Skeleton Reviews

Catharsis: End of Mankind| -moonlightshadow412

Client: DeannaHellerErskin
Book title: Catharsis: End of Mankind
Chapters read: All

Cover- At first glance, I thought it was going to feature some K-Pop idols living in a post-zombie-apocalypse authoritarian state, due to the main character's eyes and the overall vibe of the cover. It's a busy cover- there's so much red and other warm colours that Hell would've been a suitable setting. What's the thing behind Catharsis's head? They look like scarab beetles' wings. And really, the 'e's and the 'f's, in addition to the two 'l's of your name, aren't exactly distinguishable unless I decide to squint really hard. Which I probably won't.

Summary/Blurb- I have a problem with your first paragraph. Your beginning phrase, 'After the Uprising began many unknown years ago'... reword this awkwardness. 'People who got bitten'- please change 'got' into 'were'. In your second sentence- still in the first paragraph- you use 'others' twice, and right next to each other too. In my opinion, the consecutive-word thing disrupts the flow, which is definitely not what you want. Second paragraph, you're missing a comma between 'monster' and 'having'. Maybe consider removing the list of contests too. Other than that, I've not many issues with your blurb.

Title- Catharsis: End of Mankind. I'll just start off by saying that this title flows very smoothly on the tongue, so good job on that! *automated clapping sounds*
But...

Just kidding. I'm good with your title. It's not going to get thwacked over the head by the butt of my rifle.

Description/Scenery and Use of literary devices- Imagery is *thumbs up*, as well as the use of literary devices. In fact, most of the description is done with literary devices. I can picture most things... though sometimes, you overuse literary devices to the point of my head hurting with the sheer amount of detail. No rifles slammed (just barely, though).

Sentence flow/pacing- Chapters' pace is a bit slow, with a tonne of details in the torture. Seriously, it's been 9 chapters and all that's happened so far is escape from prison! *slams rifle onto the ground in impatience* And I can't see most of the plot due to Meng's info-dumps! Meng's history disrupted the general flow of the story because of the poor integration with the rest of the story.
On another note, sentence flow is generally good, except maybe a few cut-off sentences after chapter 2 and a couple of sentences missing a word or so, plus one or two run-ons.

Originality- It's not American Horror Movie, I'll give you that. AKA it's not too cliche. But I don't exactly see where this is going right now, so I can't really tell except that so far, the story type- undead rising- is a tad bit cliche. But the spin- the abilities thing- makes it unique and your own, so it's saved from being labelled with a big red 'CLICHE' stamp. *points to a stamp larger than the Eiffel Tower*

Characters:
Antagonist- Who? We could say Newitt, but he's... not relevant anymore.
Protagonist- Catharsis. A Korean boy with silver hair, orange eyes, a stutter, and a long, self-pitying mental dialogue. He pities himself a lot. And calls himself a monster. I think that's why I didn't really like him as much as I liked Allen Bramble- he feels too sorry for himself, and it's like he doesn't exactly have any thoughts that are actually borderline logic, because he's so... emotional. Which isn't exactly a bad thing, but too much gets irritating- and irritating really, REALLY, REALLY fast.
Sides-Meng Ru and Allen fall in this category, alongside Mr. Hollow and his kids. I think that Allen has the strongest character development out of all the sides so far. It's good, yes, if you're going to focus specifically on him in the future. But if Catharsis's going to interact with Meng Ru and Mr. Hollow more, they should seem a bit more three dimensional.

Grammar- Decent. Not the best, but definitely not the worst either. In fact, borderline 'good' is pretty accurate. A few corrections on tense would make it to the middle of 'good' and 'great'. All of that's mostly the beginning though, before the official start of the novel. After that, there's a couple of mistakes in dialogue tagging in addition to the ones listed in the sentence flow/pacing section. (Check out Ghoul Editing -Lich)

Realism- A couple of days ago (my first read-through), I read 'Tuscar' and 'Jamaican country' in the same sentence. Can't find that now, so I guess you fixed it. In terms of worldbuilding, either I'm really ignorant or you don't have much in terms of holes, so realism, it's good. And good job on portraying abuse, by the way.

Anything else: I hope you're aware that your banner has a watermark on it. Also, are you sure that, um, your story is part Horror? Because if you really think it is... try harder.

First impressions- What's up with the punctuation issues? They're present in your Introduction chapter, AKA Copyright + Restating-What's-On-The-Front. 'abnormalities', not 'abnormities'.
Also, way too many asterisks. I'm annoyed easily by overused asterisks that are supposed to serve as a break and separate unrelated sections. Use actual banner-breaks for that, please. Also, the chapters before the actual first chapter have multiple grammatical errors. Some of it is just basic stuff, though, so going back and editing it should eliminate most of the mistakes. These mistakes, though small, could discourage a reader. It almost discouraged me, if I hadn't seen worse. *English flashbacks from two years ago*

Tone + Word choice- While you have good imagery and detailed descriptions, your tone is a tad bit... flat. This is quite troublesome because I should feel horrified that a boy is being ruthlessly tortured by a guard- and yet I barely even felt pity, both times that I read those three chapters. Spice up your vocabulary with words that lie further to extreme on both sides of the connotation spectrum. Maybe add some Chengdu pepper mixes while you're at it.

Character development- In the story (as of right now), only Catharsis and Allen get a bit of extended character development. Catharsis's personality- a distinct recessive- is a bit more 2D than Allen's, who seems more complete. Maybe it's because of all the wallowing that Catharsis does. Seriously. He's even more of an emo than I was when I was younger.

If you've more questions, feel free to ask me via PM. Thank you for choosing me as reviewer.