Sweet Reads: Celebrating Wattpad's Best

Terres by @violetsun5

There's this thing about saving the best for last, but sometimes you stumble upon something great right away, and you've got to celebrate it.

I joined Wattpad over three years ago, read a little, wondered if I should post the book I was working on, and then decided to keep writing offline as I edited, queried and hoped. Fast forward to this past July when I decided to finally start posting chapters of COUNTDOWN and began flipping through titles to check out the virtual talent.

I didn't flip long when I started reading Terres by @VioletSun5. Writers talk a lot about "showing" vs. "telling" tales to readers , and from its very first pages, Terres made me feel like I'd fallen into a different world. One of the things that makes Violet's writing so compelling is her ability to describe places, people, feelings and incidents with an intimacy that make them come alive. The devil's in the details and there were so many times reading this book that I couldn't help comment on the small physical nuances of her characters that breathed vitality into them - whether it was picking at a small hangnail to demonstrate restlessness or scratching at an elbow during conversation - adding realism amidst the fantastical.

Violet is a confident storyteller and the world she's created is complete with its own social hierarchy, culture and norms. An affliction referred to as "fledging" affects a portion of the population, known as The Marked Ones. Those who are Marked receive their fate in a sudden and violent way: without warning, massive wings erupt from their backs, tearing their skin and ripping apart the lives they've known in Terres. Families disown them, friends disengage from them and they're forced to live on the fringes or serve the caravan of roving market retailers as scavengers and guards. As the book progresses, the lore behind the Marked Ones starts to unravel and I look forward to learning more about this backstory as the series progresses.

Terres follows characters who are Marked as well as those within the general population, each striving to claim an identity and lifestyle of their own. From Wren, the main female character who bucks societal expectation to avoid arranged marriage at all costs, to Armand, who covets his brother's wings, to Rannock, a newly fledged guard with ties to Wren's past, the author's deft use of third person narrative allows the reader into their thoughts, emotions, biases and regrets.

Conflict grows over time, and tension is matched with character development that ratchets up the stakes of choices and the inevitable fallout of rash decisions. The author doesn't just write her characters, she KNOWS them. Each individual is nuanced with definite reasons for their actions that add to the story's emotional landscape. She lets her characters make mistakes based on who they are and what they've experienced in life - even if their actions make the reader cringe at certain points of the book, wishing they would take easier paths leading to safety, comfort or potential happiness (if that exists in Terres). In the end, the author's decisions make for better storytelling than taking an easy path.

In this reader's opinion, @VioletSun5 is multi-talented, but exceptionally skilled at developing characters able to elicit emotional reactions from readers; and it's rewarding to come across chapters that build empathetic backstories for characters who initially seem unsympathetic. In short, Terres makes you CARE, which is the highest compliment I can give as a reader and amateur writer. I had fun reading the comments of other Wattpad readers as they rooted for relationships, cheered for favourites or waved a virtual fist at antics of which they disapproved.

Terres read like an offline published book to me - the grammar, unique descriptions, pace and sure footed approach with character development felt like something I'd purchase, let alone read for free. And thankfully there are already other volumes written in the series, so I don't have to say goodbye to the characters just yet — and neither do you if you check Terres out (and I definitely think you should!)