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Thank you so much for participating in the awards. The entries all had something truly unique or special about them. However, there can only be one winner and just like a good steak, our judges must trim the fat.
Below, are the first round results for Fantasy.
Good luck to those continuing and thank you for your efforts to those who didn't make it through.
Portable Magic, JaneQuill28 Title: 3/5 Cover: 2/5 Blurb: 5/10 Hook: 2/10 Total: 12/30 Notes: I think that there is too much going on in the blurb; specifically, I don't feel any mystery, as it's all laid out. It's more like a summary. The story itself was quite ordinary – as a story about magic, I'm wanting to see more elements incorporated from the beginning. The tension with the rain and lightning is good, but I really didn't feel a plot-driven pull from the beginning here. Some mystery with the last dispatch, but it's as it's written: this is a "usual" morning, so there really isn't anything interesting or out of the ordinary happening. I think this would do better if we started with a bit more action. However, this doesn't seem to be the purpose of this first chapter (which is fine). In terms of whether I was gripped, I'd say I was not, but that doesn't mean this book doesn't grip readers later. It just wasn't for me in the beginning.
Raven and Rue, ella_rowan Title: 4/5 Cover: 4/5 Blurb: 5/10 Hook: 5/10 Total: 18/30 Notes: The blurb is cute, but too pitch-y for me. Less like a hooking blurb and more like an elevator sales pitch. Perhaps this can be used elsewhere, but the blurb is not the right area for it. Unfortunately, I was turned away by the opening line of the book. I'm not sure if it was meant to be ironic or not (and from further reading I concluded that no, it wasn't meant to be ironic), so my reaction was a cringe. I also didn't care for the ending; this was all a flashback? Or perhaps foreshadowing? But this isn't a prologue, so it felt odd that we saw this backstory from the start.
The Epitomes, Timothy441 Title: 3/5 Cover: 1/5 Blurb: 2/10 Hook: 1/10 Total: 7/30 Notes: The blurb was quite lacking; very vague in its explanations of plot and ran a bit short. I could sum this up to say: "amnesiac boy with no family discovers he has extra-human abilities and goes on a journey to learn his purpose." If this isn't as basic a premise as you can get, I don't know what is. I need more plot elements here, just a little bit more specificness. In a large world of stories, you have to be a bit more unique to catch your readers' attention. As for the hook: I wasn't impressed. This type of writing simply isn't my thing: addressing the audience and spelling out long back stories may work for some, but this felt incredibly exposition-y to me. It isn't a hard and fast rule to start a story right in the middle of the action (books can be perfectly successful without doing this) but with over half the chapter dedicated to exposition, the plot doesn't seem to move a whole lot. Impart this backstory/worldbuilding on us as we go, this way we are engaging more emotionally with the MC from the start.
