@Tubacabra Just finished my review and let me say, wow!
Your writing style, specifically with some of those descriptions is just fantastic! They really suck you into the story and it was definitely a stand-out feature while I was reading. I already mentioned before that your descriptions aren't just imagery, but also effective storytelling about the environment and the characters.
A particular stand-out moment I even made in my notes was in Chapter 2 when Mancer visited Jyna's grave. The scene was absolutely gorgeous and yet so heart-wrenching. Some of the language there was just beautiful and it was a great way to set the stage for their relationship while also hinting to (and I like how you didn't explicitly say it) a motivation Mancer has for why he goes back in time.
I do want to say the criticisms here might come off as a little harsh, but that's only because I genuinely think you're writing is great and I had to nitpick a bit to find potential improvements since you asked for me to be as critical as I can. But anyway, here they are:
Adverbs
I noticed a slight overuse of adverbs in your writing, especially with the more dialogue-dominant scenes. While not inherently bad, they do weaken your writing a bit when you use them and could be replaced with more effective adjectives and nouns. This is actually something I'm also trying to improve in my own writing as well. but here are a couple of instances I noticed:
“The baron raised his eyebrow sceptically” (You can probably drop the sceptically since the reader can infer that action is out of scepticism.)
“Selene smiled thinly.” You could change it to something like: Selene pressed her lips into a thin line, curving them into a faint smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. (It’s wordier, yes, and you could probably do better, but I think it paints the image a bit more effectively.)
Cliches
Some of your characters are a little cliched and tropey, but I'll use Angelina as the example here since I found she fell most into this (she falls into the spoiled rich noble trope and becomes a damsel in distress, though I understand that's to help build respectability for Mancer as her new teacher). I'd say that tropes and cliches aren't bad on their own and are tools we should use, but they can make your characters less compelling. I acknowledge that I only read the first 10 chapters and I don't get to see how these characters evolve more over time, but it'd be great if you did have character arcs that diverted from these cliches or even invert them down the line. It'd really make your work stand out beyond the typical regressing story.
Overall, I think you have something really great here and these are just nitpicks because your story is generally really great! The quality and polish exceed what I usually expect from web novels, so keep going!
