CLN's Seasonal Reviews (CLOSED)

The Lady in the Weeping Mansion- by BrutalRice

REVIEW DONE BY : Krippy93

Cover :

It's a very nice cover : there's the mansion, there's the mystery/thriller vibe, the font is intriguing and the overall color palette suggests a mystery/thriller story. Well done!

Blurb :
It's not that bad. If I had to rate it I would give it a 7/10. The contents you wanna touch in it are clear but you should improve in the storytelling part. An
example is in this line:

-Rather than "Will our MCs BEAT the bad guys?" it's better to ask "Will our MCs BECOME the bad guys?"-

It's a very interesting line, because you are basically saying to your readers what the book's conflict will be. This is a theme that can be developed well, that can really go deep in the psyche of your characters.

But. Why did you write it like this!? You should intrigue your readers not spoil them! Try to say the same concept in a more "storytelling way", for example:

-When faced with the shocking truth of a world not so black and white, what would our heroes do? Would them fight for what it's just to society or for what is just to them? Would they fight to beat the "bad guys" or would they join them, and become one as well?-

This is just an example, of course, so feel free to adjust my words to your liking, but you get the idea. Evocative yet taunting words will do the job!

Chapt 1 :

This is a very good chapter. I honestly don't know why you said you need advice: you clearly know how to write and the story is undoubtedly interesting.

Let's start with the good things: perfect balance between long and short sentences. There's also the right amount of descriptions, dialogue and narrative sequences. You show, for the most part, and tell only near the end of the chapter. The narration was very well done!

Watch out for close repetitions of words, for example right at the start I noticed "blood" being said twice in the same paragraph.

The general atmosphere of the story is clear and well done, I feel immersed in the world you created right from the start.

The bad things :

the story is so well written that the few issues here and there really stand out to me. I say issues and not mistakes because I think these are just general improvements you can do to the story but nothing really troubling. First of all, after you move from the Princess to Rain you (correctly) adopted a separator. Why don't you insert an image, here? A fancy divider, or even the dashes if you like them but at least center them in the page!

Second, watch out for repetitions and wrong punctuation here and there. There weren't many, though! The one that really bugged me was:

-To him, it was the cold and no one, not even the submission of his wild son, Kaizen would change his opinion.-

I would change it to:

-To him, it was just the cold: no one, not even the submission of his wild son Kaizen, could change his opinion.-

Keep in mind that numbers are always written in words and not number, except for exact dates and times. So, 15-year-old becomes fifteen year old and 200 km becomes two hundred kilometers, etc.

Something that weirded me out a bit was the second change of scene, when you shift from Rain to Kaizen but, this time, without using a divider. It works fine even without the divider, honestly, because of the narration style you adopted, but it feels kinda strong and some readers may not like it.