Bloodlust and Butterflies written by degeneraete
i. COVER & TITLE
Your cover is, in complete and utter seriousness, the most stunning one I have ever come across. The logistics of it are perfectly balanced with the creative aspects—the fonts are unique and beautiful but still legible. The colours are bold and contrast to the darkness of both the title and the book plot. It's mysterious and alluring, captivating and striking. I would pick this book off a shelf without looking at the blurb. I would read it based on the cover alone. I would sell my soul for this book cover. I would pay good money to look the person who made this cover in the eye and thank them for allowing me to live on the same planet as them.
I have similar thoughts about your title. Why? Because it's perfect. There isn't a more perfect title on the face of the earth. Bloodlust is a violent, scary word, and butterflies is an elegant, beautiful word, which gives your title both an intriguing juxtaposition as well as an idea of what this story will contain. Honestly, you don't really need to be a good writer. You could build your success on your cover and title alone. But let's see what we can do.
ii. BLURB
Your blurb gets a solid 4/5 for being simple and straightforward. But it gets one point off on my system for being simple and straightforward. Let me explain that.
Your blurb has everything we need: a clear character, motivation, and generalized conflict. It's written in a way that is both easy to read and follow. It's everything a bookstore blurb needs to be. However, I'm not in the habit of recommending what everyone else does. I think blurbs need to have a spark in them—show us something unique. Creativity is derived from originality, and your blurb sounds like it was written entirely academically. Again, in my personal opinion, I don't like that—but a lot of people would. So it's entirely your choice to agree with me here. Below, I'm going to rewrite your blurb. I'm going to do it in my tone and my style, and that is going to be obvious. I just want you to read what I've written and understand why it comes off radically different from the original:
She's trapped.
It's not the metaphorical kind of trapped. Eko is the literal, stuck-in-the-hybrid-form-of-a-human-and-a-butterfly, kind of trapped. Confined to the imperial garden of the Zemor Empire, Eko believes freedom is nothing more than a dream. The only real source of faith in her life is the single friendship she shares with the crowned prince, but that, too, is beginning to dwindle.
She meets Ardor at the perfect time; he has the touch of realism she's desperate for. His company, his blunt honesty, the captivating idea of his nightly appearances—those are the things that drive Eko to flee from the life she knows.
But as it turns out, Eko's number of secrets pale in comparison to Ardor's. The truth is beginning to surface, and it shows that Ardor is not the alluring man Eko thought he was.
In fact, he's not a man at all.
What gives this blurb more personality? There are a few things. There is irony and a little touch of humour in the hook, and then you have this mix of punctuation—semicolons, dashes, the use of unique grammatical structures. I've spent a lot of time analyzing what makes tone and diction readable, and I find originality to be the main factor—readers like reading something that doesn't sound like everything else. In short, the original blurb feels like every other crisp, cool blurb in a bookstore—that's why I wanted to see something different in it. Again, this is picky. I admire your ability to make a clean blurb.
1 5 / 1 5
(did I say I was going to give one mark off on the blurb? yes. but the cover and title and overall impression were just too good to take any marks off. whatever. it's my review. I make the rules)
i. PUNCTUATION
Grammarly is my friend. I've known her for a long time, I love her, I see use in her, and I couldn't live without her. But sometimes she's just so stupid. She makes these dumb mistakes and corrects or underlines things that aren't wrong. Sometimes it's right—but the problem with Grammarly is that it lacks critical thinking. (I don't know if you've made this mistake because you do use Grammarly, but I'm blaming it either way.) If you use Grammarly, you have to remember that it is not always right. You and your brain are smarter, and you need to check its work. Look at this sentence from your writing:
"Although, she's my sister, Amielle's young. She still doesn't know what should and shouldn't be said."
The comma there are 'although' is correct in Grammarly's mind, because it exists after an introductory phrase. But it's wrong and if you include it, the sentence makes no sense. The use of those two commas actually implies that 'she's my sister' (the middle clause) is nonessential, even though it completely changes the meaning here. You're trying to say that even though she's his sister, she's still young and doesn't always know what to say. But grammatically speaking, you've said that although she's young, she doesn't always know what to say, oh and also she's his sister—and that simple relocation of the 'although' causes the sentence to make no sense.
I always try to explain these things to authors, but really you don't need to know why that comma can't be there. You just need to read the sentence out loud and see if you pause after you say although. You wouldn't—you would say, "Although she's my sister, she's young." 'Although she's my sister' is a clause, and you've split it.
Similarly, Grammarly tells us to put a comma after 'so' when it comes first in a sentence. Is it...right? Well, kinda. But WHO TALKS LIKE THIS:
"So, that's it?"
NOBODY TALKS LIKE THAT. You wouldn't go, "so," pause, "that's it?" You would say, "So that's it?" I have listened to and presented speeches all over the world and never once heard a human being pause after 'so' like that. I'm sorry. Just...don't trust Grammarly. Be wary of her. I don't even know if you use her, but your commas after introductory phrases are disrupting your flow. Think critically if you need them. Did you breathe after 'so'? No? Then get rid of that stupid little pesky little annoying stupid little comma.
You use the wrong dash (: Don't do that. Use the right dash:
The hyphen is used to connect words that...have a hyphen in them. For example, I am five-foot-ten.
The en dash is used as style or formatting. It's what you currently use where you should use,
the em dash is used in creative writing to indicate dialogue that has been interrupted or other thoughts. For example, "Wait—" he cut off.
Anyway, that was a long-winded way to say your logistics are nearly perfect and had very little to work with here.
ii. DIALOGUE
You've got one dialogue rule left to conquer, and that requires defining some terms. Recall that a dialogue tag is a string of words that indicates who is speaking by describing the way that it is said. This includes anything like 'whispered', 'said', 'shouted' and so forth. On the other hand, you have an action tag, which also indicates who is speaking but does so by describing an action rather than the actual words.
"I...understand," she responded.
This is a dialogue tag because you have indicated it is her reply by using the word 'responded' in reference to her words. Similarly:
"Join me, Eko," he began again.
That's all good on your end. The problem arises when you confuse the punctuation of dialogue tags (correct punctuation is done above) and action tags:
"I knew you would give in," Roman smiled.
Here we have an action tag, not a dialogue tag. We're still using Roman's smile as a way to indicate he is the one speaking, but since it describes only the action and not the way the words are said, it does not follow the same punctuation. It follows the same punctuation rules as any other sentence, corrected below:
"I knew you would give in." Roman smiled.
Your dialogue, with the exception of the oversight above and one more thing I will mention later, is well done. You forgo the tags entirely when it becomes both appropriate and cleaner to do so, something that I don't see much. Excellent work here.
1 4 / 1 5
i. PACING
Unfortunately, I do have quarrels with your pacing, but I only started to have them around the ending of the first chapter. I really liked the way you ended the chapter with the line you used, but I felt a little jarred at how quickly she came to that conclusion and presented it to us. They're being cute, then I start to notice that there is something wrong going on, and then just bam the chapter ends. It felt abrupt, and I felt like I didn't have enough time to realize that she seems to really like him but can't quite figure out what he wants from her. I didn't have time to process that. I think you need to stretch out the end of that interaction just a tad to give your reader's minds time to catch up with Eko's thoughts.
ii. TRANSITIONS
I like the dramatic nature of the end of chapter one, but I don't like how chapter two continues on with the same interaction. In my opinion, chapter one should end with Roman leaving or the interaction ending. The chapter break there felt like it was in the wrong spot. Chapter one would be just fine being a little longer, and chapter two would be just fine being compiled with one. You have to be careful when ending chapters on a dramatic note—if the next chapter or scene hasn't moved on from that drama and is still a direct continuation of the previous situation, it takes the drama out of the ending and just confuses us as to what's going on and why you chose to end the chapter there.
iii. FLOW
There is one, singular place where I can point out a lack of flow in your actual words, and it relates to your dialogue tags. Above I mentioned that you had excellent work in that area—in the logistics of it—but here I'd like to bring up an issue I see a lot in published books and Wattpad books alike.
Let's think about what a dialogue tag is, and why we lowercase the beginning of it. Logistically, we do that because the dialogue tag is not its own sentence—it is the continuation of the dialogue before it. Too often writers forget that the inclusion of a dialogue tag after an already long-winded sentence is disruptive to the flow of that sentence and therefore the story. Here, you can see an effective dialogue tag:
"Well, I know that," she mumbled.
Here, the dialogue tag has purpose—both as an indication of the speaker and the tone in which it is said. But look at this one, taken from your writing:
"That's right. She's cute, isn't she? Amielle's grown out of her phase where she would follow me everywhere I went. I kind of miss it, but she still dotes on me. She packed everything. Everything, except this," Roman said, pulling out a bottle of blood root wine from the basket.
The dialogue tag in there is, for lack of a better word, useless. I pick this specific example to show you not only the flow disruption, but also how you've separated the ending of the dialogue and the action that he carries out at the same time by including the dialogue tag. Ideally, we want the word 'this' (that we as the reader require clarification of) to be as close to the clarifying verb 'pulling' and the clarifying noun 'wine' as possible—which is what makes the flow most effective. Here's what it looks like edited:
"That's right. She's cute, isn't she? Amielle's grown out of her phase where she would follow me everywhere I went. I kind of miss it, but she still dotes on me. She packed everything. Everything, except this." He pulled a bottle of blood root wine from the basket.
The idea of flow is perfected by simply eradicating anything unnecessary—things that do not add to the voice nor scene. We didn't need to have Roman's name in there, because it was very clear who was speaking. We didn't need the dialogue tag, because it didn't clarify anything and only created extra space between words that need to be close together. And finally, we didn't need 'out' in there either, because we already had the filler words 'a' and 'of' in there, and one more short word isn't good for flow.
I've been criticized for overusing action tags before, and it is one criticism I choose to completely ignore. Action tags are more effective than dialogue tags if there is no need to describe the tone in which the words are said. I will take that stance to my grave.
0 7 / 1 0
i. CHARACTERS
Your characters are real to me. This isn't because you've managed to dream up interesting characters or because I just vibe with who they are—it's because you have convinced me to like, believe, root for and fawn over them. Your incredible ability to expose character interests and tendencies without overexplaining who they are is unstoppable. You don't throw in my face that Roman is the crown prince—you slip it in at a time where I would not have noticed if I weren't a reviewer looking for these things. You describe the weight on Eko's chest as a recurring theme that is changing with the scene and helping to ground us. You present her as timid and tired but I immediately see the parts of her that I want to like.
There's a widely beloved character named Nikolai from the Shadow and Bone series. Arguably, he is the saving grace of what would otherwise be (in my opinion) a wreck of a series. We all love him for his quick replies, overly dramatic nature and confidence in his appearance. However, as much as I enjoy reading him, the way he is written lacks complexity. Each one of his replies is in the same format, and as someone who is also a writer, I can see so clearly what the author has done to make him likeable—cut him from a mould. He's not really that deep. He is a surface character.
Roman reminds me of him, but you've entirely sidestepped the aspects of Nikolai that I had trouble liking. You've made him mysterious and slightly suspicious, but also impossible not to like at first. It's a very, very difficult character that you've pulled off—confident but not arrogant, witty but not too brilliant. He's complex, and he's not even close to the masterpiece that is Eko.
Eko could easily come off as a very pessimistic, self-degrading and downer of a character. But somehow you've managed to manipulate traits that could so easily become annoying into those that we sympathize and relate to: broken, scarred, deeply troubled and yet thoughtful. The mention of her useless wings in the words of any other writer would've had me go, "come on, dude. you have wings. stop complaining. I don't feel bad for you." But you have so beautifully turned those thoughts into, "how heartbreaking and lyrical is it that something so full of potential never gets to fly?" I don't have enough words to explain the absolute mastery and depth I see in your characters.
ii. SCENES
The description of the spring view? The lunch spread? The WING DESCRIPTION??? Decorative sheets of paper?? Come on. I have no use here.
1 0 / 1 0
i. PLOT
Your plot is very unique. I've never heard of anything along these lines. Each part of this world is brought in slowly and carefully, each aspect of the plot crafted effectively. I'm intrigued to see what I do in the characters and their motivations, and I'm interested to know what happens to them. Sometimes I feel like a little more worldbuilding could be done to really immerse me in the more fantastical aspects of this plot. You seem to have those aspects, but you just don't tell us about them quite as much as you could.
ii. TONE
This is a tone that balances simplicity with originality. I greatly value a book written that way! Your metaphors, descriptions and dialogue are just so easy to read. Nothing is confusing, although there is the odd place where I've found the pacing to push me along at times and places where dialogue tags could be switched out for action tags. Your tone is unique, exciting and so wonderfully simple.
0 8 / 1 0
I didn't expect to fall so in love with your style and characters. Your logistics are nearly flawless, your plot is unique, your characters are...something else, and your storytelling is just beautiful. The only area I recommend you focus on is the area of story flow—pertaining to your pacing, your transitions, and then a little there with the dialogue hiccups. Thank you for applying and allowing me to review. Since you've received over fifty points, I'll add this story to my reading list. Am I adding it to that list because it's worthy or because I'm just obsessed with the cover and want to look at it as much as possible? I guess we'll never know. I'm kidding. Very worthy, very lovely work.
5 4 / 6 0