@MelancholicOtaku All done! Here you go, I hope you find some of these tidbits helpful. You have a beautiful world (and beautiful art attached to it) and I think this story has a lot of potential. Thank you for sharing both the story and your support!
Engagement/Pacing: The story has a kind of dreamy, meandering feel to it and makes me feel like I’m reading a pastel fairytale/storybook. Almost cozy. The beginning does feel just a little bit wonky. I recognize that you wrote it a looong time ago, so I don’t know how much of this will still feel relevant but I’ll put it out there since my focus here is the first five chapters.
The whole bit where you refer to Tollkeeper as ‘the voice’ is distracting, because I had trouble differentiating that it was him all along once you introduced him. I kept looking for ‘the voice’ since it wasn’t gendered, but Tollkeeper was. It also isn’t immediately clear what he looks like/that he is older/that he is her work-partner/companion—all things that might get the reader more interested in caring about who he is. The physical description you give him later should come up front, along with naming him. (Additionally, that he is Tollkeeper and she is a tollkeeper is confusing; maybe call him Head/Lead Tollkeeper/etc bc it being a job title shared by others takes away from it being his character name)
The ‘help me, oh prodigal daughter’ part is interesting, but I wanted more information/background right off the bat to figure out how much I care/how interesting that is to me--and having Elly wistfully say that Elias would like the sweet she’s eating right after detracts from the punch of ‘oh! This is her mission that we should care about! It’s been 10 years of chasing this goal!’
Just little tweaks like making the characters and plot pieces that we should care about super clear with names, descriptions, etc would go a long way in giving readers a ‘hook’. Additionally, just my two cents, but moving the chapter where she and Elias are playing hide and seek to Chapter 1 & making Chapter 1/festival into Chapter 2 might also give readers more emotional investment up front. That and really getting into Elly’s head about how it feels for her to guide souls home when she does, etc etc will help people relate to her faster.
Writing: Really just some technical pieces to follow up on. Grammar errors with spacing and commas are pretty prevalent throughout the first chapters as well as minor spelling errors, it might be good to circle back and tighten that up. I do like how you describe things and the imagery you use. It doesn’t feel overdone/superfluous. (In some places, like the orbs in chapter one, it might even be underdone—which, personally, I think is better than OVERdone). The narrative flows nicely, though sometimes the tense gets slipped up. Missing periods here and there. Again, nothing a copy-edit wouldn’t fix up nicely. For an example of little errors to circle back to: you capitalize Harvest Moon in later chapters but not in chapter one. You also say ‘the tollkeeper replied’, but Elly didn’t say anything for him to respond to in the opening chapter, so a different dialogue tag would fit better.
General: I like the feel of the story and I like what I’ve read so far! It has a unique feel, I haven’t seen this story told before. It doesn’t feel remotely trope-y. It does a good job capturing melancholy and a dreamy sense of beauty. Giving a stronger narrative frame/stakes/details for readers to invest in and go ‘I care about Elly/Tollkeeper! I want to see if they accomplish their mission of x’ up front would probably help keep more readers curious and engaged early on—people have short attention spans, so the faster you can accomplish this, the better. Readers generally decide whether they want to keep reading or not before the end of the first chapter (in fact, I’m guilty of making a judgment after the first three paragraphs). Hook, then build. Make them care about your characters, and then show them the beautiful, unique world you’ve created.
For the same reason, I think the scene of Elly and Elias playing hide and seek and him going missing/dying/not coming back would pack more punch if it weren’t broken up and if it were put at the very, very beginning of the story. If it’s important that it’s broken up, maybe give readers a high-level overview at the beginning and show Elly having more and more vivid memories of it/filling in the details later as you progress. (And maybe you do! Since I only read the beginning, I realize I might be missing the narrative that you end up weaving—just giving you some feedback on what might tighten up the beginning, since you wrote it back in 2023).
I hope this was helpful! Again, this is all just my subjective opinion so I'm not saying any of this is correct/the best way/etc. Just my two cents, based on my personal taste.
