Sapphire's Review Store 3.0

Review by Jacob: Letters in the Whirl of Time

Title: Letters in the Whirl of Time

Author: GiftiFikir

Reviewer: Prince_Pretence

Cover: 1/5

It's messy, unorganised and doesn't serve much to the story. We have been advised from ages ago to not judge a book on its cover, but the truth is that a book is always judged on its cover. Cover for this book doesn't really tell us anything about the book other than the title. Too many colours and too amateur execution. It can be done better by designing something that tells us more about the story.

Blurb: 4/5

One thing that almost instantaneously caught my eye was the improper formatting. I'm assuming that 'sky' and 'star' are characters here, which means that these names work as nouns. A lot of missed spaces and grammatical errors. I loved Star's part, though. Man, the character has a lovely vocabulary.

To the content of the blurb. This is one of the few times that even though the blurbs haven't filled the reader on four main aspects: aim, characters, setting, and stake, it is still fascinating, and we want to know more. Sky's words here are pure innocence and curiosity. At the same time, Star is limited in her dialogue and explains why Sky is so curious. From what I gather, Letters In The Whirl Of Time runs in two different spaces. Miamor is a setting, a location where one side of the things happens, and I side with Sky's questioning about where is it from and how? While I love Star's vocabulary, I could not understand what is the character referring to? Befall of a disaster? Star's name is perhaps, Hannah, as Sky has referred to, so is Hannah replying to the same letter? If so, then what attack is she formulating? She is royalty or someone with high social standing that I know. So far, there's a mood in the whole thing: Sky is the curious commoner, and Star is the mysterious royalty. I'm hooked to know how these two are communicating, why, and who they really are to call themselves 'sky and star'.

Grammar: 3/5

For the most part, Grammar is sleek. The word choice is quite flowery at times. Like in the blurb. Where, at one point, I almost questioned my own extent of vocabulary. As far as the tenses and typos go—there are none. Then again, I'm not the most prominent judge of Grammar. One difference that I've noticed is that the language is distinctive when the story runs in the form of letters between Sky and Star. The 'voice' of the writing, [writing style, in one sense] changes to something more uniform but extremely simplistic when the narrative turns to focus on Sky or Star alone [the non–letter part]. This is not bad, yes, but the details in the non–letter parts are not enough to tell us more about the Sky and Star, which is why I'm unable to decide what purpose those parts serve. Especially, given to the fact that the non-letter parts exist only for the first few chapters. More on this in Plot and Writing Style sections. As for Grammar alone, lesser adverbs and adjectives will do. Websites like Hemingway Editor can be used for basic editing [I'm not the official sponsor of Hemingway Editor, I swear]. Also, the formatting throughout the book is literally rammed into each other. I think this might be a problem because the story was written in Notepad or some software of the ilk and directly copied to Wattpad's editor. It's not a grammar error, but it definitely took away the visual value and made it hard to read the text.

Character Building: 2.5/5

The story has developed. The characters? To know character development, I must know the characters from the lens that they aren't holding. Star, who engages in one side conversation for the better part of the first few chapters, is shy, a young woman [or, girl?] who believes in freedom and her choice, at least when it comes to marriage. To be honest, I love the character as she is. No, not her misery, but the part where she wants to stand up for herself, but cannot do so because that doubt, inability to speak up, and general confusion is gnawing her. She is the epitome of a strong [female] character whom I like and can relate to because not all of us are Disney Princess with a sharp tongue who can just speak when they want to. No. Star's efforts to be a part of her family and stand up for herself are as heartbreaking as they make her 'human' and make me want to support her. She is a lovely, kind person—something that I've never regarded a character before. She is optimistic, a bit early on patience, and, overall, acts really human. I don't think if I've ever seen a 'royal' or 'rich,' 'strong' and 'female' character before who is so real and beautifully shown through the thoughts they're sharing in a freakin' letter!