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Review by Jacob: Nameless Thoughts of an Onlooker

Title: Nameless Thoughts of an Onlooker

Author: YeetleBeetle

Reviewer: Prince_Pretence

Cover: 3/5

Decent, except that the appearance of the human being. This also relates to one of the essential points in the story—lack of information about which period is this all happening in—more on that in the Plot section—otherwise, a good job.

Blurb: 3.5/5

Okay, I'm gonna accept that I was considering the narrator to be female until Hebe came. Like, seriously. Why so? Because one—my mistake. I hadn't noticed the 'woman' in the blurb, which is weird, so, apologies. Second, because there was no specific indication of the guy's gender until Hebe came. So, what can you do about the blurb? Either change 'woman' to Hebe's profession, as you've done with the narrator whose name we will never know, or instead of 'soldier', swap it with gender identifying noun. I know that sounds really picky and stupid, probably—but it's just so that you don't seem like queerbaiting or anything. I don't mind having to figure out that a narrator is a man, because honestly, I don't even know why I thought it was a woman. I guess I wasn't awake properly. But other than that, people get offended at the slightest of things, and queerbaiting could be one of them, so, yeah. It's better to be safe than sorry.

Grammar: 4/5

As usual, a good rereading ought to straighten out the missing adjectives or pronouns. There was an essential issue with the punctuations; you often seem to use a comma after hyphen[dash], which is incorrect. Other than that, this book has a better grammatical structure than Stumbling Forward, and I like that.

Character Building: 5/5

You've got a tremendous sense of creating characters who are like—the polar opposite of each other. That's it for the main characters. The development here comes for the protagonist as well as the person of their interest, Hebe, differently, and all I can say without revealing too much is that it's epic. No matter what I felt by the end of the story, your characters do justice to the story. The rest of the characters are static and have a voice of their own. Ryder is loyal to a fault, and he expects the same of the other. Niles is a fun person, but he can slit some stuff without a second thought. The One–Eyed Dutch—was the only person whose character or role in the fictional world was not much clear to me. Hebe is a kind and extremely talented soul whom I feel like knew more than what she let on.

What I loved the most about characters and their development to the end—they changed, for better or worse. I won't spill on that too much, but I will say that this is the only time where I looked at a protagonist and severely felt sympathy for them, knowing that they indeed are to be blamed for what happened and still, that won't do them any justice.

Writing Style: 4.5/5

The writing style and the voice in the story Nameless Thoughts Of An Onlooker have that sense of 'oh, so this where we were about to come—shit!' I mean, it's fantastic, it's communicative, and it makes me want to read those parts where there is no action—the ones where the narrator speaks about certain sayings and how much they apply to real life. Not everyone can do that. Those parts were vital for us to understand the meaning of the story; this is one incident where the narrator's entire life has been flipped upside down.

There was this one point in the beginning paragraphs, where I was confused as to what am I supposed to focus on? For example, in the first paragraph, the narrator explains why the saying in the first line is ridiculous. By the end of it, I had truly lost the string of the words and their meaning in early reading. It was much easier to understand the third time, but as I have said before—your readers won't wait for a second or third time. It was far easier to follow the same theme in the last chapter. The problem was actually with the way it's written—it's like someone's trying to speak something without taking a breath. That's all. Apart from that, the thing that I mentioned in the Blurb section—there was massive confusion about the narrator's gender, the period in which this story takes place, and the characters' appearance. All these things would not be such important if your primary motive were to convey a message through the story. But they are things that most of the readers crave to know; it helps them in seeing the story through their eyes. So, that's that. Other than that, I really can't think of anything that requires a change or critique. For its sake, I must suggest you keep revisiting the book at regular intervals [like every two–three weeks or something?] to see if anything that you change or improve.

Plot + Originality: 5/5

What to say? I was so excited to read this book, considering my views on Stumbling Forward. And for all I can tell, I'm not disappointed. I'm sad, sure. Now that I look back at the story of a selfish and selfless human, I can see that everything makes sense. I should've known what was about to happen, right from the start. Eran and the narrator do not make much difference, yet their fate is so different and still the same. Like, I know that a tiny part of me died at the end, like literally, therefore I must assume that Eran's fate repeated on our narrator. I was on the edge of my seat until the last word, because at that point, I wasn't trusting anyone. Indeed, no sane human would want an innocent bystander to follow the same fate as them, nor an innocent human would ever go without a struggle. The narrator and Hebe are these uneven pieces that fit perfectly against each other's edge. And that ring—oh, that ring! Please take any amount of offence you wish to—but that was the cruelest thing you could do to your readers. I wasn't even kidding when I said that I hadn't been this heartbroken in a long time.

OVERALL SCORE: 25/30

I have mentioned all that I could think of. Nameless Thoughts Of An Onlooker is a beautiful story that is one of those rare gems that make you think twice, thrice—to the point where you know that the world isn't as black and white as we think it is. We are all yet just to tried in those gray areas, where we believe that we've survived, once again. But have we, really?

Sorry for getting this flowery or the short review. I honestly can't think of anything to critique, and I'm at a loss of words to praise either. It's just that this book deserves much, much more attention. If you need any more assistance or clarification on any point, comment down, and I'll try my best.