Reviewer: Sadie twoshortnails
Book: The Chronicles of Annora
Author: Book_Fangirl_13
Chapters read: All

Cover:

First of all, I looked at all three covers in the part titled ‘Vote for my cover for this book here!’ All three have a fabulous choice of image, and as I understand, someone else designed the cover for you.

The design is made much better by the accurate images shown, displaying a strong female warrior/princess who probably somewhat fits your interpretation of Aletheia’s appearance. I like the way the images are simple and not too busy, focusing on the person more than the background. This creates clarity and makes sure that the reader isn’t distracted.

What I don’t particularly like is the font. For a fantasy book, I would be looking at fonts like ‘Old English’ or some cursive, which would really capture the theme and interest of a fantasy book. I lack that in the font the designer chose for your book. It’s a very standard serif font that doesn’t compliment the image at all. The white colour of the font, whilst clear and easily visible, stands out like a cloud in a clear sky.

I suggest changing the font to something more fantasy-themed, and if you want to keep the font simple, go for a ‘Times Roman’ font, or on Canva, there’s a font called ‘Cinzel’, which would go well with this sort of theme. Try using an off-white colour for the text, or using a gold colour and then using the neon effect on Canva. Personally, I like the first cover best, so take the image from that one. If you don’t want to change the font for your name and the little subtext, then it should be fine if you leave it as is. Bear in mind that if you change the colour of the title, you need to change the colour of everything else!

The text placement is fine, but make sure everything is centred! ‘Annora’ looks like it was placed too much to the right.

I did have a look at the designer’s shop and the other options that they made for you. In my opinion, all the images are quite good, but I still like the first one best. It captures Aletheia’s warrior descriptions the best, but the choice is up to you.

Overall, I love the images and I think the designer did a great job. I think it’s worth asking them to change the font to one of my suggested fonts, or find one yourself, though!

Title:

For a fantasy book, your title might not be the most original, but it definitely gives the reader a ‘professional’ sense and it looks good on the cover as well. When I say your title isn’t the most original, I mean that there are loads of other fantasy novels that have the title: ‘The Chronicles of ____’. e.g. ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ or ‘The Chronicles of Riddick’. If this doesn’t bother you, then don’t worry about your title at all. Personally, I wouldn’t change it! Your title is fine.

Blurb/Description:

The first thing I notice about your blurb is the lack of paragraphs. Not having enough paragraphs is a recurring theme in your writing, and this is somewhat of a concern because paragraphs are extremely important to keep your reader interested, engaged, and paragraphs also make it easier for the reader to read, hence resulting in them enjoying your writing more!

Separate this massive paragraph into three chunks, and you can decide where to separate it. Remember, you are the author, and I’m only here to suggest things.

The content in your blurb is really great, and has everything that is necessary, but with some extra unnecessary add-ons. The reader doesn’t need to know that Aletheia Halcyon is intelligent and fearless, they just need to know that she’s a teenager. Try to remove unnecessary information that the reader doesn’t need to know, and let them find out for themselves.

Your sentences are also quite short and sometimes, the writing doesn’t flow very well. An example of this would be the line, ‘She starts seeing visions about prophecies and war. She becomes a female leader of the warriors of Annora and she goes to battle against the evil Nyxalderians.’ Using a pronoun to start a sentence will get very boring, very quick! Try to phrase along the lines of this instead:

‘She starts receiving prophetic visions about war, and death. Haunted and distressed, Aletheia battles to become the female leader of Annora’s warriors, and leads her soldiers into battle against the evil Nyxalderians. What horror awaits them?’

This also brings me on to my next point. You use great writing techniques in your writing (in general), but there are some things that you could add to your writing to make it even better! For example, in the blurb, you don’t use rhetorical questions to create tension, and in turn, you’ve missed an opportunity to keep the reader engaged. You could also use verbs that are more powerful. Instead of ‘figure out’, try ‘discover’. A good article on powerful verbs is:
https://jerryjenkins.com/powerful-verbs/?utm_source=pocket_reader

Overall, great job on the content, and just try and improve clarity!

Characters:

With strong female characters, I normally have some criteria that they should meet. They should have under three strengths, and weaknesses/fatal flaws, as well as a history of discrimination (sexism or something along the lines of that). I have this list, because I often feel that, if strong female leads don’t meet these points, they aren’t good characters.

For me, a good character means they are three-dimensional and developed. This is especially relevant to main characters, like our star, Aletheia. She is clearly displayed as a strong, intelligent and brave young girl, who has some weaknesses and trauma (the visions that disturb her). This is great character creation, but I do have suggestions to develop her character.

Firstly, she encounters sexism, but not to a realistic extent. When she decides she wants to lead the troops, you have to understand that Everest wouldn’t allow her to. He hasn’t seen her fighting ability and she would only be considered a liability because of her sex. And she’s also to be Queen, and her life would be considered extremely important and she wouldn’t be put at risk, even if she has people to protect her when she eventually went out to fight. In order to fix this, I suggest she challenges to fight one of the best soldiers, and after proving her worth, is allowed to lead the warriors. This would not only make more sense, but also give the reader a preview of Aletheia’s abilities.

A second character that I think could be improved is Arawn. He’s an interesting character, but there are some parts of his character I feel are lacking. For one, people don’t just become generals because they’re good at fighting. It takes about two decades of experience in the army to become a general, nowadays, and I imagine it would be at least a decade in the fantasy world you create. Therefore, he should either be a lot older, and hence not be a potential love interest, or you need to change some of your world building and his backstory.
Perhaps it would be a good time to insert an interesting sob story where his younger circumstances meant he would be more qualified to be a general then an older soldier? Of course, Arawn doesn’t have to be a general, he could just be a talented soldier.

In the form, you also asked me to focus on description. I noticed that in your writing, you take care to include a description, which is great! You could improve them by developing them, though. Rather than describing people with their hair and eyes, try and describe other and more interesting things, like their stance. Here’s an example:

“My name is Aletheia Halcyon. I have golden brown hair that flows past my shoulders, fair skin, and gray eyes that look like stone. I wear a long silver gown and a white sleeveless tunic.” These are the first few sentences of your first chapter.

“The breeze that whips through my sleeveless tunic plays with my golden-brown hair, teasing the ends that flow past my shoulders. I have gray eyes that look like stone against my fair skin, blushed by the wind. I stand tall and proud facing the palace of Annora.” This quick draft of a paragraph describes her features in a more discreet way, and mentions other physical attributes as well. Think about this when you write other descriptions about your characters!

Plot/Storyline:

In the chapters that are published right now, I can tell that your plot is fast-flowing with no time for side plots. This fast pace keeps the reader interested and engaged, which is great. It also flows very well, with events generally making sense!
In my opinion, you can focus more on these themes: sexism, power and relationships.

With sexism, you can really go into depth about the opinions of men regarding women, and how Aletheia has been affected. Books with monarchy and a strong hierarchy need to explore the theme of power, and how people dictate others. Power also ties into sexism and domination. And finally, as you continue to write further chapters, look into the relationship between Aletheia and her two companions. Is there a difference between their relationships? E.g., is one relationship romantic whilst the other is platonic? And also the relationship between Aletheia and Everest.

Occasionally, you dive really deep into the history, and try to explain everything. This is a mistake that lots of authors make, when they try to help worldbuilding, but it only ends up making the chapter a bit boring. This also makes the reader feel a little bit dumb… I suggest editing some of the dialogue, especially the conversation between Aletheia and Elpida in Chapter 9. Yes, worldbuilding is necessary, but also give your readers a chance to figure stuff out themselves before explaining it.

I think you have a great plot that is fast flowing and interesting, and I would like you to continue writing, focusing on the themes I mentioned.

Grammar:

Your grammar is generally accurate, with some small slip ups and typos (missed space etc.) But the most important thing that you are lacking is paragraphs!! Well, you aren’t lacking paragraphs, per se, but you haven’t separated them properly. On Wattpad, the formatting gets all weird sometimes, but it is really, really important to leave a gap between your paragraphs. As I was reading, I often realised I was skipping paragraphs because it gets pretty hard to read sometimes. Please go through and correct all of the paragraphs, your whole book will feel much more professional and readers will enjoy it more.

I think it is also worth proofreading with a fine-toothed comb to pick up small mistakes. There are a few typos that could be easily corrected and are quite obvious when you start focusing on fine details. If you are particularly worried you might miss something, I suggest getting an editor to proofread your book, a quick and easy way that is mostly foolproof!

To enhance your writing even more, use sentence variation. Your writing has lots of short sentences or medium length sentences, which get the point across well, but could be improved. Think about using connectives to join short sentences into long sentences, and then contrasting with a shorter sentence. You also use adjectives and tripling well, as well as repetition and rhetorical questions. That’s great!

There is some minor confusion with tense, so ask an editor for clarity or proofread.

And finally, use italics for inner monologue or thoughts like ‘Aletheia. You are lost. In times of need come to me.”

Overall, well done with grammar, I just pointed out some minor things that you could develop or improve.

Summary:

To sum up, I’ll make a few points of things you should aim to do!

Change up the fonts in the title to make it match the ‘fantasy’ genre theme better

Divide paragraphs properly to make it easier for the reader

Expand on your descriptions, and use more writing devices (like sentence variation)

Continue writing and focus on themes: sexism, power and relationships

But you did so many great things with your writing as well!

Your plot is very interesting!

Your characters are appealing, especially to your target audience (teen - young adult)

The content in your chapters (and blurb for that matter) is great, and engaging

Your title is memorable and related to the genre!

I hope you appreciate my feedback and use it to benefit your writing.