Nightmare Assassins by kth_disneyfanatic

Reviewer: Yasmin Owls1221

Title: 8/10

To be honest, the title is unique and it makes you curious to know what is meant by ‘Nightmare Assassins’. However, I have to admit that it kinda distracted me due to the word used. You see, it’s a cool idea that those ‘assassins’ go on missions to fight nightmares, but the word assassin is used somewhat incorrectly. An assassin is a person who is paid to kill certain people, and so in your story I got the idea that the main characters are getting paid by someone to kill these nightmares and not ‘fight’ them. And not just kill them directly, assassins usually do their job undercover. So overall, if you're writing about people fighting nightmares, I suggest you use ‘fighters’ for example or ‘warriors’ or any other word that means fight, not kill.

Cover: 6/10

At first I thought it was an original story, but upon a closer look at the cover I discovered it’s a disney fanfiction, specifically Frozen as stated in the summary (obviously).  And it’s not bad since the main characters are about to uncover their past, hence the picture of Elsa and Anna going to the unknown. What gives it great imagery  is the subtitle on the cover, indicating that you added more than just going to the unknown, they’re going there to ‘annihilate fear’. Although, I have to point out that even though it gives you an idea on how the characters are going to face their challenges from a metaphorical perspective, it’s still just a picture from frozen 2 with your own title. Which is kinda not that eye-catching nor very gripping, and it’s telling the readers right away that this is a fanfiction story when they browse books on wattpad.

Summary: 8/10

The summary is really good and brief, in fact very brief and it easily gives the reader an idea of what your story is about. However, it just lacked a very small amount of context when I read the last part of the summary. Join forces with who? And who is the Nightmare King? He wasn't mentioned before in the beginning of the summary. So just add a little more context of how the characters came to know the king to stop him.

Grammar: 10/10

There was nothing wrong with the use of grammar so everything in this section is alright.

Vocabulary: 9/10

There was good use of vocabulary too, it was just that there were some words that kept repeating but not a lot. For example Crystal kept saying her mother is a dignified person rather than using a synonym for the word dignified. But again, there weren't a lot of repeated words.

Spelling: 10/10

There are no mistakes in spelling other than accidental ones, there were very few of them and they didn’t affect my reading.

Hook: 6/10

I think what hooked me the most in the book is the vibes honestly, to be Nightmare Assassins and venture into the night underneath the stars, it’s atmospheric to me. Other than that I don’t think there are other things that grabbed my attention and that’ll be explained in the plot and personal enjoyment section as one.

Character Development: 7/10

I like that there are small or subtle changes in Crystal’s character, from being scared to gaining confidence in finding her parents when she takes the role as the moon spirit. But there are things I would like to talk about that relates to the plot and I don’t want to repeat it in every section sooo… I’ll explain the, probably, biggest flaw of the book in one section.

Plot Development and Personal Enjoyment: 5/10

I don’t want to sound rude or hurt your passion as a writer, I really don’t want that, but I have to address it so you could be aware of how it looks from a different perspective/reader. You see, it’s very apparent that the story is a fanfiction of Disney Frozen, and I’m not against that really. It’s cool to see people put their twists and interpretation into an original show/movie and it makes fanfiction even cooler than the original show or movie itself, but only if done in somehow a sensible or engaging way.

There were lots of flaws regarding the characters themselves and how they are presented in the story, which gave me lots of questions about what is happening. First of all, I understand that children get their traits from their parents and sometimes act like their parents (well most of the time) but that doesn’t mean you have to put them in an exact situation their mothers went through. Like the scene of when Alanna snatched Crystal’s glove and for Crystal to accidentally blast ice and Alanna not knowing Crystal had powers, it’s kinda cliched and to be honest it bored me and made me question the plot. Why did Crystal hide her powers from Alanna in the first place? Shouldn’t it be obvious that Crystal has powers because it passed down from her mother or at least let the people know? It’s like reading Frozen all over again but with a slightly different cast.  

Secondly, who is Manny? Uncle Sandy? Aunt Tooth? Who are these characters that came out of nowhere? At first I was so confused because the characters that I didn’t know kept being mentioned without context. Like the characters keep saying that “Pitch is getting stronger etc.” and I’m like who is Pitch? I had to do research on some of the characters just to remember who they are and it hit me… And oh my god… It turned out these “aunts'' and “uncles” were none other than the characters of Rise of the Guardians themselves. And since these characters are here acting as uncles I immediately knew who Crystal's father is and I went speechless.

I don’t want to hurt you but… I stopped reading chapter 5 because of this. And I understand the plot more clearly now, so basically what you did was combine the plot of Frozen with Rise of the Guardians and used Elsa and Anna’s daughters as the main characters. And unfortunately, this type of fanfiction (after I found out it involved Jack Frost ship) is not my cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean I disrespect you, I still respect you and your ship but again this is not my jam.

So what I’m going to say is that I take back what I said about the summary and the title in terms of Nightmare Assassins since I discovered it’s a crossover of Frozen and Rise of the Guardians and it makes sense now. The reason I’m saying this is because fans of this crossover are going to understand right away what your story contains. HOWEVER, I’m going to advise you one thing in this section, please please please put some notes or a warning in the very beginning of the book to tell the readers that this is a crossover and not just a frozen fanfiction, i’m telling you this because you have yo keep in mind there are people (like me) who will think this is a frozen only fanfic rather than a crossover and that these readers might be dislikers (is that a word?) of the jack frost shipped with Elsa and will stop reading your book.

So overall, don’t repeat the same scenes from the original movie into your book even if it’s with different cast because it’s cliched and please make a note regarding what kind of fanfiction you’ve written so you wouldn’t attract the wrong audience. 
 
Punctuation: 8/10

I think punctuation is used correctly most of the time in the plot itself, but it needs some improvements when used for dialogue. When the character is continuing their speech with a comma, the first letters must be small even after a dialogue tag is put before the speech. Here are examples:

X incorrect X: Bruce was pinning Sirius to the floor with his foot. “Welcome back Salvador, look at what I found,” Bruce looked back at Sirius, “A spy in our midst!”

O correct O: Bruce was pinning Sirius to the floor with his foot. “Welcome back Salvador, look at what I found,” Bruce looked back at Sirius, “a spy in our midst!”

Also, when writing multiple characters, you must separate each dialogue and address who is talking. Otherwise, you never know who is talking to who. Here are other examples:

X incorrect X:

“Sirius!” She cried. Salvador was stunned in his spot. “What is going on Bruce?”. “Well, while you were away, this lover over here was acting suspicious by hiding away,” he said. “But then I caught him in the act of disguising himself as a human, and he was none other than Elevor’s spy!”. “This can’t be true, can it?” Fearian turned to Jeselia.

O correct O:

“Sirius!” Jeselia cried.

Salvador was stunned in his spot. “What is going on Bruce?”

“Well, while you were away, this lover over here was acting suspicious by hiding away,” Bruce said. “But then I caught him in the act of disguising himself as a human, and he was none other than Elevor’s spy!”

“This can’t be true! Can it?” Fearian turned to Jeselia.

Pacing and Writing: 8/10

Overall, the pacing was good as well and the writing style was clear (except for the plot) and I like how you positioned the lyrics within descriptions of the book, visually it looks clean and it helped me know the characters are singing. So yeah, I think that’s all I have to say, it’s a good book (for those who ship JxE) except for very few errors to fix and you’re good to go.