Vae Victis: woe to the vanquished.
Will you be defeated?
Enter my arena, where you'll find brutal honesty, blunt critiques and epidermic reaction to what you call writing.
The Dragon's Scale was the first story I reviewed for this book, more than a year ago. Recently (roughly), Cross-Warrior bravely reapplied. I guess that, as a devout christian, she knows about martyrdom. Or maybe she's just masochist. In any case, I can only be impressed to see her coming back and submit her story to my grumpiness.
As it's a second run, I won't be able to avoid making comparison with my former review. No surprise here though, you know I'm lazy...
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Title
The title didn't change. I liked it then, and I like it now.
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Cover
The cover did change. And it's for the better as I didn't like the previous one. I found it way too YA and, most importantly, hard to read.
The new one is definitely better. It's clearer, ridden of the unnecessary series' title and way more epic thanks to the badass dragon (kudos to your cover artist), but...
(You knew I would find something wrong)
Why, oh why, did you need a cute little boy on the cover? He's not only getting in the way of the fantasy/epic tone of it, but he screams Young Adult story. Again!
(And by Young Adult, I really mean Little Girl)
Once again, it's only a personal taste (or distaste rather) and depending on your target audience, it must work just fine. But for the record, it's something that makes me want to run away (and barf).
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Blurb
In the first review, I wrote that I hated the blurb. Yes, I did that. Not sorry. It had a quote from the story (I still think it's a bad idea), evoked a "normal" character and was basically a summary of the story.
Now, let's have a look on the new one. No quote, no use of "normal" anywhere, short, not telling too much. So far so good!
Now that I've been kind (I'm starting to get a rash), here's what is wrong with this blurb.
To be honest, I have a hard time with your blurb. I like what you say in it, but not how you say it. I thought of advising ways to reword it, and failed. It would divert too much from what you wrote and you're the writer, not me. But here are the things you may want to change:
