounded in the process', does not work as a sentence on its own.

And, finally, dialogue and punctuation. 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:

"I cannot stay long," his emerald spheres shifted to the woman.

This is inaccurate. Since the 'his emerald spheres' is not verbal, it should be:

"I cannot stay long." His emerald spheres shifted to the woman.

Character Building: 4/5

Thus far, it has been a bit hard to judge characterisation since we haven't had that many chapters to really delve into the character and see the way they react to the conflict at hand, but, from what I can see so far, you're doing a great job.

I liked seeing the way Abzeth grappled with his feelings – and the way you often seep his thoughts into the writing is a clever way to show this. I love the use of rhetorical question, and his actions and thoughts felt very true to his character. It didn't feel awkward, and you can certainly tell that he's wave of thought is different to the thought processes of a human protagonist.

Actually, I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but the formal writing suited the character so, so well. Even though it's in third person, the way you show Abzeth moving around through the writing makes it sound like someone foreign to the world is trying to navigate their way around. I think it suits the story exceptionally well. Great job!

Writing Style: 4/5

I am loving your use of literary devices throughout your story! Whether you use it to describe things visually, or whether you use it to compare and contrast the way your characters feel, it's just so nice to see you use personification, simile and metaphor throughout your writing.

I'm also loving your manipulation of sentence structure – particularly in that prologue! I loved reading those one-word sentences – they really added a dramatic punch. Great work there.

And it's so nice to see you incorporating your worldbuilding by fleshing out simple details that would normally be glossed over. It was great to see the detail in which you described the retraction of wings, and it was also great to see the description of the apartment to make it seem even more mundane and make Abzeth seem even more unfamiliar to the setting.

Again, the only thing that really broke the fluency and effectiveness of your writing style was your accidental changes of tense here and there – so I recommend going back and working on that. 

Plot + Uniqueness: 4/5

It's a little hard to judge a plot from four chapters only, but this seems like a promising start! Your beginnings and endings of chapters are incredibly strong, and the introduction of new, more fantasy-esque terms is smooth – thus, making this story very accessible to readers. From what I can see, your story is heading in the right direction.

It also is very unique from what I can see – I can't say the whole 'angel' concept is new, but I can say that you've taken your own, interesting spin on it and I can't wait to see where you take it. 

OVERALL SCORE: 18.5/25

Overall, a rather promising introduction to a story! I also want to say that I was so thrilled to see your request – I do remember writing a review for you previously, and I'm touched that you've come back and asked me for a second one. I hope this review helps you just as much as the first one did!