J's Reviews [closed to catch up]

#23: God Is My Oath [Jungkook]

First Impressions

The cover used here is absolutely stunning, very professionally designed and it's clear what the book is about. Clearly depicted is a member of the boyband BTS (I think it's BTS) with a crown on. It is eye catching and is exactly what a book cover should look like. I feel that it will not only attract fans of BTS, but could easily attract readers who are not of that fandom, like myself.

Character Introduction Page

I am not sure if you have read any of my reviews before, but if you have then you will be aware of my feelings towards character introduction pages. Unlike a lot of other books I have reviewed, the majority of your readers know exactly who your characters are and what they look like. These pages, especially within your genre, are just not needed. I can almost guarantee a lot of your readers will skip these pages as there is really no point to it whatsoever. My advice is to scrap this page and learn how to describe your characters with words instead of pictures.

Playlist

Well, I think that's what people call it. What you are doing is something that people have been doing for hundreds of years, writing works of fiction. I struggle to understand why you feel the need to add a playlist? If you were writing a stage play or a screenplay then I would understand why you would add music, but this is a book at the end of the day, and books, in my opinion, don't need songs.

Round One

This is the first time I have ever seen chapters be called Rounds, before, so this is something that is new to me. The book starts with what could easily be turned into a brilliant hook, but the way it is currently written, there is no hook at the moment.
Here you have an audience boomed with applause and encouraging words for the swordsmen they supported. Think about that sentence. To me it sounds bland. It lacks description and it lacks a hook. Now if you were to rewrite this first sentence, show the noise of the applause filling the room and the faces of the audience as they scream and shout their words of encouragement, then that would give your reader a clear vivid scene that would make them want to read on. I would consider rewriting this scene, showing it through your character's eyes instead of telling it from the writer's point of view.

There are quite a few sentences here that don't flow as well as I would have liked to see. If you were to tighten them up a little bit then that would drastically improve the flow. Grammatical errors litter the chapter, quotation marks are missing from the characters thoughts. There should be one at the beginning of the thoughts and one at the end. This is to show the reader that the character is thinking, italics works as well, but in my opinion quotation marks should also be used.
The little note at the beginning of the chapter explaining what the italics means and what the bold words mean, is one of the strangest things I have seen for quite a long time. If this was properly written and edited, then there would be no need for this little note or indeed the words written in bold. We know from the sentence below that Ella is preying, but if you were to explain earlier, show her putting her hands together and closing her eyes before she starts to prey, then you wouldn't need to put it in bold as to be honest, it looks a little bit unsightly.

I am sorry but the way this is written and the amount of description that is missing from this work, I am finding it very difficult to understand what is happening in this chapter, or Round as you have called it. The bold is distracting and the gif you have also added to the beginning of the chapter, I feel is unnecessary.

Conclusion

I always usually try to read three chapters of a book, but I don't feel I am able to continue with it. For me as a reader, as someone who is not part of the BTS fandom, I found it rather difficult. There are a lot of parts here where there is little or weak description. Although you need to be able to tell a story, which you have, you also need to be able to show the reader what is happening to the character. What can Ella see? What can she hear? What can she feel? Taste? Touch? None of this has been explained. It's very black and white, with very little colour.

I struggled to really get into this story, and I stopped reading at the end of the first chapter. I didn't feel able to continue with this and at the end of the day I didn't really want to read anymore.

Advice

My advice to you is to learn how to show the story and add more description to the scenes. Perhaps a book club might be able to help you, or a writing community. There is a BTS fan fiction book club that I think would be good for you. It is run by PinkeuSeokJin