Yugantar ~ Story of Kauntalya by theroyalmisfit

Reviewer: samantha-writes

I would like to preface this review by saying that I'm very sorry this is so late. I also think you should know that I live in the U.S., so I don't know much about other cultures, which is sad because I think that's important to learn. So I may not have understood everything in this story, but I tried to do research to understand as much as possible. It definitely wasn't easy to read, though, which isn't your fault whatsoever. I just want you to understand that I tried reading and doing research so that I could review it properly.

Cover: 5/5
— The cover is absolutely beautiful! It's so well-made. Whoever made it did an amazing job!
— The fonts are fitting and readable.
— The thematic images on it are fitting to the story.
— I have absolutely no complaints. It's perfect!

Title: 4/5
— I had to look up the meaning of the title just so I would understand, and google told me it means "New Era." I'll trust google on this one because that title makes a lot of sense and is very fitting to the story concept. A girl killing herself and being transferred to a new world seems like it should be named "New Era" to me.
— The name is very unique too. I looked up the title and found no other stories with the same one, so it definitely distinguishes your story from the rest.
— Since the story is written in English, an English title would probably make the most sense to have. Otherwise readers could be confused. But I understand why it's not in English, I just recommend that. It's not a big deal.
— I couldn't find the meaning of Kauntalya anywhere, so I'm assuming it's a made up, fantasy name for something. I like it a lot, it sounds cool.
— The cover says, "The Story of Kauntalya," but the title says just, "Story of Kauntalya." This isn't a major issue, but you should probably choose one. I like "The Story of Kauntalya" more, plus it's much easier to add the word "The" in the title than change the entire cover to take out the word "The."

Blurb: 3/5
— There are lots of grammatical errors in the blurb, mainly with capitalizing the first letters of each sentence, but I won't really get into them. Maybe just look over it.
— The blurb seems long because the paragraphs are so short so it looks like there are lots of paragraphs, but it's actually a good length. I think it's around 100 words? I tried counting them. That's a good number, although I do recommend maybe combining some paragraphs to that the blurb isn't so choppy.
— You introduce Anahita and her situation well, though you could mention her parents' death.
— You don't describe the new world Anahita is in very well. You don't need to go too in-depth, but it would be nice to mention what it's called before the very end.
— I like the final sentence. It's pretty great.

World: 1/10
— The realistic world Anahita lives in isn't described well. Even in realistic fiction worlds, you need to world-build. However, it's more like describing the community a little bit; you don't actually have to explain the entire world since we live in it already lol. You do mention the name of the university, but maybe explain the environment a bit more. What is it like there? Is it populated? Maybe smaller? Are the students rich, smart, or are they the life-of-the-party types?
— In the new world—Dwapar, if I'm not mistaken—there isn't much explanation. What kind of world is it? Is there magic? Kingdoms? Mythical beings? Anahita obviously knows what this new world is like because it's the world of some Bollywood film, right? It's also an epic according to Google. At least, that's what I remember from when I looked it up. And sure, most of the people reading it are going to know all about the world already, but from a reviewer's point of view, I was lost. You can world-build here by having Anahita question if she truly is where she thinks she is and ask questions to the people there about the world that will help readers like me understand it better. Or just have Anahita think about the world, I guess. Maybe both.

Plot: 15/20
— The exposition could be longer. In fact, I'd prefer for it to be. Readers need to truly understand to Anahita's suffering. Something that I think would be cool to add in the beginning as well would be a scene where Anahita watches/reads (because Google claims that it's a film and an epic) Mahabharata because she's clearly a fan of it. I think something like that would be cool. (It would also help world-build a bit.)
— I love the concept of your story. A girl commits suicide and ends up in the world of a film/epic that she loves. Really cool idea! Very fun, and I can see how it will be interesting to read since she knows everyone already and they don't know her.

Characters: 3/10
— There were a lot of characters thrown it at once, and for someone that has seen/read the film/epic, it wouldn't be complicated. But for me and anyone else reading it that doesn't know what it's about, it's almost unreadable. Even though most of your readers already know the characters, you need to introduce them properly. Maybe adding that Mahabharata scene in the beginning that I mentioned earlier will help do that or at least explain the concept of Mahabharata and make it easier to comprehend.
— You describe the characters' clothing more than their appearances. Though this does provide some distinguishing factors between them, I would prefer both that and their appearance descriptions.
— Their personalities definitely don't have much distinction. Some characters such as Anahita, Ketan, and maybe Luna have some clear character traits, but none of the rest do as far as I've read.
— Their ages are pretty easy to infer, which is good. Sometimes it can be too awkward to directly tell readers what their ages are, so I'm glad you make it easy to assume.

Chapters & Content: 6/10
— Chapter 1 was organized a little strangely, but I understood it. You were trying to give some backstory. I just don't think that's the way to introduce it. I definitely think you could've started when Anahita was 25, and then you can sprinkle in some backstory as the story progresses. It'll leave readers wanting to know more.
— The chapters are a good length, so nice job on that.
— The first line isn't particularly engaging. I'm not talking about the "Age: 7 years old" part, but the actual first line just isn't a good hook. Like I said before, you should start off when Anahita is 25, so starting off the first line with her getting beaten up would be a good start, although dark and sinister, but a good representation of her suffering nonetheless.

Grammar/Spelling: 14/20
— I can tell that English isn't your first language. That isn't bad or meant as an insult by any means, I just can tell. There's just a certain was English is written if the writer doesn't speak it as their first language. But despite that, your English is great! There were issues here and there, but I'm genuinely impressed by your English! It's an incredibly hard language to learn, and you're doing so well! I'm just going to give some pointers. Not towards your phrasing exactly but towards your usage of punctuation.
— After dialogue, there are sentences called speaker tags. These are sentences that identify the speaker, and they can be something like, "she said." When you're writing these speaker tags after or in between dialogue, the first word should NOT be capitalized. This isn't a huge problem, but definitely fix it. Even if the dialogue ended with a question or exclamation mark, keep the speaker tag lowercased.
— Make sure that you end dialogue with a comma if it would have originally ended with a period if it's followed by a speaker tag. Basically, any dialogue that ends in a period and has a speaker tag afterwards, the period should be replaced with a comma. DON'T replace question and exclamation marks, though.
— Probably your most prominent issue is comma usage when someone is calling someone by their name while speaking to that person. "What happened Putri?" should be, "What happened, Putri?" This goes for any dialogue where the speaker adds the name of the person they are speaking to into their spoken sentence.
— "Dushala stammered sweating like crazy," should be changed to "Dushala stammered, sweating like crazy." I'm not sure how to explain this exactly, that's just a grammar rule. When you have a complete sentence and add that dependent clause (incomplete sentence), there should be a comma. Same thing goes for if the dependent clause is before the complete sentence because I've seen that mistake as well.

Writing Style: 8/10
— I can't even with your writing style! It's actually so good! Like, how do you describe everything in so much detail? I'm hecking jealous!
— You really go so in-depth when you describe anything, I'm really impressed by it! You could have just a bit more imagery, which is description that taps into the 5 senses, but that's my only complaint about the description.
— As your English isn't perfect, there are lots of phrasing issues, but that isn't your fault. It might help you to have someone go through and edit your sentences so they sound more natural in the English language, but it's readable for sure, and that in itself is impressive enough. English is hard, I know!

Enjoyment: 2/5
— I can't say I particularly enjoyed the story, but that was mainly due to the fact that I'm not the target audience. I'm not a part of the Mahabharata fandom, so this story, of course, didn't particularly draw me in.
— Regardless, there could have been more done to make the story interesting even if the readers aren't in the fandom, and really it could have been explained better for those people like me because I was confused by a lot of events the majority of time I read it. After all, you asked me to review it, and I had no idea Mahabharata even existed before this, so there's definitely at least 1 person that needed some explanation while reading.
— Your descriptions really drew me in, though. And I am curious about the world, so I was intrigued.

Overall: 61/100
The story needs more explanations about Mahabharata and more world-building. There could be some adjustments with character introductions, chapters (mainly Chapter 1), the blurb, and phrasing. The grammar and your descriptive writing are both incredible, though, and the cover and title don't need changes. I won't continue this story simply because I'm not a part of the fandom, but with some editing work and more explanations about the Mahabharata world, I would definitely reconsider even though I'm not a part of the fandom. Keep working on it and good luck writing!

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