Dreamland Review Archive

The Seasons of Sissera (T)

The Seasons of Sissera

Laentheon

Initial Impression: (cover, title & blurb)

Your story had a very good initial impression to me. Your cover is creative and seems to hold symbolic meaning to the plot. However, it is a little dark and I would not have picked it out of a list of stories simply because I couldn't see the title properly. With that being said, once I opened it to full size, I found it great. It would be a good idea to brighten up your cover, but you can also keep it the way it is.

Your title is perfect. It's snappy and it's got that whole alliteration thing going for it. It seems to relate beautifully to the story and encompasses meaning.

Your blurb is well done. I liked the first paragraph, but I wasn't enthralled by it. However, as soon as I got to the part where you listed the characters, I was hooked. That is definitely the strongest part of your blurb- at least to a reader like me, who tends to skim blurbs until I find something I like. I think those descriptions are incredibly unique and captivating. I would recommend reordering your blurb to put that part first. This is just a suggestion as I found that part to be so interesting. After all, it would be a shame for readers to never get a chance to read it because they chose to click off before they got to it. It also beautifully represents your abilities as a writer. It's clear and concise and it draws you in. However, it would be a little lengthy to put all of that before your actual explanation of the book. My final recommendation is to trim down that part and put it first. Is there any characters you can exclude from it to make it shorter? My favourites are the 'vagabond destined to be a dead king' one as well as the 'lover attempting to play a game of chess with lives.' I really like the one about mirrors as well. I think those are the strongest points of your blurb, so you should put them at the top. Your blurb is error-free and well-written either way. Well done on this aspect!

13/15

Logistics: (grammar, spelling & dialogue)

Your grammar is, for the most part, very well done. I noticed some commas that should be added here and there but they were very few and far between. I'm assuming they were simply errors. As always, I'd recommend going through your chapters and reading them aloud. If you have trouble getting the sentence out on the first try, the grammar isn't clear enough. The only major problem I found was the hook of your first chapter. I like the hook, but the sentence is a little awkward. I'd recommend restructuring this. The hook is very important- and I was surprised at how good your grammar was the rest of the story because that first sentence threw me. I think the hook would be a little cleaner structured like this:

'Nokkland had two things going for him. One, it wasn't storming...yet. Two, the ice-dragon scale hadn't stopped humming...yet.'

I find this to be a little easier to read. If you like it the way it is, I'd still add a comma after the first 'yet' for clarity. Or try to restructure it yourself. Another issue I noticed is your double and singular quotations. I'm Canadian, and the way I understand the rules is if you're emphasizing something, you use singular ones, like this: 'the colde one' (the hook of your chapter two). However, I believe the UK does it a different way from the US which is different from Canadian. I'd suggest quickly checking out the correct version for your location if you haven't already. With that being said, a lot of the time when we're writing creatively, decisions around things that have pretty loose rules like that fall to us. For example, professional writing rules say you shouldn't start a sentence with 'and' or 'but' but I actually do this quite often to increase drama and excitement. Sometimes, it's okay to bend rules like that in the name of creativity. Personally, I believe the singular quotations are a better choice because they'll never be confused with dialogue, but if you're adamant about keeping your book completely accurate, I'd do some research on it.  I took off no points for this because I understand there are a lot of different rules and even something I could be missing here.