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《Blade》Drunken Life, Dreamy Death

REVIEW - DRUNKEN LIFE, DREAMY DEATH (S_A__TSUKUMO)
(First 4 chapters were reviewed)

REVIEWER - Blade DeathBlade__

Title: 3/5
- The title sounds very catchy. I like how the title makes death seem more desirable than life, it sounds macabre in a way.
- I don’t know if it fits the book though. Till now, Nobu seems like a guy who hides his sorrows by being overly enthusiastic and that does not fit with the drunken life part of the title. Maybe it will begin to make sense in further chapters but as of now, I don’t see it.

Cover: 5/5
- I love the cover! It is minimalistic but it put the theme out for the readers to perceive. I love the color scheme of purple and black, it has melancholy vibes to it which fits with the theme of the book.
- I also really love the glowing font. It pops more than the rest of the cover, pulling my focus toward it which is a nice touch!

Blurb: 3/5
- The blurb is short and it gets to the point. It touches on all the relevant topics in the book and presents them to the reader which gives a brief idea of what the book is about.
- The sentence ‘Each attempt however goes wasted, for with every day passing, and each fault-finding, nothing but a desire to look past that sting drew breath.’ is hard to understand. There’s a lot going on in one sentence which makes it very wordy. I’d suggest you split it up into something like this:
- Each attempt, however, is wasted, and with every day that has passed and the more faults he finds…
- Also, I don’t really understand what you mean by ‘sting drew breath’. I’d suggest changing the words up to clearly express what you want to.

Writing Style: 5/10
- The writing style is easy to follow and it’s not a hindrance while reading. While it isn’t a hindrance, it also doesn’t catch the reader’s eye in the way that it should.
- I found that the writing style was downplayed and a lot of work isn’t put into it. Most of the time, it’s rather you saying what’s going on instead of showing it.
- The surroundings in which the readers are in are hard to visualize since we do not know much about them.
- Whilst I can look past the surroundings, I felt that the emotions could have been portrayed a lot better. The plot of this book is mainly Nobu having to move past his friend’s death. This calls for a lot of emotional moments and that wasn’t executed properly.
- He is trying to run away from his feelings but the way it is portrayed, I didn’t think he was numb. Instead, it felt as if he was indifferent or at least, close to indifferent (more on this later).
- You show Nobu’s feelings mostly in the form of words or thoughts. For example, he’s usually thinking about how he wants to run away from sorrow or he’s telling Haru about it. Apart from that, we don’t really see it in action. Actions speak louder than words and since he isn’t acting on what he says, it makes him feel less genuine.
- Also, when writing dialogues, I noticed you use lol or ha-ha or bahahaha often. Instead of laughing in words you could change the format of that and write it somewhat like this:
“*insert Nobu’s dialogue*”, he chuckled/he said, chuckling nervously.
To me, this format suits the book a lot better and it feels more professional.
- Another thing with the dialogue is that sometimes, you don’t mention who is speaking. This is ok for one or two consecutive dialogues but beyond that, it becomes hard to follow. What I’m trying to say is to mention who is saying what since there are multiple characters.
- You also use words like ay, damn, eh which makes the dialogue sound less sincere. Omitting that could add more seriousness to the book.

Grammar: 5.5/10
- I found a lot of grammatical errors while reading the book. I think the main issue is that you don’t express things the way you want them to be perceived. Usually, After pointing out the errors, I also correct them (in the comments) so that they are easy to fix. While I did do that for this as well, I wasn’t able to correct a few of them because I myself didn’t understand. For exampled:
In chapter 1, you wrote this ‘His lips parted, speech disposed, yet shortly were immobilized by her swollen eyes’. I reread this a couple of times but I could not understand the meaning behind it.
You could rewrite it like this:
‘His lips parted but he couldn’t utter a word. Her swollen eyes left him speechless’
Another example in the same chapter is mind’s eye. You cleared this for me in the comments but it wasn’t easy to understand when I read it first.