Sapphire's Review Store 3.0

Review by Sunshine: Curse of the Moon

Title: Curse of the Moon

Author: BTSBae321

Reviewer: ray_of_sunshine9

Summary: 3.5/5

You've got a pretty good summary. I absolutely love the way you build up to show the climax of what may happen – and you very clearly introduce the protagonist, the conflict, and the stakes. The ending is very dramatic, and the idea of the gods coming together to form an army is simply brilliant. I do, however, have a few little points.

First of all, if you capitalise 'Gods', you must do so consistently. You can't keep capitalising and uncapitalizing it. Next, you have a few missing commas, so you could brush up your summary. Additionally, try keeping names consistent – I know Dalnim goes by the name Jenny as well, but for the rest of the summary, try keeping it to one name so it's more fluent.

Also, make sure you capitalise names! 

Grammar: 3/5

Your grammar was pretty clean for the most part. However, there were a few things that I caught, so let's go through them in a bit of detail because they were rather consistent.

First of all, run-on sentences. When you have two independent clauses – that is, two clauses that could work perfectly as sentences on their own – joined together by a comma, you have yourself a comma splice. For example:

"I had to pick up some money from the jar, there's been a robbery at work and I need to go down to the police station."

The two parts of that sentence, separated by the comma, work perfectly as sentences on their own. That means you need to change the comma to a period, or an alternate punctuation mark (like an em dash or a semicolon).

Next, let's talk about dialogue tags. You definitely know how to punctuate dialogue when there's a dialogue tag or an action beat, but there were a few things I noticed. First of all, when there is nothing after the dialogue, the dialogue should finish with a period. For example:

"...twenty-four minutes to get there,"

It should be:

"...twenty-four minutes to get there."

Next, whenever your dialogue is followed by an action beat, the sentence following the dialogue should begin with a capital letter. For example:

"...do this alone, Dalnim." he stroked his thumb across her cheek.

It should be:

"...do this alone, Dalnim." He stroked his thumb across her cheek.

Now, be careful that you polish your chapters thoroughly. You have questions missing question marks, the first words of sentences missing capital letters, and some little spelling errors such as:

"If I was the only one that could use it then..." She trialed off.

You should have used 'trailed', not 'trialed.' 

Characterisation: 3/5

Dalnim being protective over her brother makes so much sense – it leads perfectly into her being ready to start an entire war to find him. The poor girl is going through a lot; she feels responsible for everything that has gone wrong and her missing family. It does, however, feel a little rushed. Five chapters in, and we're already talking about vengeance, and the burden of an old war, but because we don't have experience in it ourselves as the reader, it's a little less cohesive. I perhaps suggest writing a prologue that shows us a bit of the first war? So that it feels more impactful as we dive into forming another army for a second war.

Additionally, description was a big thing here. When we first meet Hwanung, we have no idea what he looks like. I understand that it's good to not over-describe and let readers conjure their own image in their head, but we need to have a vague sense. For all we know, Hwanung could have been an old man with balding hair, or he could have been an eleven year old who miraculously got a degree in law. A bit of physical description won't hurt.

Also, be careful of doing too much telling and not enough showing. Here's an example:

Dalnim began to flow with tears as she continued to blame herself for the disappearance of her brother.

Don't just tell it to us – show it. Make us feel it with her. Show us her reliving memories, or show us what it would feel like to be in her position. By telling the reader, the story is less immersive, and the characterisation is a bit more stoic.

Writing Style: 3/5

There are some wonderful moments in your writing! I love the personality in the description – describing the police station as "blander than ramen noodles"? Hilarious. Those touches of humour are fantastic, and I encourage you to keep them up.

There tends to be a lack of cohesion in the chapters sometimes. I'll be more specific – let's look at the first chapter. Jenny goes and ruffles her brother's hair. Then she mentions, through the narrator, how, ever since their mother's death, she had to keep a look out for him. Then, cue the story – we get old about how the mother had gone out to forage for food because the kids were hungry. Then, it's left there. It doesn't link back to how the mother died, and it's a little alienating for the reader.

Additionally, be careful of redundancy. For example:

...to avoid his sister's wrath of anger.

"Wrath" and "anger" are synonyms. What you've essentially written is: 'to avoid his sister's anger of anger'. I suggest just writing:

...to avoid his sister's wrath. 

Plot + Originality: 4/5

It's really hard to talk about the plot of the story when you only have the first five chapters uploaded. However, I do love the lore of the gods and goddesses, with Jenny having to perform spells to keep the moon up back before she had to live this pseudo-human life. Well done on creative such an immersive and culturally rich story!

A quick suggestion for the sake of making your story more immersive – when you incorporate magic, even simple things like pulling wine glass out of their hands, I think you need to slow down the pace to elaborate on how that exactly works. What is it like to use magic? How is it that they can just whip out wine glasses like that from thin air? Just a slower pace may help make it more immersive.

OVERALL SCORE: 16.5/25

Overall, a promising story with fascinating lore. I encourage you to work on polishing your punctuation, and you should be good to go. I hope this review helps!