Elephant Reviews [CFCU]

Purple Blood

By: Ririflower

First Impressions (ex. Cover, blurb, title)

-Cover: The cover is good.

-Blurb: The blurb is fine.

-Title: The title works.

Mechanics (ex. Grammar, sentence structure, etc.)

The grammar is mostly fine but some notes include:

- The sentence lengths are not too varied and some have similar sentence structures. A lot of the sentences start the same way or with the same word especially at the beginning.

- In Chapter 7 when it says, "The first thing she noticed was that her bed smelt of her mother, she smiled imagining her (Madhina) laying on the bed and thinking about her when she was away," the use of parentheses is not needed because the sentence already provides enough context for readers to understand who the pronoun is referring to. Another option is to just use the name instead of the pronoun, like in Chapter 8 when it says, "He ordered that they (the council members) be flogged publicly in the market square just as the queen had suggested," it can instead just say "He ordered the council members..."

Plot & Characters

-In Chapter one, it introduces Rida but it doesn't tell us who she is exactly or what her role is in the story.

-Chapter two and several other chapters are pretty much entirely exposition which is kind of hard for the reader to digest all the information at once.

- There's not a lot of dialogue especially in the first few chapters, so it seems like it's just a summary.

- In Chapter six, the POV header isn't needed if you add dialogue tags in, as it is the king telling the story in the first person narrative.

- One question that came to mind while reading chapter nine was how did the queen gain more power than the king?

- In Chapter 12, Rida is looking for her mother but the last time we saw her, she was with her mother.

- Chapter 25 is confusing because it seems like Gbonka put Rida in his carriage, but later on it says he still has to get Rida.

This seems like an interesting story with action and social issues. Best of luck to you in your writing journey!