Sapphire's Review Store 3.0

Review by Brooklyn: The Lady in the Weeping Mansion

Title: The Lady in the Weeping Mansion 

Author: BrutalRice

Reviewer: brooklyn-rose-15

Summary: 3/5

You've got some great things happening here in your summary. First of all, I loved the addition of the beginning, where you included just enough detail to keep your readers engaged. However, there are still a couple of things I'd suggest changing because of the slight clunkiness.

First, let's discuss the use of semi-colons. Semi-colons are used to connect two sentences, but in the summary, you used them to connect words that weren't full sentences, therefore creating unnecessary lack of smoothness. You also don't need to capitalize the words unless they're proper nouns. Instead, you could write it as, "7 lords, 5 bosses, 3 lords and 2 legends."

Also, instead of directly addressing your readers towards the end of your summary, you can just provide enough detail for them to keep reading. Adding the rhetorical question at the end and directly addressing the readers just makes it overly excessive, so I'd suggest making it a simple rhetorical question, perhaps like, "Is it better to trust the revenge-driven royal guard, or is it better to trust the kind princess who murdered thousands of lives, both innocent and guilty?"

Other than those slightly clunky spots, your summary was well-written and nicely composed. Well done!

Grammar + Punctuation: 4/5

Generally, I could agree that your grammar and punctuation was pretty clean. It was nice that although there were the common mistakes with dialogue, you kept it consistent—which, as you'll soon realize, will be very helpful when editing out those mistakes.

The most major problem I found in your punctuation was definitely the use of commas in dialogue. Before ending the dialogue with a speech tag, you have to end it with a comma rather than a full-stop, or a period. For example, "'You flatter me, Commander Roy.' She replied with a slight smirk."

Here, it should be written as, "'You flatter me, Commander Roy,' she replied with a slight smirk." This would make it more clear, and more importantly, grammatically correct. There are several other instances like this, and though I'm not going to list them all, the good thing is that it's consistently written with periods, and you can just go through and fix that up quickly.

Other than that, there were mostly only the casual typos and missed commas that will be easy editing. However, I did like your use of consistent, impressive vocabulary throughout. Good job!

Character Development: 4.5/5

Character development was definitely one of your strong points. There were so many laughable moments involved throughout that showcased your characters' senses of humor, as well as those dark moments in which the mystery kept leading your readers. However, for certain characters, it was more difficult for me to grasp the feel of characterization.

While I loved your use of speech tags, I'd suggest using less of those and focusing more on thoughts, emotions, and feelings. For example, in chapter nine, "'You've been like that since the beginning, Kai. Stop it.' Saito said."

Although you added that slight detail in which he was proud, you could've also showcased his slight jealousy, especially since at the end of the paragraph, it said, "He knew that if they were to start with some sort of 'Power' training, he would've no chance to catch up to Kaizen." Rather than including his pride, you could incorporate the feelings of jealousy as well.

However, while there were those slight characterization mishaps, you were definitely really good at incorporating the reason behind why characters did something. I loved that about your writing, as it really portrayed character development. Well done!

Writing Style: 5/5

Your writing style was fantastic through and through. There were so many moments where Kai and Saito were having those humorous, laughable interactions that it simply made me laugh while reading.

Plus, the darkness of your story was really nicely composed. I could tell that you put all of your hard work into your writing and the mysteriousness of it, as well as the dramatic drop of suspense. Your plot rose and fell at just the right moments, which made the book all the more enjoyable. Nicely done!

Plot + Originality: 3/5

While there were amazing moments of your plot, I personally felt that there were a couple too many plot holes that could've been more relative to the main plot itself. There were a lot of action scenes in which Saito was training Kai, but I thought some of those could be reduced to maybe half the length they are.

That being said, I'd touch up on a bit on the plot holes, one of them being in chapter nine when Saito was training Kai. This could've easily been reduced or even cut out of the chapter, as it wasn't intensely relative enough to the plot itself. I would consider changing it up or maybe throwing in a sudden interaction with another character.

Overall though, you did such an amazing job with this book so far. It's got so much potential and your writing is overly enthusiastic. Keep up the great work!

OVERALL SCORE: 19.5/25