Jerk Reviews - Closed

7_ Saga of a New World

Review of Saga of a New World By L Krahn

This work is well-thought out, and it seems as if a significant amount of time was devoted to editing, which certainly makes the work readable. Additionally, the imagination of the work is quite impressive. The author takes the time to delve into the details about the main character's physical adjustment to the changes she goes through, and the descriptions of her struggling and stumbling are meticulously done. The creativity a story like this requires is notable, and there is a lot of promise when it comes to the story line, which makes it a little disappointing in terms of the follow through on the presentation of ideas.

For instance, the third person present tense is a little jarring and off-putting and the piece reads, at times, as wordy and overly concerned with propriety and following the conventions of "academic" writing rather than cultivating a literary tone.

In short, there's a stiffness to the piece that is sometimes problematic. However, it is definitely imaginative, and the narrative is unique enough that some reviewers want to learn more.

Grammar, Syntax, and General Editing

As noted by most reviewers, there were spelling mistakes and misuses of words and analogies that crop up in the chapters reviewers read, issues that occasionally led to a jarring awkwardness. For example, 'tampered steel' should be 'tempered steel.' If steel was 'tampered,' it would be weak and yielding because it was flawed. Furthermore, 'tampered steel' is not an actual saying.

Overall, though, the basic mechanics of writing were good other than the extremely distracting dialogue mechanics. Once readers noticed the fact that punctuation within dialogue was used improperly, it was all a few reviewers could pick up. For instance, in Chapter 3, the author presents dialogue as: "'Hello? Is anyone there?'." The period is unnecessary in this case, which makes this dialogue have too much punctuation. Compounding the issue as the story moved along, the dialogue tags were inconsistent.

The link provided in the review application sent reviewers straight to the first chapter, and it wasn't until after reading that one reviewer went to the synopsis and found a further frustrating statement acknowledging that they author knows their use of dialogue punctuation is mistaken but that they learned it this way as a child and would like for reviewers to not point out the issues. This is a problematic statement, and dialogue tags don't necessarily fall easily under the "creative liberties" category in writing.

Some reviewers found that the pacing got a bit slow and description heavy as the narrative moved forward. Furthermore, when it comes to editing, reviewers noticed that Chapter 3 onward has no spacing between paragraphs. Although reviewers found that using multiple POVs interchangeably did not work within the narrative, because the writing is in present tense, which makes these POV shifts feel awkward.

Plot, Narrative, and Tone

Most reviewers liked the idea for this story as it is rare to find books where an apocalyptic event changes people to fantastical creatures (other than zombies...if you count zombies as fantasy). Furthermore, the characteristics the author gives these fantastical creatures are also unique (i.e. Astrid, as an elf, has a red-filter vision, and Noah, as a dwarf/imp, has super vision, sight, and smell).

The action sequences are also pretty good, especially in terms of tension build-up. To that end, the emergency warning was particularly convincing to some reviewers and readers generally found it built anticipation as early as the first chapter.

Despite investment by some reviewers in the first chapter, the second chapter lost them. The reason for the narrative losing some readers was that the writing style required over-thinking and many readers fell out of the narrative in order to reason out what the author meant and process the details and concepts the author sought to present, making the action is sometimes difficult to follow. For instance, one reviewer mentioned that the fight sequence where the female officer was firing at the creature was difficult to understand without rereading. Though the description of chaos and confusion is a good writing technique, with the third person present point of view it occasionally seemed inappropriate.