25: River's Shadow by AnecdoteofAstrina

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"Rivule Mirthiel, the Crown Princess of the River Elves, has been burdened with her inevitable fate her whole life. She must embrace her duties and accept her birthright to the High Throne. It's her destiny to lead her realm into a brighter future, just as her ancestors before her.

But destinies are not always fate's desire.

Disaris Vilhimnir, the Guardian of Darkness, is awaiting his ascension to divinity. For far too long has he been perceived as a child by his superiors and enemies alike. As one responsible for the fates of the species in the universes, he must appear vigilant and vigorous.

A twist in the stars brings the two together, and their union gives birth to a worm of deceit. The ancient order that has once terrorized Earth's past is about to rise once more. And with it, the possible downfall of Mother Nature."

This is a book that was one of my first requests, but the author requested I wait until they finished some rewriting. I don't think they're done with their rewriting, but this has been sitting around in my queue for so long that I wanted to get this out of the way. This is also going to be an extremely short review since I know this is still a work-in-progress and they might not be done with any edits they wanted to make, and I don't want to add a bunch of padding for the sake of padding.

Your blurb is clear enough, although I don't think using a metaphor with "worm of deceit" (I haven't read the story yet, but I imagine they aren't birthing a literal worm) makes sense in this context where we'd expect a bit more literal of a phrase. You're also missing a paragraph break before "But destinies," but that's a small formatting thing.

I would watch your word choice, in the prologue especially: "lambent" is too literary of a word to use given the rest of your narration, and you use the word "luminescence" and variations thereof frequently when you could just say "light."

Looking at the opening chapters, the main thing I would say is that you're very heavy on names and worldbuilding, in a way that I think is too dense for the reader right off the bat. There are a lot of proper nouns tossed about, and when the scenes are just people talking to each other about their world's history, it becomes hard to keep track of. Chapter 3 was easier to follow in this regard than the first two, and I imagine that things will be a bit cleaner after that.

There's nothing else I can really say given how short this is. I'll give you an 80/100 because I don't think there was anything particularly damning, nor was there anything especially compelling either. It's up to you now to see where your story goes, but I can't judge things like plot that effectively from just this. It's why I find it interesting how so many review shops on Wattpad only read a few chapters: you simply can't judge a lot effectively from so little. Keep up the good work!

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