Sapphire's Review Store 3.0

Review by Eliza: Ethereal Thread

Title: Ethereal Thread

Author: MusicalKehleigh

Reviewer: eliza-lou

Firstly, thanks for lettingme read your book! And thank you so much for your patience in waiting for thisreview during the craziness of the world right now. It's always a vulnerablething - letting others read and critique the ideas and characters that mean alot to us - so thanks for putting your work out there. With that, let's getstarted! 

Title/Cover/Summary: 4/5

Title: 

It's unique and to thepoint! I like it! Definitely sets the tone that this is a fantasy book or hassome sort of "other-worldly" aspects. With that, I'd remove "First draft" fromthe title - it makes the title way too full and busy. You include a warningabout it not being edited in your summary - you don't need double warnings! 

Cover: 

I like the image of the cover a lot! I think you could play more with the fonts. Your title is legible from the small thumbnail, but your author name isn't - so maybe look at different fonts that could help both the title AND your name be visible! :) Also, I'm not sure what the "2k, 8k, 20k" little things in the bottom are for? I'd either make their purpose more clear, or remove it. You cover needs to be clean - picture, title, author name. IF you have any badge from an award, strategically place it to not cover anything. Other than that, nothing else should be on the cover.

Summary: 

What a great foundation! :) You are very clear as to the importance of the beams, that you have to be skilled to harness them correctly, and the main plot of the book - to unite three tribes, Celisae must create three dresses. Nice work. I'm going to be picky in this portion to push it even further.

A rule of thumb (in my opinion) for summaries is:

- introduce your main character (maybe one other character alongside of your MC)

- the main conflict of the story

- the stakes: what could happen if the MC doesn't accomplish their goal?

- the cliffhanger/hook to draw the reader into wanting to find out what happens

Let's see what's covered so far & what can also use improvement:

- Main character? Yep! Your main character is Celisae.

- Main Conflict? Yep! Celisae must create three dresses from sunlight, moonlight, and starlight to unite three tribes.

- The Stakes? The stakes are clear, but I can feel them having more of an impact. The impact of the importance of Celisae accomplishing these dresses, feels like it should pack a punch, and I want to help make that last sentence a wallop of a cliffhanger. In the first paragraph, you say that Celisae is the only one who can capture the light and spin it into thread. But, at the end you say she can't weave it together. So this implies to handle the "ethereal thread" - two people are extremely important. One to capture the light, and one to weave it together to create garments to harness the lights' power.

I think this point needs to be established in that first paragraph. Your second sentence says, "If you know how, you can catch it. If you don't you destroy it."— I think this is an opportunity to talk about how you need both people. So maybe something like, "Few know how to capture the beams without destroying them, and even fewer know how to mold them into woven creations of light." (That's just a sentence I came up with off the top of my head, don't feel like you have to use this!)