"Harbinger of Death"
by qu_elsnap
Cover: It's totally awesome! It drew me in immediately, it's just spectacular. A+
Title: It sounds spooky, and surreal. 10/10. Definitely caught my attention!
Description: It's interesting, but it doesn't really tell me a whole lot about the story and it's a little confusing.
Premise: It seems like a really cool idea that you can take in so many different directions. I'm already so into it!
Plot: I felt like the plot didn't progress very much if there was one. In my opinion, you should spend less time on the character's backgrounds. The story flows more smoothly if you feed us bits of backstory, and don't just dump it on us all at once. But it's still a great story, and the things that happen in the present-tense are awesome.
Characters: The characters were genuine and fascinating. Each character had a distinct and unique personality and background. I didn't feel like any of them were flat, they were all well-developed. Great job!!
Writing Style: Your style is beautiful. You are very descriptive and detailed. The only thing I didn't like however, when you use terms that most people probably wouldn't know (the terms that you highlight in bold like "henquet" and "lengha" among other things)... you don't explain what they are! Haha. So that was kind of confusing.
Step-by-Step
Prologue: The detail in the prologue is astounding. I love the way you use descriptive words and figurative language. One of my favorite examples was "Hellfire licked the tips of his pearlescent fingers as he gripped the edge of his brittle throne." From the very beginning, I was hooked! I could cry, this is so good so far.
Chapter One: This part isn't specifically titled as chapter one, but for reviewing purposes I'm going to refer to it as such. ("Bast | The Setting Sun") I liked the visual elements you added to it. It's great and you're a very talented writer, but I found that the formatting was really distracting. You have the words centered in the middle. (But that might just be my personal preference; other readers might love it!)
I LOVED the line "He may pretend to be our ruler, but immortals cannot bow to Death." And the ending of chapter one is magnificent. I eagerly continued on to chapter two!
Chapter Two: ("Kali | Fear's Enclosure") It's really interesting how each chapter is from a different goddess's point of view. The dialogue is witty and understandable, and it's intriguing to watch the different characters interact with one another. I also appreciated the partial cliffhanger at the end, but I once again found the centered format to be very distracting.
Chapter Three: ("Freya | Hel's Gates") First off, is it meant to be spelled as "hel's" or is it supposed to be "hell's"? Just curious :P
Your story is so! interesting! This might have been my favorite chapter to read so far, and I don't have any complaints about it except that you possibly wrote too much backstory again.
OVERALL: I truly enjoyed reading this. I would suggest explaining the foreign terms a little better, and spend a little less time on the backstory (all at once anyway). But other than that, the characters, writing, and details in general were just amazing! You are very talented and you are definitely going places! I made sure to give you some votes, because you definitely deserved them.
RATING: 8.5/10 stars! Wow, wow, wow!
PAYMENT
I would love if you would check out my book "The Young Cure", but you don't have to if you don't want to! :)
Reviewed by mangoskies_