Status: Closed
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Looking for a place to get a personal review for your story? Well, step in.
A workshop initiative by @TheSavantGirls since 2020
cover credits: @devianmisfit
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Warning labels: The book was deleted once by someone who has beef aga...
This is the story of a young boy whose name is Johnny O'Conner who was born as a monster, yet outwardly appears human. Due to his monster race he was hated by everyone and no one accepted him the way he was but still there were some people in his life who showed him kindness. He embarks on a journey to become the strongest being in the universe, driven by his desire to protect both the universe and his loved ones. However, despite his immense power, he often finds himself failing to safeguard his friends and others. Johnny is caring and really kind but after losing his loved ones time to time watching them die infront of his eyes he starts to gets cold and he always walks on dark side, even though he's nice. Due to his incredible abilities, he becomes a target for the villain Perseus. Perseus was sealed by Omegamon, the strongest Magician, but then he was revived by his monster generals using dark magic. Perseus became a threat to the universe.
Johnny was extremely powerful, and he was the only one who could defeat Perseus. For that matter, every monster started targeting him and his friends and loved ones in order to kill Johnny. Nevertheless, Johnny refuses to give up and continues to persevere. But even so, he still occasionally fails to protect his loved ones. Throughout his journey, he encounters numerous sorrows, loneliness, and adventures, facing challenges from various worlds.
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Cover
An excellent cover - for a fantasy that involves quite a bit of adventure, this could not be any more on point than it already is. The red eyes and the font on the topic are in perfect combination and complement each other wonderfully.
(disclaimer: this above critique was for the previous cover before it was changed)
Title & Blurb
The Dragon Emperor - to be completely frank - is not very catchy. Books that have fantasy as their genre have to be extremely eye-catching and something that is very unique, making one interesting or at least have enough interesting Blurb that makes readers want to read their book. Take, for example, Fourth Wing - a completely unique story title that hasn’t been heard of before and a very intriguing Blurb that definitely entices the readers to want to read more of it.
Your blurb is very standard - and I mean this in the best possible way. It starts off describing every fantasy that has adventure and action. There is a slight curiosity that is created but not enough for it to linger; not enough of that spark to make it do something in the heart of readers to want to read more. I would suggest re-working this once, try and read this from the perspective of a reader, what would make YOU pick up this book to read it in depth and get obsessed? What does it lack that would make you want to know more about your book? When you find your answer, your blurb is then going to be perfect. Write something that would make you pick up your own book from a bookstore.
Plot
When I first started off, I wasn’t impressed. Not with the character description (it felt a bit too robotic) and the start of the chapter one where Johnny speaks in the first person point of view. But the moment we stepped into the prologue, everything was dramatised and there was a drastic change in tone, speech, and delivery. You can say that it might or might not have made me wonder for a moment as to what was going on.
The names of your story has my eyes re-reading, the diversity is beautiful and the names unique to a point I don’t recall ever hearing them in a person.
Unfortunately, adventure and action - especially of a fantasy level - isn’t my area of expertise and I find it rather unjust to critique on something I do not know much about.
Visual Imagery
In accordance to what I have read, I think the story can do better with an editor. Not for the typos or grammar but much more for the imagery of the story.
You have done a marvelous job building the story up in your head but it’s time to bring it all together. The idea for the sorting ceremony was brilliant but the lack of imagery and themes described in detail made it feel duller than it should.
Dialogues
The dialogues of the story is rather confusing as well. Not in terms of speech but there are just too many characters introduced all at once (especially in the first chapter) that I believe most of your readers - atleast the ones not used to chaotic writing - would have a hard time differentiating them or keeping up with who is saying what.
Writing Style
The final thing I would like to bring to notice is the jumping between character point-of-views. While really brilliant, it is not the most professional style of writing. If there is a need to showcase everyone’s point of view of the same ongoing event, I would recommend stating it in third person point of view (removing the confusing of who is referring to themselves as ‘I’). The second method would be to dedicate each chapter to one particular person’s POV without repeating the sequence of events (this is seen in many books but I think the best executed one of this is - ‘Restore Me’ from the Shatter Me series).
Overall
I feel you can do better. You have vision, a solid plot and quite a brilliant idea, just with a bit more help to polish up and spend a tad bit more time re-reading your chapter (or getting an friend to help out or an editor) after finishing working on it, I believe this can be phenomenal.
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