Title: Somnum: Before the beginning

Author: traversetxwn
Reviewer: MoniTheTigerEmpress

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SYNOPSIS

❝ 𝒂𝒕 𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒕 𝒍𝒆𝒕 𝒎𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒚 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅𝒃𝒚𝒆! 𝒑𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒆! ❞

── ABOUT TWO MONTHS ago, the peace and quiet of the forest kingdom Syla was disrupted by its biggest civil war in years. It began and ended with the Emberis siblings, eleven children who wandered into the woods a year ago to find a safe refuge in which to live.

Only two of the siblings now remain, and Ashling, one of the younger brothers, is determined to not let the tale behind the war die off.

MY DEAR READER: If you're not reading this on Wattpad, then you've just invited a lot of malware and viruses to come host a party on your computer. Please, come read it on Wattpad. At least your computer won't have to clean up the afterparty if you do.

(( VIOLAE LIBRIS: BOOK THE FIRST ))

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Title:

I think your title is great! It is quite hooking and it makes me wonder what your book will be about.

Cover:

N/A

Blurb:

I think your blurb is great. A reader can see what your book is about and it gives enough information to grip a reader.

Plot/flow/pace:

Grammar and dialogue:

Your grammar throughout was done well and you used dialogue vs action tags and grammar well too. The dialogue was realistic for the scene. There were a few things I wanted to mention!

I've noticed this a couple times in your prologue but you use capital letters during whole bits of dialogue to show a character IS YELLING which is jarring. An exclamation mark (!) shows yelling so you do not need the capital letters.

(This can be found in the prologue) The second sentence for the paragraph 'Eventually I made it downstairs'
For that sentence, it is one big run on sentence so I would suggest breaking it up as a reader cannot read the whole sentence in one breath. You could also add more details, sensory details, the colour of Sanguis' hair, etc to make us feel more into the characters viewpoint.

Character Development:

N/A

Descriptions, writing style and sentence structure, general comments:

For this section, overall, I think you did good overall. We needed more description from what I remembered but the little bits you did have were good too.There were also parts where I felt you over described or over told or over explained obvious little details when it was not needed and many more things but I will talk about them below.

When I first read the prologue I was confused. It initially read like a special thank you section or even diary-entry ish. Things were also told in 'real time' so it also confused me how it jumped from that to the character sitting at their desk writing. I think it would have been better if we were told the character was at the desk writing at the start to avoid confusion.

I notice as well you put a lot of the text in brackets () which can be distracting and take a reader out of focus. You also don't need to tell us things in brackets as you can easily show us what's being told by the character's view. The second paragraph of your prologue, the whole text in the brackets is shown to us in the text/view of the character during the rest of the chapter so you can just remember the entire paragraph since it is just repetition and not needed.

Another example of the above mentioned is where you say in brackets 'Yes, I can identify people by their sigh' which can be found in the prologue. This is not necessary to say as the way the character identifies who is by the door already tells us this bit of information.

I felt like the 'Let's start at the beginning' sentence was not needed as we, the reader, would assume the character will narrate from the beginning of said scene.

There was a moment in the prologue where you describe someones, I believe the brothers eyes as being 'cornflower eyes' and that sort of confused me so I had to google it. I found out it was blue so maybe add 'blue' in the middle so a reader won't think, like me, that we are talking about the actual food.

The part where you say 'I need to stop for a moment' (also the paragraph after) I feel like it would be better to show us these like the character maybe putting their pen down and such so it doesn't feel like a recount like 'x did this, y did that, etc.'

During the part where the main character says they expect to walk into a healthy blend of chaos and calm, there was no indication the character thought this earlier until after they entered said room so I think you can show us the characters thoughts a little earlier on, maybe when they are on their way to the room or something.

Touching up on my comment about the descriptions, there weren't many descriptions especially of the room so we don't know what anything looks like and it just seems like a plain white room. I feel like you could describe a little more for us to picture the scenes.

I also feel like you could indicate them leaving the house instead of cutting it where you did and throwing us into them walking for an hour just so it doesn't confuse/jar a reader!

During the first paragraph or two of the first chapter I felt you spent too much talking about this notebook and over-described it. I felt like a 'purple notebook' would suffice and describing more of where the character is at the current time would be better as we still do not know where they are.

Overall:

Overall I think you did good with your novel but it could be better. Above I mentioned things that could be done to improve your work but in its current state I believe a lot of potential readers will be interested in it.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to review your book and good luck on your future writing endeavours!