Title: Time Of Death
Chapter Reviewed: 1, 2
Username: RVR_178
So, this review is actually hard for me to write. This review is harder for me to write than it is harder for you to read.
Because I’m in a HUGE dilemma. And I have to take a deep breath to calm myself. I’m not joking 😂
Let's start.
Title:
Nice. Nothing 'wow' about it, but nice.
Cover:
Good. I like it. You might want to make the title a bit more visible though. Maybe bold it? I can barely read the title. AND the subtitle. I actually realized there's a sub after I've cropped it to the above picture.
Blurb:
I like it. A lot. It holds a lot of mystery in the words. Though I think the last sentence is grammatically wrong. I might be wrong wrong myself. Maybe adding 'that' before 'are waiting for them' could solve it? I'm not sure. It might be right. I'm still not a fan of the syntax. Especially the use of the semi-colon there.
Miscellaneous:
Let’s start with your A/N. Like others, you have an induction issue. I am truly not a fan of authors who tell people ‘this is not something...’.
And I think you’re making a mistake when you say ‘this is just a book, not a movie yada yada yada'. So because it is JUST a book, you don’t need to show? Just tell? What do you want to prove here again? That you’re trying something new?
So, because you say you want to tell rather than show, I don’t read the ‘Dramatis Personae' chapter. Tell me why this chapter is necessary? Too many words to describe your characters. It would be great if you include the descriptions IN the actual chapters, because your descriptions are amazing. But sad. I just scrolled this non-chapter chapter.
The poetry in the Prelude is actually very good, except I couldn’t appreciate it. Too many ‘death’ echoes in the verse. But for those who knows how to appreciate long, echoing verse like that, it’s a nice piece.
You have a....separatory(?) chapter with a verse: 'I die every night just to see you.'
That’s a very, very good start. I really love the quote (though I don’t know what it means).
CHAPTER UNO:
You opened the chapter with a short verse.
'I had a family, I had a home. When I woke up, I was alone.'
Again, I don’t get it, but it’s nice. The rhythm is very good.
This is random, and sorry for asking, but are you Indian? You can not answer this if you don’t want to. XD It’s just, Indian is very good in poetic verse. I've read A LOT of Indian writer's works, and your work reminds me of them. XD
Okay. Now, let’s do this one by one.
'It caught her skin and pulled it to their direction.' What are you trying to say here? To what direction? The smile? The skin? In this paragraph, you have ‘skin’, ‘smile’, and ‘curved lines'. So which one belongs to the ‘it’?
'She would be no longer an orphan.' Shouldn’t this be: She would no longer be an orphan. (?)
'The doctor, my adopter, had a sour taste.' 'Had a sour taste'. What does that mean? His face looks sour? He seems like he has a sour taste in his mouth?
'...merely combed...' I believe you could remove the ‘merely’. I don’t think merely belongs in the sentence.
'Again, this name didn’t belong to me...' Your POV confused me at first, but then, when I get it, it’s actually very nice!
But I’m kind of confused with this: 'Despite her ocean of tears, she was and always was the jolliest girl. "I can't believe I'm adopted now." I hopped and my arms fluttered like wings beside the doctor, moving towards the egress, his hand wrapped on mine.' Care to explain what’s with the transition here? From ‘she’ to ‘I’.
'Then, slowly, the girl descried her mother in her phantasmagoria, a very, very confusing experience in which ripped dream was sutured onto reality to seem echt.' Now, I find this sentence very, very confusing too. My Grammarly keeps on asking me to autocorrect ‘descried’ to ‘described’, it becomes so annoying 😂
'So true, she closed her eyes but saw the orphanage, she covered her ears though hear the whispering sound, she ran away yet she remained in the orphanage.' Why does it start with ‘So true'? What’s about this sentence structure?
'The orphanage, a place they called home, imprisoned twelve children in a strange and inimical world. The orphanage, a place they called life, simmered our anxieties made the sensation that each step could be the last common on these creaking ashen floor planks. The orphanage, a place I called hell, drove loveless children silent as if it succored us and gave us a virtue of discipline in this so-called birthplace.' Another one that makes my brain bleeds. Especially the second sentence. I’m quite sure there’s a grammatical error in it, but can’t say for sure.
So, ‘Innimical' and ‘descried’ are 1800s literary adjective/verb. Writers don’t really use the words nowadays. Not that I’m aware of. Where did you read the word? A Tale of Two Cities? Huckleberry Finn? The Scarlet Letter? Are you sure you want to use those words?
CHAPTER DUE:
'The sound of someone else's voice was more quiet than the sound of an empty hallway, a lonely room or maybe even in the middle of those towering thin trees outside.' Whose voice here? Don’t get this sentence.
'It was also said multiples times not to talk to strangers, but the doctor wasn't as untrustworthy as one, another saying, on the contrary, was against this saying. The saying was about strangers being the only people known to be normal which came from a book, probably, but I incompletely believed both just for the sake of safety and of the doctor.' Don’t get this at all. I only have a gist of what you’re trying to say.
You keep on having this ‘chocolate-milk’. Not sure why you word it that way. It’s either ‘chocolate milk' or ‘chocolate-flavored milk'. And then you have ‘brown milk'. What’s that? Chocolate milk?
'Aback, a man in his dark tuxedo appeared on the mat by the door. Rather than his monocle, his low top hat, or his gray beard, his stare on the orphans bore an authoritative focus saving that he was the mayor.' Appeared on the mat by the door? It makes it sound like he just apparate there. Does he? Is this supernatural?
'"I knew it," she whispered. She fully sips the milk, emptying the mug.' Who is talking here? You were just describing about the man. There was no woman around for you to suddenly use a 'she'.
'Exhausted they were on preparing for the visitors. as for me, I got the longest leisure time than the orphans could ever have.' You mean ‘exhausted (as) they were', or ‘exhausted(,) they were'?
'"I know the children loves the place, too, right? I mean, this girl loves this place so much that she almost refused her adoption.” He also quoth paragraphs everything not about him, some of them being just made up.' Don't get the narration.
Anyway, 'quoth' is also a verb used back in the 1800s. And I’m not aware of it being used like that. I thought it’s used only in first and third person singular before the SUBJECT. As in ‘..., quoth he.’ and usually, it's used humorously.
'I had been here, a thousand times if I'd counted it though it came to me natural as if it was an inevitable but bitter truth of children committing white sins.' Don’t get this one either.
I just realized I didn't touch on any other points. I can’t really review on other things coz I used 100% of my brain capacity to comprehend your description only.
I can’t connect to the MCs personality. I don’t even know what kind of characterization she has. Though I understand that she uses 3rd person to describe Aurelia coz she hates the name, right? I absolutely loved it. It’s actually brilliant storytelling.
Plot: She hates that she’s an orphan, and she hates the name they give her. One day, someone comes to adopt her, and she is so happy to leave the place. The orphanage bullies got jealous of her and lock her in a room. That’s the plot, right? I don’t get it wrong?
OVERALL:
Okay, now you see what I meant about this review is harder on me than it’s harder on you?
You know, I actually loved what you’re trying to do here. I loved the purple prose you’re trying to write in. The problem is...everything about it.
Despite it LOOKS good, it doesn’t work. Nope. Despite your clean grammar, it just...doesn’t work.
You could write in much simpler words, but you don’t. It’s sad. You have HUGE talent. Gifted even. You could be so, so good at this.
What makes it all wrong is your extremity.
What makes it more ridiculous is, you mentioned in your A/N or somewhere that you target Young Adult. Are you sure of that? Are you sure with this kind of writing, you want to target YA demo? You’re trying to write classic literature here, and you target YA who reads the ‘After’ kind of writing?
I’m 30, and I can hardly understand your prose. I need to think and think and think (Half of it might be my sleepy head's fault) to actually get what you’re actually trying to present.
So the problem lies in your presentation. I feel like I’m reading a classic book and I fail to comprehend what’s going on (that’s not a compliment).
You said you wanted to TELL. Not SHOW. Let me tell you. You’re telling too much, and it becomes cumbersome. I was lost in your deadwood. There’s a limit to purple prose, and I believe you’ve crossed over that limit.
However, I need to commend you for writing such prose. It’s not something everyone could even think of doing. I could never manage to write the way you write. My brain doesn’t work that way. I must say I’m very impressed.
Your issue is just extremity. What you could present in a simpler way, you present in a twisted way. And this kind of writing is in every single paragraph of your story.
I’m actually a new writer. I do this for only a year. Writing, reviewing. And I had the same issue before. I used to write in fancy vocabulary, in purple prose (though I was not even as good as you when I did that), but I learned to not do that anymore.
And I agree with most of the reviews I got before. It is not a good idea to write deadwood prose.
Maybe the fault lay on my incompetence as a new writer too.
Even so, I dare say that you’re making the same mistake too, no matter how better your writing is compared to mine before.
When people have to squeeze their brain to understand what you're trying to say, it's not something fun anymore. I've learned that, and I learned that the hard way.