Sapphire's Review Store 3.0

Review by Gnome: Living Monsters

Title: Living Monsters

Author: simsfan478

Reviewer: GnomeMercy

Summary: 4.5/5

Your summary has everything there, characters, setting, dilemma, and stakes. It doesn't give too much away, but is still understandable—so well done! I did notice a few errors in the first sentence. Let's take a look.

Penny and her adoptive sister Lana have always been worlds apart, which is why they weren't thrilled to be studying at the same university in a faraway, secluded town.

Firstly, it should be "adopted" sister. I did some research to double-check, and "adoptive" is usually used for the person who adopted the child. So consider changing that! Secondly, since the summary is in present tense, I recommend you change "weren't" to "aren't" to make it more cohesive and grammatically correct.

Other than those small problems, great summary!

Grammar: 4/5

Even though you only had five chapters, you had very clean grammar! I didn't notice any mistakes, so well done! There were a few small errors:

The bottom-est floor was just a narrow...

It should be:

The lowest floor was just a narrow...

Another one:

The banging stopped as an older boy, tall and still youthful with dark skin clear of any imperfections stabbed the monster in the stomach.

There should be a comma after "imperfections".

I recommend you look out for typos and smaller errors, but other than that, great job!

Characters: [no score -- not added to final score]

Since I read only five chapters, I don't think I can I can give you a score on your characters. However, I do want to point out some things.

Firstly, a lot of characters were introduced in one go. Since there are only a handful of chapters, we don't really have enough time to really get to know them well, and a lot happens at once which makes it a bit confusing. I recommend you slow the pace down a bit (more on that in plot) so we can really know these characters and have them develop properly.

Also, Penny and Lana trust people way too easily (this was mentioned once—by Lana I believe?—but no action was taken against it). They're in the middle of an apocalypse, which means everyone will either be infected or working for themselves (survival of the fittest), and most likely will attack everyone in their way. A good example, however, was Aarav. He saved them, which, in turn, made them gain a bit of trust for him. However, realistically, they wouldn't be so comfortable with him after knowing him for a few minutes (unless they knew him prior to this).

Overall, some interesting characters (I love the dynamic between Penny and Lana!) but they could use some work and be introduced more slowly and properly.

Writing Style: 3/5

I think you had a really interesting writing style! I didn't see many redundancies (but keep an eye out for them), either.

I do think, however your writing needed a lot more descriptions. I couldn't really see the setting, or what the characters looked like. In the beginning, there was some description of Penny's hair, but there wasn't much after. Descriptions are really important as they help us understand where they are and do heaps for worldbuilding! While it's not necessary to describe your characters, some description for the setting would be good.

I will talk about this more in 'plot', but the story was very fast-paced. Sometimes, it was also hard to understand what was going on, I'll explain more in the plot section of this review, but I highly recommend slowing down and fleshing things out a bit more.

Overall, keep an eye out for redundancies and some confusing scenes. I would love some more description, too.

Plot: [no score -- not added to final score]

I think apocalypse plots can be very interesting, if done well and doesn't use too many clichés. Since there were only five chapters, I can't judge your plot and give it a score, but, to me, it felt extremely fast-paced. For example, in real life (as we can all tell by now) pandemics are actually pretty slow-moving. Basically, what I'm saying is there needs to be a bit of realism to it. Realistically, there would be a lot more time and they would be well-informed. Also, they met a lot of people and did a lot things in the span of five chapters—which made it a bit confusing as in five chapters there isn't a lot of time to develop things properly. Slow things down and let it flesh out a bit more.

OVERALL SCORE: 11.5/15

Overall, an interesting story but it needs a bit more development and a slower pace! Hope this helps.