Hades and Persephone written by Siya_Stark3000
i. COVER & TITLE
Your cover is beautiful! I saw a few versions of it—the darker one when I started this review and then the lighter one, and now the current one. Professionally, I think all are effective in conveying to the reader the story while being nice to look at. However, I do think the darker cover represented more of a mysterious and alluring aura than the current one. Your choice! They're all great.
I'm sorry, but I really don't like your title. It doesn't really give us any insight to how this retelling will be any different, and it's so tell-y. It's not unique and is very generic. I would highly recommend switching it. You don't even need to say that it's about Hades and Persephone in the title—you can do it in the blurb. Think The Goddess Test, A Touch of Darkness—all retellings that don't have the names in the title but still do great stories. Is there something unique about your retelling that can be conveyed in the title? Something to think about.
ii. BLURB
Your blurb has the feeling of info-dumping, especially in the beginning. It's a hard thing to avoid once you get into this mindset that people need to fully understand your backstory in your blurb—but truthfully, they don't. I think you have a bit too much in your blurb that is unessential and causes confusion. For example, the third paragraph about the sperm and the father and the robot and the brother just really went over my head after even a few re-readings. I don't think you need any of that. Here's what the blurb would look like if you stripped it down:
After the war between Hades and Kronos, the minor Greek Gods and Goddesses disappeared, meaning that Hades lost his Persephone.
Indulging in the affairs of the Underworld, the mighty Agesailos is a shell of the God he once was—and that doesn't sit right with his brothers and a certain God of love.
Starting a human University was never on the to-do list of the lord of the dead. But in this place called University, he discovered someone who he thought he lost eons ago. And in between the technical drama and the Olympus' over drama, Hades is set to find out the reality of his own existence.
Do I think this is a perfect blurb? No. But I think it has more to work with than what you currently have. I'm still a little confused, but maybe that's because I have no clue who Agesailos is (it sounds like that's what you've renamed Hades, but I'm not sure because you never repeat it). I'm also confused about that little mention of the God of love—because traditionally that's Eros but he would've disappeared with the lesser Gods like Persephone, so I'm not entirely sure what's going there. Truly, I think you need to take a step back from the blurb and write it as if we have no knowledge of mythology or your story or literally anything. That might help with some of the more confusing parts of your blurb. In addition, make sure every word and therefore sentence in your blurb is absolutely essential—and take out anything that you deem isn't.
0 7 / 1 5
i. PUNCTUATION
Commas help to separate thoughts in your writing, and they make things smoother and easier to understand. Usually, the easiest way to describe a comma is just a 'breath' in the writing or a slight pause. You don't use a lot of commas, which is how your story ends up feeling a little rushed and hurried. Look at this:
'Not believing her luck her eyes lit up with joy which crushed the remaining light in his heart.'
Here, you've got a few thoughts. One, 'not believing her luck'. Then, you've got 'her eyes lit up with joy', then the sort of transition to how that makes him feel. You definitely need a comma to separate those two clauses in the beginning, and I'd recommend using a dash for the rest, like this:
'Not believing her luck, her eyes lit up with joy—which crushed the remaining light in his heart.'
As I said before, you don't use a lot of commas, and there are tons of places where you should. I'd recommend going through and trying to separate clauses like the ones above with commas.
ii. DIALOGUE
Your dialogue tags are misplaced and have the wrong punctuation. Read these five rules, refer back to them when you need, and you should have all the info you need to fix this problem!
1. Definitions: There are two ways to indicate which character is talking. There are dialogue tags and there are action tags. To understand dialogue, it's important to know the difference. Dialogue tags are anything that indicates who is talking by describing or detailing how they are speaking (he screamed, she whispered, I asked). Action tags also indicate who is talking, but they only use actions to do so (he grinned, she raised an eyebrow, I blinked). Some verbs can be used as both, such as 'he groaned.' If you want to say he said something in a groan, it's a dialogue tag. If you want to say he said something and then he groaned, it's an action tag.
2. Dialogue tag preceding or following a spoken sentence: In this case, the beginning of the spoken sentence is always capitalized and if your dialogue tag is after, then you end the spoken sentence with a comma and begin the dialogue tag with a lowercase. If the dialogue tag comes before, then you place a comma after the dialogue tag and begin the spoken sentence with a capital.
Examples:
"Hello," he said. OR He said, "Hello."
3. Dialogue tag in the middle of two spoken sentences: In this case, you have two options. You can a) pick a sentence and attach the dialogue tag to that using the above rules, or b) make it all one sentence, therefore ending the dialogue tag with a comma and beginning the spoke sentence with a lowercase.
Examples:
"Hello," he said. "It's nice out today." OR "Hello." He said, "It's nice out today." OR "Hello," he said, "it's nice out today."
4. Dialogue tags following or preceding special punctuation: Whenever you have an exclamation mark, question mark or a noun that must be capitalized, the rules do not change for dialogue tag punctuation.
Examples:
"Hello," I said. OR "Hello?" she asked.
5. Action tags in writing: In this case, you follow the regular rules of writing and end the spoken sentence with a period and begin the action tag with a capital.
Examples:
"Hello." He grinned. OR He grinned. "Hello."
iii. FORMATTING
In writing, there's something we call the focus rule, which basically means every time a new character talks or thinks, they need a new paragraph. Without this rule, the characters' thoughts and dialogue blend into one another, and it creates confusion. You have some issues in this area, where sometimes I had to read something multiple times in order to understand who was speaking. In addition, using the focus rule means you won't have to say 'Hades said' or 'Poseidon said' every time they speak—you can rely on action tags to do that, which makes for a smoother story.
0 7 / 1 5
i. PACING
I think your story needs some reorganizing in order to help your pacing. I talk about the problem more in the character section, but here I'd like to talk about the solution. For one, your prologue has two parts to it—the italicized memory of Persephone, and then the brothers talking. Because of those two parts, it didn't really feel like a prologue at all—it felt like a first chapter. But then I get to the actual chapter, and I realized how the focus of the story has completely changed, and therefore I understand why the prologue was a prologue. However, the prologue moved so fast, and then we're at MIT and I'm a little lost as to how we got there and why we got there, and where Hades is, and who are these people that appear to be the Gods, and why are they at MIT? Of course, questions can be a good thing, but too many of them cause confusion. I think you should leave the Persephone memory as the prologue, then make a brand-new chapter with the brothers coming to see Hades and answering some of the above questions. We'll get to see more of their relationship dynamic, as well as learn the story a bit better.
ii. TRANSITIONS
I really don't have any problems with the transitions that I've seen so far, as they always end on a note of finality and begin with a hook. They're strong and usually error-free, which is all I really look for in chapter transitions. As for the transitions from scene to scene, I found those pretty well done, but there's always room for improvement. I found you often focusing on a character, describing the way they looked, having them complete one action, the going on to describe the way they act. It was repeated a few times, which isn't ideal in my mind. Try looking at ways to get rid of repetition in that area and introduce each new character in a unique way.
0 7 / 1 0
i. CHARACTERS
Your characters are relatable, funny and interesting, but they lack any mystery or development. In the prologue chapter, we see Zeus and Poseidon come in ready to viciously taunt and make fun of Hades, but then moments later, they're talking kindly to him, acting like they care deeply. The quick transitions between the character's personalities were a little jarring to me, and I had trouble try to decipher who these characters really are—are they nice, are they mean? Are they nice on the surface, but they harbour hate underneath? Truthfully, I think your characters—apart from Hades and his inner turmoil—lack depth. Try thinking of ways to really make us understand why they say the things they do—things that make them unique and set them apart from the rest of your characters. When we don't have any established qualities of these characters or their relationships, we don't feel the impact when they fight or reconcile. For example, when the three brothers are all sweet and kind at the end of the prologue, I can't exactly find it in myself to feel for their reconciliation, because I haven't seen these characters actually fight yet, and so this doesn't feel unordinary or special to me like I think you meant for it to be. Does that make sense?
ii. SCENES
I quite like your scene description! I really like the MIT assembly setup—you did it quickly, describing essential details and nothing else. I really felt like I was there! You have nice, neat descriptions sprinkled among your writing, and I wouldn't recommend any more or less than what you're currently doing.
0 7 / 1 0
i. PLOT
Retellings are always hard, because it's hard to separate your plot from others. However, I really like your unique take on a common myth. I don't totally understand what happened or how you're going to pull of the rest of the plot, but I appreciate the originality that you've already shown!
ii. TONE
I do like your tone, and it's easy to read for sure. You don't use a lot of literary devices, which I think adds in originality that you slightly lack, but that's okay if you want to keep your writing simple. I'd like to briefly remind you about tense, and just point out that a few times you slipped up in your tense. You write almost entirely in past tense, but then you have a few sentences like this:
'Her body is adorned with a white silk shirt and black shapely trousers.'
The word 'is' here, instead of 'was' puts us in present tense instead of the usual past tense of your story. This just throws the reader for a bit of a loop. Easy fixes, of course—just ensure all your verbs maintain their past tense forms.
0 8 / 1 0
I really like the different take on the Hades-Persephone myth, and I think the ideas you have for these characters are really interesting. However, I have some trouble understanding them as of now, so taking a deep dive into them and their motivation would be beneficial for your story. With a little reorganization and polishing of some typos and such, this will be a lovely read!
3 6 / 6 0