Cruel Reviews

Saga of a New World by LKrahn

1-9-2019

This is my tenth review and it's for Saga of a New World. Keep in mind that this review may no longer apply after a while, if the writer happens to edit their stuff eventually.

I want to get a few grammatical/spelling errors out of the way. 

Hoping that they 'will' reach, not would reach. 

Her mind. There's a space missing. 

And that's it.

The story is told in the third person present tense, circling around the perspective of a fresh high school graduate named Astrid. The plot revolves around a happy family on their way to visit their grandparents, when a radio message announces a nuclear attack. A fog settles in on their car, which begins to malfunction, and the family is forced to attempt to make their way on foot through the fog, during which time Astrid is separated from the others. She feels her own consciousness being overwhelmed by another, losing all sense of herself until she is mysteriously rescued from the fog which is where the chapter ends. 

The dialogue can be a bit incongruent at times. 'What foul magic is this' is a line more suited to a character hailing from the fantasy genre. Which is followed by her attempting to cast a spell so I suppose there is magic in this story and I completely missed it. And if there's not, then this is a strange part of the story and I would suggest removing it. At other points, the dialogue is unrealistic. In the same chain of thought, the mother states that watching her children grow up is 'so' weird and simultaneously 'kind of' weird. Those are two very different degrees. But at the same time, the dialogue has been strung together to form conversations very smoothly for which the author deserves to be commended. 

There are parts that do not flow well, such as the wake of the radio message in the car. Long winded sentences are not effective in establishing tense situations so a bit more work is needed to fully capture the intensity of the situation. Also, stating what the most likely explanation is can take away from the stunned confusion that this message has inspired in the listeners.

I also raise the question of why none of the characters in the car but the mother panic in the face of nuclear fallout. While it is never mentioned, their behavior seems rather numb, not for a moment considering the ramifications of a nuclear fallout. 

At the very beginning, only a single brother is mentioned and it is later revealed that there are two instead. The descriptions of the landscape are excellent and Astrid's walk through the fog is also captured impressively well. It is not an easy thing to cover the transition from a happy family vacation to a nuclear fallout but the author has managed it with a certain amount of stability, ending the note on a cliffhanger done properly. 

That brings me to the end of my review. This book his a total of 21 chapters and my review was for only the first chapter. GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR FUTURE WRITING LKrahn!