Astania Reviews

Azia | Demon's Bride

You also have both young and new tags, which are contradicting. Reading your first chapter, your story feels more new adult, so I'd suggest getting rid of the youngadult tag.

Prologue: This was a quick glimpse into a demonic ritual that's stated in the description. It's well-written and immediately pulls the reader into the terrifying situation. I love it! If you want, I'd suggest making this longer by (1) showing even more emotions from the main character and (2) maybe having a glimpse of the perpetrator/the people doing this to her.

Another suggestion I have is for you to avoid filter words like "I felt". These are words that add unnecessary layers between readers and the characters.

I felt the ropes tightening around my wrists. -> Ropes tighten around my wrists.

I felt someone's cold hands ripping the white dress off me. -> Cold hands ripped my white dress off me.

And then, I felt a piercing pain in my chest. -> And then, a piercing pain in my chest rips my consciousness away.

Lastly, and totally optional, but I hope you can add the Latin translations at the end of your book! It's not at all necessary to follow the narrative but it's always nice to satisfy curious readers (like me hehe).

Chapter One: To be honest, since this chapter immediately follows the main character waking up after blacking out in the prologue, I think it makes more sense for this chapter to be combined with the prologue, with a scene break separating them. The reason why I think you should do that is also that your prologue has a better hook than this chapter one. Your prologue was impactful and gripping from the start, while your chapter one starts with the main character waking up, which is unfortunately a cliche.

So Camille wakes up, and after talking to Lilith, proceeds to look around and describes the other people in the room with her. I understand the need for setting up the scene but at this particular part of the chapter, it felt very information overload: just chunks and chunks of descriptions thrown at the reader. I highly suggest breaking this description-heavy section up with dialogues. Perhaps they can continue arguing with each other, and then you can sprinkle in the description as Camille looks around at whoever's speaking.

After that, the story becomes more interesting, with Devlin showing Camille around. The chapter ends with Camille being depressed about her current state, which is a good way to end the chapter. So good job there!

To further improve your story, there are some small writing mistakes that a lot of amateur writer makes. These are small fixes that can elevate your writing:

(1) Excessive use of "immediately"/"instantly": It's implied that things are instant/immediate when it's a sentence that follows the previous sentence. You should only use this word if it's actually instantaneous, e.g. when your main character is reacting way faster than normal reaction time.

I was instantly blinded by the brilliance of ornate chandeliers. -> Remove that, it's implied.

I immediately recognised him as the one who suggested waking me up. -> No need for that too. Plus you could change the sentence structure to something like, "His voice is familiar—he's the person who suggested waking me up."

Not far from Lilith, two people sat, whom I immediately recognised as siblings. -> In addition to the fact that "immediately" is not needed here, I find it hard to believe that it's possible to assume people are siblings unless they are identical twins. Have you seen the trend where people try to guess if two people are siblings or a couple? It's quite difficult to guess correctly xD

(2) Excessive adverbs use: A control+F tells me that you have about 58 adverbs in just one chapter. Adverbs are a nice addition to a sentence, but when it's done excessively, it can be quite jarring and also tell you that you haven't been using a lot of varied sentence structures in your writing. A lot of the adverbs could be removed (just like instantly or immediately), while some of them could be better incorporated into the sentence by varying your sentence structure or using stronger verbs.

A boy with eyes and hair as black as coal, stared at me enigmatically, clenching his strong jaw. -> A boy with eyes and hair as black as coal and an enigmatic aura around him. He glared at me while clenching his strong jaw. Here, I simply changed the sentence structure to incorporate the adverb. It reads more easily now too.

Tears of frustration involuntarily streamed down my cheeks. -> Tears of frustration that I was holding back streamed down my cheeks. This tells you way more info than "involuntarily".

I lowered my head and silently followed him. -> I lowered my head and followed him. The adverb is removed here because she didn't say anything, so it's implied that she followed him silently.

I propped myself up on my elbows almost immediately. -> I jolted up, propping myself up on my elbows. Getting up immediately can be replaced with a stronger verb such as jolted, jumped, or sat up with a jolt.

(3) A passive main character: At least in the first chapter, Camille seems to just be dragged around by the plot. Aka, she simply lets things happen to her.

A strong and good main character is vital to hooking your readers because you want your readers to not only sympathize and root for her, but to be interested in reading what happens to her. And that can't happen if Camille is just letting everyone push her around.

I'm not suggesting that you change what she does in the story; Camille can remain quiet and obedient on the surface since she is in an unfamiliar and scary situation after all and people do clam up in such situations. But every time she is demanded a question, have her want to say something snarky back but pull herself back because of fear. Or maybe have her constantly try to ask questions, but the other characters keep ignoring her or dismissing her, making her clam up more. Describe a lot more about how she feels and how she thinks before the "tears of frustration involuntarily" plagued her. At the end of the chapter, have her wonder if she can run away or do something about her situation, before exhaustion takes over and she decides to sleep first. Whatever it is, do not let the plot and other characters drag her around!

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 (AziaElga). Thank you!