Amber's Book Reviews

Her Brother's Keeper: A Story of Alpha Centauri

arkham71

Genre: Science Fiction 

 Summary: Immerse yourself in a world where all is not what it seems. A dystopian society where humans face adverse conditions to survive on a colony world in orbit around one of our closest stellar neighbors. A place where women rule with an iron fist and men have been stripped of all rights. Where each woman is forced to give birth to a minimum of six children in order to populate their empty world. Where all the children they bear are from implanted embryos in a never-ending eugenics project. 

 Experience this civilization through the eyes of an extremely intelligent young girl born into a well-off family. A person who accepts most of the trappings of society as being normal yet possessing the knowledge that things today differ from the way people lived on Old Earth. An individual with a rare interest in history because of her unusual upbringing and unique genetic lineage. 

This schoolgirl is currently facing an incredibly hard decision, the most agonizing choice of her young life. Because of laws preventing males from receiving any formal education prior to middle school, she had spent her time in primary school with her non-genetically related twin sister. Now, however, her Mother has entered her into an intra-familial tournament to determine the Sister most fit to act as security for her elder Brother. A Brother with whom she has shared a unique, Sister-like bond despite his gender. A Brother who is about to enter junior high school. 

She must determine which path she wants to take. Will she try her best in the upcoming contest or will she throw the competition? Will she choose to remain by the side of her womb-mate or will she choose to guard her closest male relative? 

 Will she decide to become her Brother's Keeper?

Focus: This author requested my opinion on how to gain more readers. I am going to tailor this review to wattpad readers specifically. That means the advice I give here might not be what you would do in an effort to get a book published, or even garner readers on another site. 

Readership Review: The first thing I noticed was that right off the bat the summary is long. There is way too much information here, it could be cut down a lot without losing any of the crucial information. 

"Experience this civilization through the eyes of an extremely intelligent young girl born into a well-off family. A person who accepts most of the trappings of society as being normal yet possessing the knowledge that things today differ from the way people lived on Old Earth. An individual with a rare interest in history because of her unusual upbringing and unique genetic lineage."

So for example in this paragraph here the only key pieces of information really needed are the fact that the MC is a girl, she accepts the way things are, and she likes history. This could be condensed down to:

"Experience this civilization through the eyes of a young girl with a thirst for history who has never before questioned the society she lives in." 

This is just an example, but the long drawn out summaries with unnecessary details can be off putting. Readers want to quickly read a paragraph or two to decide if they might be interested about what's inside. 

The next thing I notice that might turn readers away is the chapter: "A Few Notes on The Terms Used in This Book". Wattpad has plenty of people who would be excited about this, but I would say the majority of readers would see this as work that would hinder their ability to read the book leisurely. What I would suggest here is footnotes. Don't tell the readers they will have words to figure out, instead just use those words and have explanations as footnotes at the end of each chapter. This will make the information a lot easier for readers to swallow, and will also stop them from feeling like they have to back track to the chapter that explains the word usage to understand something. Basically you need to trick your reader into becoming invested in the story before you start asking them to use their brain. 

Chapter by Chapter Review: 

Prologue

The prologue was very enjoyable and well written. It gives us some interesting information about the new world through the dialogue between unknown characters. I always like when a prologue doesn't go too in depth about who everyone is because, to me, that is just not the point of a prologue. The author seems to have some very unique ideas that are being outlined here. I especially like the protection of the men as almost a nonrenewable resource. Particularly it makes me think of all the statistics of male death's in risky jobs and what it would be like if all of that followed a colony to a new world. 

Interlude 1

I will be honest, I don't really know the point of this chapter. That's not to say it doesn't have a point, but as a new reader I fail to see why it is included. If it is not key to the story I might consider taking it out. If it is key to the story I would add something that links it just a little bit more. 

A Very Busy Afternoon 1

I approve of breaking up the long chapter for the sake of the app. I find that many readers read on their phone and with the longer chapters it can be easy to get lost in between reading. The shorter chapters make for less scrolling, and it is much easier to keep your place. 

The author does a great job of introducing the MC in this chapter, along with some world building that seems very smooth and natural to me. 

Overall Review: 

Pros: I didn't focus too much on the chapter by chapter review because this author doesn't seem to need any help on that. The grammar is good, I didn't see any mistakes. The paragraphs and dialogue are well written and well formatted. The author seems to know where the story is going and all the background and world building information that can sometimes lead to plot holes. The chapters are long, but the genre is science fiction so I expect that. The MC seems to be well developed, and the author seems to be comfortable writing her.

Cons: There is a LOT going on. I recommended footnotes at the beginning of this review and I stand by that. Until the readers are comfortable with the world and authors writing style it would be very helpful to be able to scroll down to the end of the chapter and have some questions answered. Another thing that kept tripping me up was when the author abbreviated see-ohh-too to just 'see' I had to reread the sentence to realize it was the 'see' for the 'C' in CO2 and not the see as in to perceive with your eyes. My advice here would be to maybe italicize see-ohh-too so then you have 'see' to use your eyes and see as the abbreviation. It just distracted me from the reading a little bit.