Big sorry, BIG sorry for how long this took, but here it is:
Fallen Moon written by Moon_G0ddess
i. Title & cover
I LOVE this cover. While it would make sense to me to have a moon on the cover, I also try not to put too much emphasis and stress on covers and titles without having the full story read. Either way, this cover captures my attention with professionalism, colour and size. Send your designer my way, I beg of you.
In terms of the title, I don't have any problem with it. Connects to the blurb, nice and short, interesting.
ii. Blurb
I've never liked dialogue at the beginning of blurbs. I think it takes up a lot of words without summarizing much and doesn't make good use of the precious space you have to capture a reader's attention. That being said, yours is pretty good, introduces us to a little bit of the story and is well-written. I'd still advise taking it out or putting it at the end, but I'm not as sure about yours as I usually would be regarding this aspect.
The rest of the blurb summarizes what we're dealing with pretty well. The main thing I'd edit is the overuse of the word 'promise'. While I suspect that's an important part of the story, it's said a few too many times, especially at the beginning of the blurb. There are a lot of areas in this blurb that can be condensed and shortened so more relevant info can be inserted. Some repeated words, some redundant areas, etc, can be looked at again to make this summary a little smoother.
My last point here is that the blurb is very general. We see Celein, her sister and then some very overarching roles and themes. When we generalize a fantasy book to that extent, it starts to sound a lot like other fantasy books. I would take another look at what makes your book unique and try to incorporate it into the blurb to set this book (and therefore blurb) apart from others!
1 2 / 1 5
i. Commaaaas
You slightly overuse commas in some situations. I talk a bit about a slow pace theme in your writing, and this is another way you can combat that. Keep in mind that a comma is only needed in the second half of a sentence if a noun appears. So in this example:
'She heard a voice that was not her father's, and wondered how the man could utter a word when her father was so furious.'
So what I mean by having a noun in that second part there isn't is there any noun, but is there a clarification of who is doing the action (wondering, in this case). If you clarified that by adding a 'she' or name in front of wondered, then a comma would be needed, but here, you're good to take that comma out and clear up the narration.
ii. Dialogue tags
You've mastered most dialogue tags, just be careful when you have special punctuation like an exclamation mark or question mark, as these don't change the rules at all. So when you write something like this:
'"A boy? A fourteen-year-old child and they could not stop him?" The little princess heard her father say quietly.'
That's still a dialogue tag, and therefore it's a continuation of the previous sentence and needs a lowercase on 'the'.
1 0 / 1 5
i. Hook
So let's talk about your hook. I found it fine; it didn't make me want to read on like crazy, but it didn't turn me away, either. In terms of the flow, I felt the hook to move a bit slow (which happened a few times in the following chapters) but I think I know the reason this is happening and maybe something that could help. I read in this one creative writing prose book a long time ago that one way to move a story along is to stop narrating in the character's eyes when it isn't necessary and just tell it like it is instead. It's faster, more interesting and moves smoothly. Here are some examples:
Instead of: 'Her heart jumped when she heard her father's furious voice coming...'
Say: 'Her heart jumped when her father's furious voice came...'
Instead of: 'She could see her sister's chambers at the end of the hallway...'
Say: 'Her sister's chambers at the end of the hallway..'
When I read this phenomenon in that prose book, I was shocked to realize how true it was and how widely it can be applied. If we're in a character's head, there's no reason to slow down the pace by saying 'she heard' or 'she could see'. It just slows down the pace. Something to think about.
Another thing on the prologue/hook is the ending. I wasn't a fan of how it ended; it felt rushed and sudden. Maybe just one more sentence at the end there showing what the little child thought of what her father said or the narration concluding such and this problem would solve itself. Something like 'so war was coming after all' would do it.
ii. Repetition
Some areas in your story don't have grammar problems, but they come out a bit redundant (another cause for a slow pace). Take this sentence we already worked with, which I've taken the comma out of:
'She heard a voice that was not her father's and wondered how the man could utter a word when her father was so furious.'
This is a super common problem I find when editing my own work, where we have to clarify a noun twice for the sentence to make sense, but then we've said the noun (in this case her father) so many times that it's repetitive. It's not always an easy fix, but this one isn't too hard. We just have to rearrange the sentence:
'She heard a different voice now, and she found herself wondering how anyone could utter a word when her father was so furious.'
(Notice how putting in the 'she' here has allowed us to use the comma)
Because of some quick moving around, we're able to change 'the man' into a general term and get rid of the first 'her father' so that we don't have to clarify it again. Just a little trick if you're interested in using it.
Another example of repetition:
'They lived in a peaceful kingdom, the strongest and biggest of all kingdoms.'
I think you're good to take that second 'kingdom' out to get rid of the repetition. There's a few areas like this to look through.
0 7 / 1 0
i. Characters
There was so much explanation in the first few chapters that I didn't really get to know Celein much. She seems to be quite snappy with her maids and a bit (understandably) bitter, but there were a lot of opportunities to lean into this more. Her father is set as a very hardened man, but I love how he gently squeezes her hand when she's nervous and doesn't seem to want her to worry. These interesting contrasts were present, I just felt they had the potential to be more capitalized to make these characters feel real right from the get-go. You do this a lot more later on, which was great. For example, when she meets her sister and she wants to laugh like little girls and get excited, but instead composes herself--that was really awesome! It made me feel like she was someone very humble and relatable. I would look for areas where details like that can be used more often.
Last thing here on a more literal description side, you have a bit of an info-dump approach to describing characters. I would be careful how many times you use the same obscure comparison (like emerald green) in one go, and also just be careful how much you are describing a character in general. Often, giving us one defining trait is enough to introduce us, and then we can learn more about how they look as the story moves on, both speeding up introductions, making them feel more natural, and allowing them to continue through conversation.
ii. Scenes
Sometimes I found places where you would benefit greatly from choosing details over generalizing statements. More often than not, details are highly preferable because they make a scene feel real, and generalizing statements aren't as strong and can even hinder the reality of the story sometimes. For example, when you say 'the other maids went back to their work of readying me for the ball' you could say something like 'one maid resumed pining up my hair while the other continued poking me with a sharp needle while doing adjustments' (See how this also opens up an opportunity to have the character's voice come through narration?)
I also found the first few chapters to be quite info-dumpy. Obviously this is a super tough thing to work through in fantasy stories--the readers need to know what's going on--but we can always be working on ways to make it smoother. While we might need to dump essential things at the beginning, try to list some things that are nice to know but not exactly essential to our understanding at this point. Those things can be introduced later.
0 7 / 1 0
i. Plot
I do see a lot of pretty usual fantasy aspects in this story, which is fine--people love that kind of thing for a reason. I felt the back-and-forth between Damien and Celein to be a bit forced, and there were maybe some areas where their previous relationship needed to be established before I could really get behind the hate for him. As it was, I just felt she was unreasonably mad because I had no reason to hate him yet. If you want to save the reason she hates him for later, add in some cues as to why to bring the reader to her side.
However, when the two of them started to get more into the political side of things, I found that to be quite interesting! They both had pretty good points and motivations behind their actions (the slap, I don't know. I'm deciding still). Lord Drystan, or just Drystan, apologies, was a nice addition. I really liked the non-romantic characters in this book like Celein's sister and Drystan as well. They provide some dimension to the story.
ii. Tone
Some of the issues I had with your tone came up earlier in the flow parts, but I also felt like sometimes the story was pushed a certain way instead of letting it happen naturally, like the hate for Damien, the annoyance at the ball, etc. We don't need to be told how tedious this ball is if you show us how demeaning it is for Celein. If you do that, then you don't need to tell us it as well at the risk of repetition. I also would've liked to see some more veiled affection from Damien so I wasn't so shocked to learn he's in love with Celein. If we as the readers can see it but she can't, that would be ideal. I like your characters, so I would read on based on them, but I think there's a lot of potential here to deepen the general flow of the story. Other than that, the story moved along and seemed well-thought-out.
0 8 / 1 0
It's very obvious that you've put a lot of work into this book, and I can see it coming through in the writing. While there are always areas to improve, I could see myself becoming intrigued by this book based on the characters alone. Great work on this story and I hope I've given you something to work with in editing!
4 4 / 6 0