Brutally Honest Reviews™

Of Shadows (N)

Word Count: 3656

Title: Of Shadows

Genre: Science Fiction

Blurb: Aided by a virus whose symptoms are strangely supernatural, Oda Alours has made a living off the secrets you thought you could keep hidden. She thrives in the back-alley shadows, dealing secrets to anyone with a pretty penny. All she needs to survive is to keep her head down around the police and keep her mystical ability under wraps.

But that all changes when she's sent on a seemingly-simple mission by the notorious Fosc Agrupar. Oda finds herself in the sights of a persistent detective keen on bringing her shady world to light. And he's not going to back down anytime soon.

Then, in an earth-shattering move, an organization Oda thought she could trust blows all the rules out of the water.

Alliances abruptly shift, promises are broken, and morality is thrown to the side in the race to commit the greatest conspiracy of all time. But secrets always catch up with those trying to outrun them, and the worst bring deadly consequences with them.

Status: Completed

~

Starting Points: 30

Cover: Not a fan. The picture is unclear and it did take me a while to figure out the character is standing on a street. It's just dark, really has no personality, and so many other great covers on here upstage it. I would think about changing it. I'll be generous and not take points off--even if it does nothing for my nether regions. *Sighs*

Title: Maybe its relevant to the plot, but again its pretty boring and doesn't draw attention to itself in any way. A little imagination could for sure lead the author to come up with something better. It's not enough for me to dock a point though so congrats.

-Suggestion: Maybe adding something in front of the preposition "of" can bring more light to the context of the novel?

Blurb:

*Hisses at the use of second person*

-Try to stay in third-person in descriptions. There should be a narrative distance applied to the blurb of a book because blurbs are essentially a separate entity from a book and serve to relay an ambiguous journey and premise of the hero's plight or/and their world (I've seen first person pulled off by some but generally don't do it, dear god). Now that I've gotten that off my system: the blurb is kind of a drawled-out mess. It isn't bad, I don't think, but it does fall short by overstating itself and not knowing when to, you know...shut up. In hindsight, it could have stopped immediately after the second paragraph. Paragraph three is not necessary, but I guess if the author really wants to tell potential readers *slowly blinks* what happens, then a short sentence like this could suffice: *tone dial*.

-Never mind, I just realized how scatterbrained the last paragraph truly is and I'm slightly triggered. Here's an easy way to deal with "blurbing" a complex plot: just leave shit out. We got the premise, just shut up. I've been talking about this for too long, moving on! (-3)

Plot: *Shrugs, bites into imaginary pop tart*

-I really want a pop tart.

Opening thoughts:

-So, the chapter starts out with a scene depicting some kid with grey hair acting as if he has never seen rain before and just letting it soak him because...the plot needs to happen? That doesn't last long though because his mum calls out to him and some weird descriptions are awkwardly thrown in the mix that either makes little sense or is just irritating to read and only proves to be a disservice to the chapter as a whole. For example, the first paragraph is an overabundance of adjectives and it is annoying. I noticed a pattern of "double-adjectives" (sometimes even triple, HA) before or after a noun throughout it, all working to piss on my face, which is for the record: fucking rude and also tastes like Tang...Try drinking some water. Be generous to your lovers, guys! I'm talking some shit again, aren't I?