Rebel Wars - 2018 Awards [CLOSED]

WEREWOLF/VAMPIRE WINNER || Immortally Beloved

Immortally Beloved

By JadedElegance

Review by Rather_Be_A_Unicorn

Cover/Title

The cover shows us a dark-haired woman with downcast eyes, who I think captures the character of Eleni quite well. The fact she's not facing the camera gives her an air of mystery. I find the title 'Immortally Beloved' is quite fitting for a story about an immortal vampire.

Blurb

While your blurb gives me a good idea of who and what your protagonist is, it's also a bit vague. I would recommend adding something referring to what's at stake (no pun intended :-)). To me, a 250-year-old powerful immortal who is running away to avoid scandal seems not enough of a hook to capture readers if there isn't at least a glimmer included of what will and can happen if the scandal finally catches up with her.

What I liked was the inclusion of the setting, Aubrey Parish, in the blurb. To me, this worked really well, since it makes the setting in this story a character in its own right: "With a constant population of 8,999 souls and rumoured to be a haunted town able to disappear...". This is mysterious and ominous, and it definitely piqued my interest.

Hook

Once opulent and full of the richness of life, the city is nothing but torch-lit darkness, stinking of death and screaming of everything sanguine.

As a hook, I think this is great. It sets the tone of the story well; the relative lightness of Eleni's life as part of the French aristocracy before the Terror, contrasting with the darkness of her life afterwards. This story explores themes of light and darkness, but it does so in a manner that the two very different flip sides of one coin blend together, rather than convey it in a black-and-white manner. One cannot appreciate one without knowing the other and this first sentence captures that image beautifully.

Grammar/Style

Overall, your sentences flowed well and the author's rich descriptions painted a vivid picture. Some sentences were indeed on the long side, but it was easy enough to follow along. To me personally, it wasn't problematic and I never felt like I got lost.

There are some tense shifts from present to past tense, but the author mentioned in the introduction that this will be fixed in editing.

Narrative

Apart from Eleni's diary entries, the story is written in 3rd limited multiple point of view, present tense. I'm usually not a fan of having multiple POV-switches in a scene because it's incredibly difficult to pull off well without reverting to blatant head-hopping, but I have to say that I often felt myself so immersed in the story that the point of view switches in scenes hardly ever bothered me.

One thing to look out for is that in order to stick to 3rd limited to not refer to Eleni in paragraphs from Eleni's POV as (for instance) 'the raven-haired girl'. Though I realize this isn't written in deep point of view, to me it felt unnatural for a character to refer to herself as 'the raven-haired girl' when we are in her POV. To me, it signals a POV-shift from Eleni to another character to me, especially at the beginning of paragraph, but that wasn't always the case.

For instance in this scene between Eleni and Victor:

"The raven-haired woman tosses him a charming smile while he speaks. She can almost hear his thoughts when she tries, though not precisely. His mind is loud and uninhibited, making him more than a little vulnerable to the likes of her."