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addledwalrus - The Tour Guide

Title: The Tour Guide
Chapters read: 9
Score: 8.5/10

INTRODUCTION
The Tour Guide is a beautiful tale of Japanese mythology with a modern twist, chronicling the story of a fox spirit who must adapt to an ever advancing world. A dramatic tale of love and sorrow that'll be sure to not only entertain you, but also invoke a sense of sorrow from the book's strong and honest narrative.

What I LIKED about your book:
The writing style is actually very good! I loved the balance between information and emotion. There's certainly a fine line between enlightening your readers regarding the crucial knowledge in your book and creating a sense of pity for the characters' plight. The details are also finely written, narrated through a first-person point-of-view by the fox spirit herself. The unity of metaphors, direct words, and scenery created a perfect blend that is not only smooth to read, but also entertaining.

Your representation of grief when it came to Kumiko and Ichiro was perfectly represented. She described him as so distant that she had almost forgotten him but yet still loves him dearly. Definitely a gorgeous display of eternal grief.

The flashbacks also helped with revealing information and upping up the book's emotion factor. It's definite that Ishiro and Kumiko loved each other dearly and it's slowly revealed in flashbacks on how they formed this love. The flashbacks, on my opinion, is truly a smart instrument in not only drawing in readers in your story, but also in helping your readers sympathize with your characters and to relate with them.

Emotion and body language is also a very commendable factor here. Kumiko's actions and what she feels is thoroughly represented throughout the story. Such helped in emphasizing dramatic points in the story, and giving more life and authenticity to these characters.

What I DIDN'T LIKE about your book:
One thing I didn't like is that you tend to overdetail at some points but that's completely normal, especially to drafts. These mistakes are hard to detect unless you're reading closely and carefully.

Although the flashbacks deserved praise, the premise of the story was quite bland. The prologue was very intriguing but the following chapters didn't really portray the thrill that the prologue carried and disappointed a little. Understandable since most beginning chapters are literally just fillers, and it's actually good that you used the early chapters to give an insight to Kumiko's daily life, some action needed though!

The pacing of the story was also quite fast at the premise, paired without direction and rapidly changing narratives, the premise was a mess at some points. Although I can assure you that these were lost in the later chapters.

CONCLUSION:
Yep it's going to wait in my library.

But I have to tell you, this story is absolutely fantastic. Japanese mythology (or any type of mythology) fascinated me. And although there were portrayals of Greek (Percy Jackson) Norse (Thor, Avengers etc.) and Egyptian (Gods of Egypt) in mainstream media. I haven't found one regarding Japanese mythology. Well, regarding the modern twist, it was a great touch and gave me some love, death and robot vibes (The one where the fox spirit turns into a fully mechanized version of itself due to the industrial revolution and the disappearance if magic in the world)

Sorry for the word vomit! Thank you for the wonderful story!