The Evil Rant And Review Book

Sleepsong

Your chapters are huge and that wouldn't be a problem if you had stuff actually happening in them. Which leads me to my next big issue.

Pacing: this is where you lose me. You focus on completely irrelevant scenes that add nothing to your plot and characterization.

Short example: who the hell cares in what order Aerin puts the kids in the van and why? You spent an entire page on something that could be solved in a sentence. That scene added nothing but words and it kills your pace.

I noticed that you continue to do this all through the story. Even in chapter 101. Yes, Aerin finds *spoiler* information. Yes, it's fucking hard to believe and I wanted to stab my eyes with a fork for reading that, too, but he doesn't have to spend a shit ton of paragraphs marveling over it in nearly the same damn terms. We get it. He's as shocked as the readers. He's obviously trying to justify it to the readers. Move on already. We'll digest it ourselves. He doesn't have to do it for us.

There are a whole bunch of instances of pointless scenes. And to have that completely pointless video game scene in chapter one made me want to just stop right there. What is the point of that??? (See, I'm being completely unprofessional too).

Characters: I'm sorry. I just don't find Aerin believable as a character. You know why? Because he's so obviously you. I don't know how old you are, but you're definitely not a seventy something old vampire. And it's obvious.

Even if he looks 18, Aerin is not. He's seventy whatever. He will not act like a teenager. He will act like an old person. Well, guess what? He acts like a damn teenager. And I can't buy it. Because I can hear your author voice telling me the story everytime I read his musings on the page.

I haven't read enough to meet Sebastian properly so I won't pass judgement on him. But the kids at the pizza place were like giant walking cliches. They felt so plot forced I wanted to cringe.

Also, pro tip. People don't get over trying to kill each other that easily. This is fiction bullshit that should die already. From what I've read from 101, Seb and Aerin tried to kill each other at some point. How are they still together???

World building: You have something here. The setting is interesting. There was a world war three and we're far off into the future. However, as far as I've read, you haven't explored this as much as you should.

That's a big novelty in your story. You have the chance to plunge us in a whole new world. We get mostly nothing, just a few interesting facts you don't expand on, like the consequences of the www failure. How was that even possible? Who did it?

Also. World politics? Do you seriously think the US could launch a nuke on his allies and suffer no consequences? Do you seriously believe Russia wouldn't fire back, that it would end with Korea, a country no one really gives a hoot about? Having a really hard time buying your political premise.

I wish I had more dystopia aspects because the interactions, most technology and the people all act like in the present day.

So even if the premise is really cool, I feel like you really missed the mark.

Plot: I don't know what your plot is. I guess from the blurb what it starts as, but where are you going with this? What is the conflict you must resolve? It's not in the blurb so I can't tell if you got there or where you want to get.

Yes, Aerin and Sebastian are together now after trying to kill each other apparently. So what now?

Show vs. Tell: I'm going to be blunt because reasons and because you have no choice.

You tell. A lot. Making it first person does not mean you can't tell. It makes it less obvious to the untrained eye, but I'm not an untrained eye.

The prologue. You basically just TELL me all his life story instead of slipping it in and giving me a mystery to unravel as I read. Nope, just have this on a platter.