Sunflower Reviews

Raaina - God Trials: Demeter

Ø CHAPTER ONE. (7/8.3)

To be sincere, when I read your blurb, I didn't expect much from your book—story and writing style wise. All the more reason to fix the blurb, as it wouldn't be nice if, due to the blurb's shortcomings, your book is dismissed as mediocre. God Trials isn't mediocre, as you've proven in the first chapter. Your opening line is... not a bang, but it's far from falling flat either, and has just the right amount of... what's the word? Pizzazz? To hook the reader.

From there, you go on to give the readers a glimpse into the MC's relationship with their mother—somewhat complicated relationship, if I must add, and that's done in a captivating way, thanks to your writing style and word choice. With that little throwback, you've been able to establish your main character and their mother as round ones, and feed us information about the setting (world building, if you'd like) without choking us. Great job, there, and also with the description of Olympus, which is 👌🏿. Again, many thanks to your simple, yet alluring writing style.

The other characters, Cilo, Zeus, and his brothers (though, these ones are only paintings) are introduced and described impeccably. You do have a way with imagery, I'll give you that, and it's definitely working for you.

All in all, I think this first chapter is as great as first chapters can be, barring its grammatical and punctuation errors, which I'll deal with in the appropriate sections. The part where Zeus hints at people dying adds a page-turning effect to the chapter. And the last line, definitely a cliffhanger that'll make readers scroll to the next chapter. Great job.

GRAMMAR: You seem to have the same issue here as you do in your blurb. Omitted words and commas. I'll give a few examples.

Original: I having been close enough to the death fork to see my own reflection in its spears would know that it was not that shiny (Note: I probably read this sentence five times before I got it. At first, I thought you'd missed a word somewhere, then in my Eureka moment, I discovered you missed two commas).

Fixed: I, having been close enough to the death fork to see my own reflection in its spears, would knowit was not that shiny (I removed the first 'that' to tighten the sentence).

After skimming through this chapter once more, I've come to the conclusion that you probably do not like commas. Like them or not, though, you've got to use them when necessary.

Original: WhenIwas a childI remember begging her endlessly to describe... (You're setting off a sentence with the adverbial clause 'when I was a child', therefore, a comma needs to be after 'child').

Fixed: When I was a child, I remember...

Original: Itwasmore of afloatingpalacethan a mountain to be quite frank (You have an independent clause (...Mountain) and a phrase (to...). To avoid unnecessary confusion, place a comma after 'Mountain').

Fixed: It was more of a floating space than a mountain, to be...

There are several sentences like the above in this chapter. You'd do well to fix them.

PUNCTUATION: Unlike your word choice and writing style, you don't have your punctuation (In terms of dialogue and the issue with comma) locked down at all. Some of your dialogues aren't punctuated. The ones that are mostly not punctuated properly. Check Parting Shots section for tips on punctuating dialogue.

Oh, and you really need to spell 'Gods' as gods (or god, depending on the situation).

Need I say more about your description than I already have? No. Character and scene descriptions are near flawless.