The Aeryn Awards 2021 [Complete]

Fantasy 🦄

Below are the results in the fantasy category, as given by judge ashliane. If you submitted your book in this category, scroll to find the title and username associated with you work and the attached review. The books are listed in order of entry, as listed in the 'list of participants' chapter. 

Einherjar by darthwitty- judged by @ashliane
[34/34 chapters read]

Cover 5/5
Title 5/5
Summary 3/5
First line/paragraph 7/10
Plot 28/30
Characterization 4/5
Writing style 15/20
Grammar 19/20

+1 flower point (see side notes)

Total 87/100

Gorgeous cover, I love the colour contrast and lighting. Definitely helped set the imagery for Blader.

Very cool fantasy title. I love the link to Viking legend and that you didn't make it too obvious. Just seems like a cool name until you find out the undead warrior things (which I found thanks to the very engaging comment section!)

Your summary sets the premise well but goes on for a little bit and is harder to hold attention. This relates to the writing style too but especially in the summary. I think whilst the language used is simple, you should make sentences shorter and get your point across more quickly. I also enjoyed the dramatic up lead to the novel here.

The first paragraph sets the scene of a dreary high school office- not quite what I was expecting from the more fantastical cover and summary but is immediately relatable to who i suspect to be the target audience and I fell in love with blader as he huffs about getting in trouble once again. A little simple and not a massive hook, but it works.

Your plot is wonderful. I loved the story so much, after reading the initial nine chapters and finishing all this rating, I couldn't help but go back to finish the entire book and rewrite my comments. It obviously has a great leadup on the villain's motives and many unanswered questions that were brought up during the book that will make for a fantastic second book in the series and really encapsulate the two. There weren't many drastic surprises in the story until the action hit about halfway through which is my only criticism.

The characters each have their own personality, and I especially liked the way you incorporated Jorid's trauma and the survivor's guilt from Thor's bridge and how different people dealt with it. I do feel as though you could have made Blader a more interesting character. As the main character I find him a little bland, but literally everyone else you nailed (especially his family) and I must admit I was 100% crushing on Wolfstead and Ivan.

At times I had to remind myself to concentrate so I could understand what was happening, but I think that's just a me thing because I do that way too much! Overall the style was relatively easy-going and understandable. You have a good sense of flowing and how to cultivate drama, tension and especially action in scenes.

I think in the entire book I only noticed like one sentence that didn't make absolute sense to me, which is fantastic considering the length of the story.

Side notes:
- blader and the king Baldor are very similar names
- looove the (Nordic) names its refreshing to see so much culture
- I liked that romance was in existence but not the main driving force of the entire plot, although I dunno if you will be able to hold yourself back in the next book XD
- +1 point for pretty flower imagery
- Ok but my favourite line in the entire thing was when one of the einherjar trainers told Sorid to "keep asking questions. Maybe one day, someone will listen" or something like that. It was soooo amazing thank you for that joy in my life. (poor Eric ☹)