Title: Face in the Crowd

Author: LittleMissWeird97

Genre: Science Fiction 

Rating: PG-13

# of Chapters: 10 (ongoing)

# of Chapters I've read: 2 

Summary/Blurb: 

You, whoever you are, have probably seen me before. You wouldn't know it though.

Why?

It's because I have a thousand faces. I can change my appearance in seconds, and I can't put my power to waste.

They made me forget who I am, but they gave me this. I won't sit back and let them take over the rest of the world.

They can give powers to others, but I will keep fighting.

I fight with my brain.

I fight with my power.

I fight as a face in the crowd.

Review:

Disclaimer—I was a little confused about which book you wanted me to review. Under the title heading in the form, it said Face in the Crowd, but then the rest was filled out for The Manipulation Game. So because I saw Face in the Crowd first, I've reviewed that one. I hope that's alright. Otherwise, feel free to request for your other book at a later date (I will open up reviews to multiple books from the same author, just not right now). Sorry for any inconvenience :/ 

Cover: 

The title says "Face In The Crowd", but in the foreground of your cover I see a pair of legs, and in the background, random pedestrians. It's important that you establish a connection between the cover and the title—it makes your story more memorable.

Additionally, the title on the cover itself was kind of hard to read, because of the font colour. Not only does it not jump out at me and yell "READ ME!" but it hurts to look at because of the light/dark contrast between the sunlight and the shadow projected by the guy's legs.

A suggestion for this would be the following: I've seen a lot of images about "individuality" which involve a literal crowd of clones, with only one person standing out amongst them. Even though your cover literally implies "commonality" , what you really intend is uniqueness. So play with that.

Overall—Title + Cover image are unrelated.

Blurb:

Opening with the second person POV (breaking the fourth wall, where the character literally talks to the reader) hooked me right away. Because it really made me think, who is this guy? Who could this person possibly be?

Then, the part afterwards, where it says "I have a thousand faces. I can change my appearance in seconds, and I can't put my power to waste." Raised the age-old question. What would be the default look of a person who can become anyone? In X-men, the one with Jennifer Lawrence, her default appearance is this naked, blue, reptilian woman. While in Futurama, in one of the episodes, the default appearance for an alien that could transform into any other alien, was a pitiful-looking cricket with a top hat. Very interesting stuff.

I also like the sense of ambiguity you have with "they". Who are "they"? You've raised a lot of questions in this blurb, but for the better—I want to read on and find out more about the life of this person, and who put him in this position. It seems like a curse for him (or her) but at the same time, they're making the best of it.

Some sentences appeared disjointed with one another, and I didn't particularly enjoy how there wasn't any paragraphing. Using the previous example: "They made me forget who I am, but they gave me this. I won't sit back and let them take over the rest of the world." I felt like there was something missing before the last sentence. From what I understood, 'they' gave him these magical powers, but what does this have to do with taking over the rest of the world? Are there other people like him? This has to be made clearer.

Another example: "I fight with my brain. I fight with my power. I fight as a face in the crowd." I'm not sure how fighting with his brain is correlated to fighting with his power. Does this power come from the brain? I don't know, it seemed like a little strange to read.

Overall—Short, but got the main idea across. A little more clarity is needed. 

First Impression:

This was a little grim. After reading a whole bunch of light-hearted books (relatively—actually light-hearted isn't the right word. You get what I'm trying to say) this came as a surprise. It's nice to delve into the darker scene, every once in a while, so this isn't a complaint. 

If your goal was to make me have great sympathy for your main character, then you reached it. I could feel her pain, confusion, anger, desperation. Even bewilderment, when she started to morph her face into the one of someone else's—we are always hit with characters who have had full control of their powers since the dawn of time, never with ones who are just learning to master their powers (if anything, this development is skipped in stories, for fear of being too boring. It ain't.).

One thing that I found hard to ignore was the repetition. A lot of words were repeated (kind of like what I'm doing right now) over and over, sentence after sentence. Take the first paragraph of the first chapter as an example. The word 'light' is mentioned six times! I won't even tell you how many times 'pain' has been used either—more than five times for sure.

There were also a few  inconsistencies—in the first chapter— such as the following:

—I found it odd that the scientist (captor) answered the girl's questions. She's practically a guinea pig to them, an animal, henceforth his words are just fruitless grunts. They shouldn't pay any heed to her demands. "The tests are classified"—So why did the scientist  give away so much information (which will most likely backfire in the next three chapters)? I would've expected the character to be slapped, jabbed, or punched for her impertinence.

—"The concept of light is foreign to me. [..] I just haven't seen it. Or at least can't remember it." From this, I assumed that she was in the dark for a really long time (weeks even months)—so when she was thrown in a well-lit room, how did her eyes adjust so quickly to them? When miners are trapped underground for extended periods of time, in pitch black darkness, immediate exposure to light blinds them, and it takes them a while to readjust. So the same should apply to this.

—I was unsure about the gender of the character, so I think this should be made obvious somewhere during the first chapter. I kept thinking it was a guy for some reason, but when I moved on to the next chapter, I found out it's a girl (the bad guys kept using female pronouns). I had to go back and change all the pronouns/possessives in the review. 

(Etc.) 

Overall—Watch out for plot inconsistencies. 

Writing Style:

This was easy to read and it flowed, for the most part. The wording got a little repetitive after a while (a point which I've already brought up in the previous section), and it felt like you just recycled the same phrases in the attempt to lengthen your chapters/be more descriptive—I would suggest rewording a lot of your sentences and using a thesaurus (within reason, don't throw random synonyms in) to help with your diction. 

I don't have anything to say about the grammar, but the punctuation, namely the commas, was often misused. For example: "My vision has turned red, and my insides feel like they've turned to knives, but I've grown used to the pain, and rarely even pass out anymore." There shouldn't be a comma before 'and' because "rarely even pass out anymore" isn't an independent clause. There a lot of similar examples, but I won't list them all, you get my point. 

Characters:

Subject 223—Misgendered her for the first chapter and a half until I read "She's awake! Somebody do something!" I felt kind of bad for that, but there really was no indication of her being a female in the introduction. The powers just keep on coming—first she can change her appearance into someone else's, then she download all the information about that person with a mere touch. I would've expected such a thing to take a toll on her, but she seems tough enough. Even though she was tortured a lot and psychologically damaged beyond repair. 

The other subjects— Dead.

The man—You know who I'm talking about. Reminds me of a cartoon villain; he believes himself to be hella smart by revealing 'classified' information to his test subjects and is also very sassy. It will all come back to bite his ass later on in the story. Maybe literally. 

Diamond rating ♢ (1—10): 6 

I hope Subject 223 uncovers the truth about her past (and her true identity) and goes on to live in a better place. I wouldn't wish the torture she was put through to anyone, not even my greatest enemy.

Good luck!