Title: Hidden Within Dawn

Author: Writingsomethingmt

Rating: PG-13 

# of chapters:  Prologue + 3 (ongoing) 

# of chapters I read: Prologue + 1

Summary/Blurb:

Sorano Kazuho is someone that remains a mystery to most, as he does. He remains as such, most could not dig up his past. There was nothing.

However his own past haunts him in his own way, he has things that he needs to do things that he has to fulfil. After many years of building his power, he is now coming back. It was time.

He is going back to Okiban. The city of Okiban a place that he once called home.

Review: (Sorry for how late this is! Thanks for being so patient.) 

Cover:

This cover looks badass as hell because it looks like a poster for a kung fu movie! Now that I look at the designer, no wonder it's so good—of course it would be made by Rachel. (I'm obsessed with action films revolving around karate/judo/fighting, etc. so you can understand my excitement)

I love the pagoda enveloped by flames in the background and the whole red/orange color scheme you have going on. It really matches the title "Hidden Within Dawn", because sunrises share the same hues. There is also a symbolic significance—sunrise are often associated with a 'new beginning', and through the blurb, we understand that it's exactly what the character seems to go through. The guy has trained for years no, and is finally going back to his hometown to tie up the loose ends of his past. We also have him on the cover (looks a bit like Tom Cruise, I'm not going to lie), looking as badass as the rest of it. It does make me wonder, however, about whether he's Japanese or a white American. I guess we'll find out.

The only issue I see with this are the subtitles—are they meant to be one continuous sentence, just split into two parts? Because it doesn't make sense from a logical standpoint when you put them together:

"There is always a way, just whether you are willing to pay the price."

There's something missing before "just whether", namely, "it's [just] a matter of".

Other than that, I don't have much to say—I'm expecting a lot of action!

Blurb:

I was captivated by the blurb, mainly because of the story it gave me a glimpse of. It's short, but it doesn't leave out any of the detail it would require to hook the reader—in a few words, we have the protagonist Sorano, finally returning to his hometown for unknown reasons. 

I feel like someone fucked him over when he was younger, but because Sorano was too young to do anything about it, he was forced to leave and undergo rigorous training to finally face his 'outer-demons' without getting his butt kicked. I think the ambiguity of the whole matter, namely, "his own past haunts him in his own way, he has things that he needs to do, things that he needs to fulfil", works in your favour, because it sparked my interest. There are many possibilities as to why Sorano was forced to leave and come back, and I definitely want to find these out. 

 My main concern here is that the blurb is littered with grammatical errors. Awkward sentences, forgotten punctuation, etc. and the whole thing needs some polishing.

1. "There is always a price to everything"— "Everything has a price"

2. "Sorano Kazuho is a young man that remains a mystery to most, as he does."—"as he does" is redundant, because it doesn't add anything to the sentence.

2. "He remains as such, most could not dig up his past. There was nothing."—These two phrases don't really make sense, at least as they are worded as of now.

"Sorano Kazuho is a mysterious young man, whose past cannot be dug up even by the most clever of people. Nobody knows where he came from, if he has a family, what is role is—nothing."

3. "However, his own past haunts him in his own way, he has things that he needs to do things that he has to fulfil."—"Nevertheless, Sorano's dark past haunts him (insert simile here), as he has things he needs to do, and promises he has to fulfil."

4. "After many years of building his power, he is now coming back. It was time."—I'm not exactly sure about how you can build your power, because there was no mention of this earlier. What kind of power does he have? Maybe this should be said in the first paragraph. Also, there's an odd tense switch between the first and second phrase. You go from present back to past.

"After many years of rigorous training, he now believes that he is ready to face the demons of his past head-on. It's time.

He's returning to Okiban."

One last comment, with reference to the last line, the new city he's in should be mentioned, because even though I can deduce that through "going back to Okiban", I still have no idea about whether he moved to a village/town, etc.

Now, for the story!

First Impression:

The prologue, overall, was great because it served as a glimpse into Sorano's past. It explains why he feels the need to return to his hometown—although he didn't watch his mother die, he guessed it, since she sent him and his sister away to safety. He also seems to be very clever—instead of making a scene, he followed his mother's orders without making too much of a fuss. I'm wondering whether Saiko kept her criminal record hidden from her children, or if they knew that their mother was some kind of "traitor". Unless it has been mentioned here (and I probably missed it), I'm sure that Soran will find this out later on when he's older.

I'm assuming that the whole plot revolves around the theme of vengeance—basically, Sorano wants to take revenge on the soldiers for killing off his mother (because he isn't aware of the fact that his mother took away her own life). After reading "Rather, the punishment that befell most women in her place—being reduced to a servant and going to various palaces and mansions" I could've assumed that she would've allowed herself to get captured and meet her fate, but reading on, and back to the beginning, I saw that this would never have been a possibility.

A woman of her social stance would never reduce herself to a mere servant, as she's too proud to do so. It reminds me of the samurai slogan of "death before dishonour", which heavily applies to this situation as well as Japanese history.

I also wanted to add that it's great how you intertwined the country's culture/time period with the story without info-dumping it on the reader—the formality of the dialogue, the clothing, the housing, these are all very important elements which make or break the story, because without these, it's hard to put the characters' actions/dialogue into context.

Chapter one reminded me a lot of The Emperor's New Groove, especially that scene where Emperor Kuzco wants to destroy an entire village just to build is summerhouse.

"He says that he needs the land to build a dance hall, for the damaiyos to enjoy and the princes when they come," she said. "However he had neither given us a place to stay, he has thrown us out."—this alludes to that movie, and really shows the blatant disregard the upperclass has for the lowerclass. As long as they can satisfy their own, frivolous desires, they don't care about whether this may cost the well-being of hundreds of people. 

I read your author's note at the end of the chapter, and I could tell that this chapter wasn't easy to write, especially because of the terminology employed, as well as the introduction of all these new characters. It was great to see Kazuho as a man and his sister as a grown woman—I could really see the contrast between that scared young boy with a harp wit, and a strong leader who's not afraid to take the bull by its horns, even if it may cost him his life (a bit of a déja vû, am I right?). 

There are a few things I wanted to point, probably ones which have already been said in the comments section of your story:

1. The POV switch made things a little confusing at times, especially when it occured as the characters were all in the same scene. I personally do not prefer the third person omniscient POV, because it tells rather than shows the emotions of each character. It also makes the narrative jarring, and makes it hard for you as an author to cover the perspective of more than one character at once. My suggestion would be to focuse mostly on Sorano when he's in the scene—then include breaks where the lady and her son have to visit the other person.

2. In your author's note, at the beginning of the book (separate chapter), I noticed that you included a map of the world, but you didn't really go into detail about each town (state?). So I suggest that you include a little information about each in this section, so that when we get to Chapter one where the characters are discussing them, we aren't like...what's going on? There's also the formality of the language to take into consideration—because they aren't talking about the other towns casually, it makes the dialogue harder to understand.

3. At times I felt like the writing was a little impersonal, namely the narration. For example, in the prologue, I wasn't exactly given that sense  of urgency I think you were going for, because even though the sentences were short, they weren't emotionally charged. The mother was a little too calm considering the situation she was in. She seems to be very stern and firm in her personality, but I felt like even when she read out the letter it could've been more emotional. Just a thought.

Overall, though I felt like the plotline is very interesting, and I can tell that you did at least some research into Japanese culture. You've put a lot of work into this and it shines through, there's just some editing that needs to be done, and I'll mention this in the next part.

Writing Style:

There were a lot of grammatical/punctuational errors throughout the story, which hindered the flow of the writing. On several occasions I found there to be: tense switches (also a lot of 'had been's', awkward sentences, missing/incorrect punctuation, redundancy, POV swaps (which I've already mentioned), stand-alone dependent clauses etc. so I really think you need to read over those more carefully, or at least, find someone who can do it for you. 

Sentence variation was a thing, but in the prologue, there was a tendency for you to start a lot of your sentences with the female pronoun "she", and it became very obvious once it happened several times in a row. Both figurative and emotive language weren't employed, and it's a shame because you were given the oppurtunity to use them when describing the garments/housing in chapter one. The overall ideas were great, but because the writing was very simplistic in nature, it didn't completely do them justice. 

You did do a good job of introducing the setting/characters/conflict question without dilly-dallying, so I have to commend you for that. It's not easy to introduce these things right away, but you managed to do so effortlessly in just the first chapter. 

Characters:

Saiko—Sorano and his sister's mother. She's basically the woman that got the ball rolling—if she wouldn't have been a criminal, her son wouldn't have reached the position he currently has in his town. Her gruesome death is very symbolic, as it shows how her personality mirrors the one of her son. She seemed to be very level-headed and calculating, and didn't let her emotions get the better of her. (Also very crafty in the fact that she had a tunnel dug underneath her home in the event that a disaster happene. Which it did. I guess being a criminal does have its pros)

Sorano—Made a big change from that small boy to a responsible adult in just a chapter. He seems to be very compassionate and understanding, especially since he didn't refuse taking in a family wanted for treason. He knew that it would cause conflict between him and the other province, but probably because his own background is tainted did he decided to help them out. I like his character.

Misaki (or Masako? I was confused by this)—Sorano's sister. She's younger than him, and even though she initially came across as very...complacent, maybe because of her entrance into the scene, but I liked how she was loyal to her older brother. They share the same values and that's something very important when it comes to things like this. I think that her blue hair and violet eyes seem cool, definetly attributes reserved only for a protagonist.

Other characters—They have different levels of important, but to really get a feel of them I'd have to see more of them in the other chapters. 

Diamond rating ♢ (1—10): 7

I think this story is a lot of potential to be kickass and awesome, there is just a lot of polishing that needs to be done. Some of the things I've mentioned can only be developed through writing, so as you continue the story (and receiving feedback), you'll find that you'll be making fewer and fewer grammatical errors.

Good luck!