Golden Pen Reviews (CLOSED)

The Second Life: Fatal

Title: The Second Life: Fatal
Author: Awe_Da_City

Description:
Do you ever wonder how life would be different when all hell broke loose? People considered "failures" and "successes" flipped around in a new world?

      Do you ever wonder what you would need to know to survive an apocalypse? If your brain could still be your greatest asset?

      Ronnie and his company are high schoolers in the midst of the apocalypse, with nothing but their wits. Follow his story and see how one in the midst of hell can find some hope of humanity pulling back together.
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Firstly, your title is gripping. Discounting the series name/subtitle, it's one word. One-word titles tend to be pretty potent if they're used correctly, and I think you did a nice job of picking a good one. Fatal is one of those overarching titles that, despite not being overtly referenced in the book, makes perfect sense. The events of this book, and the overall world your characters are living in, are definitely a fatal combination.

Your summary is also quite good, though the wording in some sentences is slightly awkward. For example, a comma in your second sentence, before 'flipped' would be helpful in improving the flow.

Other than that, your summary gets its point across nicely and doesn't give too much away. This makes readers want to read on without feeling daunted or disinterested in any way.

The flow of your overall plot is relatively smooth. Plot-wise, my only complaint was the time skip in the first half of the book. That one caught me so off guard that I had to make sure I didn't miss something. That's not to say that the time skip itself needs to go; I would simply like to see a more concrete resolution to the previous scene, then have the three-month jump.

Your characters seem quite realistic to me, especially Ronnie and his friends in the beginning. Since we know them before the apocalypse, readers will find it easier to identify with them and follow their struggles throughout. I love how, in the beginning, Ronnie and his friends are just a group of teens joking around, and by the end they've all grown (for better or worse) in different ways.

My favorite character was definitely Ronnie, as I felt a connection to him and his mental struggle to find something to live for.

You also do a nice job of describing your characters, and that' something I always appreciate. Physical descriptions make characters more vivid in the minds of readers, helping readers to gain a concrete grasp on the characters' appearance. Without this, I find it difficult to imagine what someone in a story may look like.

With that being said, I do have a comment on descriptions from the sixteenth chapter.

"I step inside her room, and the junk in the room was really piling up. There was so much for one person to do, even with only 65 followers. Kjrsten was clearly suffering from this. She looked as if she was getting less and less sleep every day. Entire corners of her room had stacks of paper and other trinkets."

The description of the room itself seems to stand out here, but as far as the age-old concept of showing versus telling, there's a lot of telling going on in regards to Kjrsten herself.

I'm curious if there would be a way for you to make her struggles as leader more pronounced. Perhaps give us a couple more lines about her here, showing us what it looks like, in her case, to be "getting less and less sleep". I can get the idea here, but this looks different for different people.

I also would like to comment on your inclusion of different characters from different backgrounds, with different accents and different languages. I applaud it. I've tried that with some of my books, though I don't do it often because it's difficult to find the balance.

I think you did well with this, and I especially appreciate the use of foreign languages in dialogue to make the cultural differences more pronounced.

I do, however, think that you should include translations for these at the end of the chapter. Doing it alongside the quote is not ideal, but rounding up any translations in an author's note could definitely help.

One place this could serve a purpose is, I believe, in Chapter 12. We've got the phrase 'lykke til'. It's Norwegian, which I didn't have much trouble figuring out. However, the only words of that language I know are words my followers may have mentioned to me, so I had to find myself a translator to make sure my guess was correct.

Lastly, your grammar is pretty good. You've got the expected, small error and awkward wording in a few places, but considering the book's length and how small those are, it's nothing to worry about unless you want to go ahead and edit. If not, you can always wait to edit, and I don't think the grammar would cause anyone any problems.

Would I recommend this story? Yes. I'm a sucker for zombie apocalypse novels, and anyone who read my 2050 series would also enjoy this. Science fiction and action readers will be fascinated, and young adult fiction readers may also like giving this a try.

OVERALL SCORE: 95/100