Astania Reviews

Azia | Shadow Touched

Anyway, that is a lot of words for me to basically convey: the contrast between the background and the image needs to be increased xD

Tags: You only have 22 total tags used, which means you're not fully using the tools available to you to make your book as visible as possible. I suggest adding more tags leaning into your main character's traits ("thief", "rebel", "antihero"), the Crown Prince's traits ("royal", "prince", "richboy"), and the type of love ("secondchance", "heartbreak")

You should also double-check all your tags and find out which tags have the lowest amount of stories tagged with them. Switch them out occasionally to test out better tags for your stories. A lot of Wattpad is about gaming the tag system to make your books as visible as possible to future readers.

Author's Note: Usually I don't try to comment on these chapters, but your author's note chapter is so short that I think all the information should just go elsewhere. For example, who you are and what you usually write are usually found in profile bios, the fact that this book is originally in a series is usually found in the story descriptions, and content warnings can be in the story descriptions of just one line above your first chapter.

The other reason why I decided to bring this up is that you have a prologue after your author's note. So that's two chapters readers have to click through to actually get into the narrative of your story (more on your prologue later...). Someone I know has done a test on Wattpad showing that the more a reader has to click to get to your story, the more likely they're going to just click away and not even read it. Multiple people can also attest to the fact that the drop-off rate on Wattpad from the first story part to the second story part is disastrous, and the more exposure your book gets, the greater the drop-off rate (aka, more random people just clicking on your book to check it out and then leaving when they are not hooked). When readers are intrigued by your description and click on your story, they're still questioning if they want to read it, and you don't want to put so much barrier to the actual story for them.

Chapter One: I'm going to talk about your first chapter before I talk about your prologue. Mainly because your first chapter is absolutely fantastic. It starts with action, showing Naima beating the crap of someone. Immediately, I know what kind of character she is and what kind of actions she will take. It's very compelling. Naima is also such a fun character to read, and by the end of your chapter, I was hooked.

You do have some mistakes in your dialogue tags if it's something you're willing to note. I'm only pointing this out because I don't have much to add about making your first chapter better xD

"You're right. I'm sorry," I say. "But he is a bastard. You agree with that, right?"

"Y-you're mad, the two of you!" he stutters.

"Let's go find Vipes," I say to Keaton.

Prologue: Now, back to your prologue. You're obviously a great writer who can write compelling chapters that are readable on an online site, but you probably grew up reading books by other fantasy authors back in the "medieval" days of reading printed books. I say that because your prologue reads like some of the infamous prologues in "classic fantasy books": an info dump that I would skip and only get back to after I'm done with the story.

The first sentence of your prologue is intriguing. But immediately following that are paragraphs and paragraphs of descriptions about the world, the magic, the caves, etc. It then leads to a fable-like tale about an unnamed shepherd. Granted, the shepherd's story is interesting, but by the time I got there, there were paragraphs and paragraphs of information my mind already skipped. As I mentioned above, when readers click on your story, they're still questioning if they want to read it. And if your prologue and the paragraphs of descriptions are what they first see, that's not ideal for keeping their attention. You have to make readers care about the story and the characters first before dumping any information.

And honestly, in the next chapter, you show that you do have the ability to properly weave in information without dumping it all on readers! Information about Naima is slowly revealed via the narration or dialogue. Between all the action and witty dialogues, we learn about Naomi being really good as a thief, her past as Lady Naima, her relationship with Habib and Keaton, etc. If you can incorporate everything in your prologue into your narration like this, readers can click on your story and immediately get hooked.

Prologues are actually quite controversial. Some people abhor it, while some are okay with it. I belong to the latter camp. I've read a lot of great prologues that really serve the story, but they are usually prologues that are not info-dumpy. Unfortunately, I do think your prologue falls into the category of info-dumpy. I can tell you put a lot of effort into the world-building. But as much effort as we writers put in to build our worlds, the world is unfortunately the last thing the readers care about. What readers really care about are the characters—and your awesome character, Naima, is the real hook of your story. You should capitalize on that.

Anyway, that's the end of your review! Good luck with the rest of your writing journey, and I hope these notes are helpful.

Ending note: As per my rules, please share the review in your message board, tagging me (). Thank you!