The aim of this review is to provide constructive feedback that may help with author's development. Author is welcome to delete this review once it has been read by them.
In this review I looked at the summary and the first chapter. The book has promise with an ambitious plot judging by what I've read. Since I didn't go beyond the first chapter, story line is not what this review is about. I felt the basics of construction needed to be the focus here.
Looking at the summary. As a reader, what do you really want me to know? What feelings do you want me to be feeling?
Right now, I have no idea. This is what I can gather. The story is told from two world perspectives. A human world and magic world. Something happened four years again that involved a girl called Zen and village being kaput in a void. After that, I'm confused. I wanted to move away from the book before opening to the chapter.
The summary needs to sum up the book with few words, in a logical order and that will draw out the feelings you want from readers. It also mustn't give away too many spoilers. It has to be a hook to make the reader want to go to the first chapter.
Below is example for reference. It's meant to be unrelated to your story. I used emotions "determination" and "power" for the hooks.
[Zen woke to an alien world after being held in stasis for six years. She found herself plummeted into the deeps of political games between the overpowering Noa and Tabris families of Magic World. An unwanted alien in a world on the brink of civil war. She must recover more of her memories in order to learn of what happened to her home and how to return to it. Being a stranger amongst the cut throat, diabolical and self-centred Magic World civilians will not make that an easy task. It's difficult to know who to trust. Zen has no choice but to walk the path of a pariah amongst Magic World's seedy underbelly to survive. Lingering in her shadows is an undeclared truth that may threatened the order and sustainability of both worlds.]
The first chapter, to be honest, was hard to read. I recommend using markdown language that we use in the forums to represent italic and bold. As you don't need to explain what the symbols mean. https://***.markdownguide.org/cheat-sheet/
In the first chapter. A girl wakes to the conversation of non-human creatures talking over her. After that, I'm lost. I'll focus more on technical aspects. The grammar in the chapter isn't too bad. The common errors for new writers was present. Mixing tenses and run-on sentences was your culprits here. Below is an example of this.
First paragraph. Mix tenses are obvious here. "As I looking..." sentence is present. "I heard..." is past. And the coma break should be a full stop as they are two different conditions.
For other areas of the chapter. The pacing was too fast. You need to take some time to introduce your characters and world. If the girl was insignificant as a character at this point. You need to give the talking characters more charm and personality in order for us to understand their importance to the story. More descriptions of the world from the characters eyes was needed here.
Use your characters to drive and show the scene to your readers. This is generally the best approach.
Finally, every chapter, scene and character action matters to story line. They should always progress the plot to the final end. Even if they are fillers. Fillers are pieces of the same story line, so has to be connected to a main part of the story and support the progression.
Sorry if the rating looks harsh, but this is where you start.
Writing is like any skill to master. It requires knowing what areas you need to strengthen, reading and exploring more stories to discover other ways of word usage and various methods that will help you hone your own style.
Thank you for sharing your story with us. Continue to write, read and growing in the craft.
All the best.
