@StrayCat , here's my review! I've read chapters 1-10 so far, and I'm here to stay. Love the story! If you ever want a review in the future as you keep working on it, I'm happy to do so.
my notes
Cover and title art are gorgeous and really match the tone of your story, awesome choice
description: really evocative and mysterious, and a good length. The only suggestion (and I mean suggestion as in a possible thing to try rather than an explicit improvement, as stylistically you might want to discount it) is to see if you can also write a description with less in-world terms and a more thematic focus, and compare how people respond to it.
Copy / quality of writing
One of my biggest takeaways was the quality of you writing - it is beautifully descriptive, consistently grammatically correct and with few copy issues, and the imagery you use is gorgeous.
Minor things (suggestions for tighter prose, greater clarity, etc.)
A minor thing I recommend - and something I'm hyperaware of because I do this all the time- is to make sure your use of adjectives and adverbs doesn't make your prose feel awkward or clunky. I don't think you overwhelm anything overall, and I don't say this to take away from my overall assessment of your writing, but I found myself thinking occasionally that the descriptions could be trimmed slightly without sacrificing the strength of your descriptions or narrative. Personally, I like words a lot lol so I prefer to write as I please first with everything I want to say and then I cut it down to something more streamlined later (that said, my active novel now has not undergone any significant editing, and I know it needs it). I'm sure you already have your own editing style and I don't mean to overexplain here, im pretty much just ranting about how much I like words.
The other minor things I noticed was a bit of a tendency toward longer complex sentences (again, a thing I do all the time every day so I feel weird pointing it out haha). I don't know if you have an editor or beta reader or anything available, but it might be worth a round of editing a bit for clarity if you want to keep fine-tuning it. Shortening sentences here and there might make your descriptions feel more streamlined too without you cutting much of your writing.
Example (from 1.2): "Erith surveyed the sifters within the clearing, more than a hundred in number, their faces, a blend of fear and excitement, still echoing the Warden's intensity."
Suggested changes for clarity: Erith surveyed the sifters gathered in the clearing. Their faces, more than a hundred in number, echoed the Warden's intensity with a blend of fear and excitement.
related to the clarity bit, watch out for the occasional extra comma - to save yourself time some sort of grammar checker might work? Personally I used to like grammarly for catching things like that but I quit using it when they started beta testing all the AI add ons. I haven't found a replacement since. So I'm open to suggestions on that for myself haha
but again, most of that is stylistic, so take it as you will. Tl;dr is edit a bit for clarity and conciseness.
The beginning:I absolutely love the opening chapter. You immediately have action, smooth dialogue that contextualizes the characters relationships, and you avoid an info dump. Personally, I like your slower reveal of the bare facts of the who/what/when/where/why over the first four chapters. As someone who tends towards the info dump and over-narration especially in my first drafts, I enjoyed how you integrated that information into active chapters. That's my subjective take - it certainly wouldn't hurt to have those questions answered sooner, but I think your set up is preferable to succumbing to the information dump.
Your characters dialogue is especially strong too, and I think you do a good job of balancing giving the reader the needed context while avoiding the telling / not showing trap.
And my last comment I had was how well you convey the experiences of the characters. Your description of their physical environment and feelings is almost visceral at times. It makes it all the more engaging to read.
In order to comment more on things like pacing and character development etc, Id need to read more, but everything I've read so far is awesome.
In conclusion, truly beautiful work. I'm looking forward to reading the rest! Thanks for sharing and keep it up!
PS, sorry for the ironic wall of
chaotic text wherein I wax poetic about the values of conciseness and clarity
