A Warriors Awakening by CawB12

Reviewer: samantha-writes

Cover: 1/5
— The cover is clearly a hand drawn picture, and while I think it's a good drawing, it doesn't make for a good cover. The camera quality will never be good enough to make it look like a proper cover, and the clear notebook paper it's drawn on just makes it look poorly done.
— The cover is clearly over-edited. There seems to be several effects and filters over it that do make it look more like a cover, but at the same time make it have a bad quality look to it.
— The fonts are easy to read but don't particularly fit with the rest of the cover nor with the story genre. The character fits with the story, or at least his shirt does, but nothing else really seems to.

Title: 3/5
— The title fits well with the story. It's about a warrior, and yeah, he's probably gonna be enlightened in some way. Plus, he does have a new life.
— "Warriors" should be "Warrior's" because the awakening belongs to the warrior. The 's shows possession.
— On the cover, there should be distinction between the title and subtitle. Right now, it just looks like it says "The Warrios Awakening A New Life," but there needs to be some separation.

Blurb: 3/10
— The first sentence needs to be a hook, but it's just a bland introduction. In fact, there are no hooks in the entire blurb. You need to add those so that readers will be interested and want to actually start reading.
— There is wayyy too much introduced in the blurb. Way too much. Too many names, too many plans, too much of everything. No need to mention all of Janera's friends' names. No need to go in depth about Assasinator's plans. No need to mention the year. These are all things that can be mentioned briefly or vaguely to add suspense and mystery.
— The sentence structure, phrasing, and grammar is off, but that's something I'll talk a lot more about in some of the last categories.

World: 4/10
— Their location is introduced decently, but the time period isn't. There are no clear mentions of technology that could indicate the time period. And no, the blurb doesn't count. The idea is that readers should be able to understand the story fully without the blurb, as if it wasn't even there. Just adding in the mention of phones, holograms, or maybe robots since they were mentioned in the blurb would give readers a general sense.
— The school community is alright, but it's perhaps too unrealistic and directly stated. As soon as Janera gets there, he's told exactly what the school is like. There are not hints brought up every so often to lead readers to figure it out for themselves.

Plot: 2/20
— Time to bring up a little thing called info-dumping. (You might've seen @wanderedwriter talk about it, and I agreed with about every point they made in the comments of your story. You should really look into their pointers. They go really in-depth. @YelenaLugin does as well.) Info-dumping is where a writer, well, dumps a ton of information onto writers all at once, as the name implies lol. This can be with world-building, backstory, exposition, introductions, etc. In your case, it's with backstory and introductions, which oftentimes go hand in hand. The amount of backstory about Janera's family and Sensei at the beginning was way too much. I don't remember anything about Janera's family besides that they died. There is such an excessive amount of backstory that I saw some other readers commenting later on about Sensei when he was talking about sad events from him past, asking what happened in the past and if they would be told what happened. They didn't even remember that a fire killed his students, and I was surprised I did. So I know that I'm definitely not alone. It's way too much. Most of this information can be left out and distributed throughout the story when needed. Anytime you mention something related to that when it hasn't been introduced yet, you can make it a mystery to readers.
— The main conflict seems to have potential. It's stereotypical, a maniacal villain who wants power and is going to cause even more chaos, death, and destruction when he gets it. It's unrealistic, though. How could he become president if he's already killed a bunch of people? Surely they hate and fear him, so they won't vote for him. And why would he get missiles from North Korea? As a fellow American, I know that wouldn't go so well. But it's a futuristic story, so maybe America and North Korea don't hate each other at this time. If so, that's important to mention, and do it subtly during the assassins' conversation.

Characters: 2/10
— We know that Janera is in high school, but you should mention his grade so readers have a better idea of his age. Sensei, however, should be very old, or at least significantly older than Janera. Because of that, he probably shouldn't talk or act the ways he does. He acts immature and less wise than a sensei should. If he has all of these inspirational quotes, he should be a mentor to Janera, not necessarily a friend.
— The characters aren't very realistic overall. The principal cussing? Really not realistic. Not is it very realistic for the sensei to cuss.
— Their personalities aren't too clear. They shouldn't be outright stated, but there should be some hints early on. There are a few when it comes to dialogue, but it's mainly lacking.
— There need to be appearance descriptions too.

Chapters & Content: 1/10
— The chapters are very short. They seemed to get longer the farther I got, but that just makes it inconsistent. Unless it's a book for a young audience, the chapters should be longer than they are right now. And I know it isn't for very young audiences because there's language in it.
— The chapters seem to drag on, besides the chapter with Assasinator. That one is actually pretty important and we get a good idea of what he's like. But besides that, they seem to be slow-paced. Especially the first chapter. The majority of it is info-dumping, and I already talked about how bad that is.

Grammar/Spelling: 2/10
— Lots of issues here. The biggest ones were comma splices, speaker tags, dialogue capitalization, dialogue punctuation, comma placement, and run-ons. It's quite a bit, so I'm gonna try to make it as short yet detailed as possible.
— A comma splice is a comma that separates 2 complete sentences without a connective conjunction (for/and/nor/but/or/yet/so) to make it a complex sentence. Comma splices are mistakes that authors can occasionally get away with, normally with dialogue, but in your case, the comma splices were obvious and too frequent. Example: Janera is in his bedroom in the dojo, he is sitting on the bed and meditating" to either "Janera is in his bedroom in the dojo, and he is sitting on his bed and meditating" OR "Janera is in his bedroom in the dojo. He is sitting on his bed and meditating."
— Make sure to use commas when using a connective conjunction that separates 2 complete sentences. The comma should come before the conjunction. However, if the phrases around it are not BOTH complete, don't use a comma and just leave the conjunction. Example: "There is also a small drawer by his bed that has four martial arts comic books on it and he has a closet by the drawer" to "There is also a small drawer by his bed that has four martial arts comic books on it, and he has a closet by the drawer."
— Speaker tags (sentences that come before, in between, or after dialogue that indicate the speaker, for example, "he says") that come before dialogue need to have a comma right before the dialogue starts. The dialogue should also start off capitalized. Example: "Janera says 'goodnight Sensei'" to "Janera says, 'Goodnight, Sensei.'" (I also added a comma before Sensei because that's a comma rule when the speaker is identifying who they are speaking to.)
— When stating many adjectives in a row, they need commas between them. Really, you don't need as many adjectives as are in this example, but I'll use it anyway: "It is a gigantic vast enormous story building" to "It is a gigantic, vast, enormous story building."
— As dialogue continues from paragraph to paragraph, the paragraphs don't have to end with end quotation marks, but the beginnings of the new paragraphs must start with quotation marks. Really, the dialogue shouldn't go on for as long as it does anyway, but that's a minor issue.

Writing Style: 0/10
— And here's the biggest issue with the story: the writing style. The sentences all have such a similar structure when you're describing a scene, and it's not a good structure to use either. Try using less "____ is," "_____ has," etc. It's more passive and will make the verbs end in -ing more often. If you take out the "is's" and "has's," the verbs will be simply in present tense, and it will be much better.
— Use more complex sentences and hyphens and semicolons. First, make sure you do plenty of research to know what these are and how to use them so that you don't make the grammar worse, but it will improve the writing style drastically because there will be more variety.
— Speaker tags don't always have to come before dialogue. They can be in between of after it too. Please include more diversity when it comes to speaker tag placement.
— Use. Less. Adverbs. And. Use. Stronger. Verbs. Almost every single speaker tag includes an adverb followed by "says," and it's so repetitive. Just use a stronger verb. Use a thesaurus, please.
— Speaking of repetition, that's also a common issue. In sections like the first paragraph, words or phrases are repeated or unnecessarily stated (even if they're common sense), like "bed/bedroom" in the first paragraph, for example.
— There should be more variety with vocabulary. It doesn't fit with the audience at all as it is. Thesaurus can help with this too.

Enjoyment: 1/10
— The story felt somewhat unrealistic, immature, and overwhelming. There were just too many unnecessary details. Look back at the descriptions in the first chapter. All you're doing it describing Janera's room, and for what? It really serves no purpose. The people commenting may have applauded your details, but there were far too many unneeded ones.

Overall: 19/100
There's a lot of work to be done in all areas. Focus on reducing info-dumping, describing only important scenes and details, grammar mistakes, writing style, and making the story more realistic. This may require you to rethink the concept of your story, but I think it's crucial. There are some parts of categories, like the high school's world and the characters' personalities, that were alright and only need minor changes. Otherwise, focus on the concept and plot of the story first, followed by your writing and grammar, then finish it off with the first impression aspects (cover, title, and blurb). Good luck writing/editing!