Leeward

empiresofwater

Thank you for being patient with this review! Sorry it took so long, I hope it's helpful!

Initial Impression: (cover, title & blurb)

Your cover is exactly the kind of cover that I sense historical fiction in. It's interesting and the subtitle really hooks us in. I have a few suggestions. For one, the colour of the words on top are a little too dark. I'm wondering if that's white or if it's off-white? Maybe changing it to white would make it show up better? Also, the title of your book could be a lot bigger. You're lucky that you've found a title that's short and fits well onto a cover, so I think you should utilize that more. Make it huge and see what it looks like. Last thing: I'm not a big fan of the 'by' before your name. If you make the author's name a big bigger and take that 'by' out, I think it'll look just a tad more professional.

I mentioned already that your title is short and snappy, and it obviously represents the story and even genre. The title let's us know exactly what we're in for, so I love it.

On to your blurb. I like the concise manner of your blurb, but I do believe you have a bit more info than you need. I think you could pull together that first line a bit, like this:

When the naval ship Ulysses mutinies in the Caribbean, no one knows how many of the crew are left alive, nor what the mutineers plan to do with the vessel.

It's a super tiny change, but it does flow a tad bit better, I think. I also took out the year because I felt it was unnecessary. They'll figure it out themselves and readers often skim over numbers because they're scary. Just a little preference thing there.

As for the rest of your blurb, it's really well done. It's short, and it ends super dramatically. It truly does interest me in the story. I actually went to rewrite it like I do with all the blurbs I review, and I just couldn't find a reason to change anything else.

13/15

Logistics: (grammar, spelling & dialogue)

(You use the semicolon correctly yay!! So rare on this app, but it's nice to see authors tackle that right.)

So basically, your grammar is almost perfect. There's one formatting error and one persistent grammar error I'd like to mention below:

First off, your dash is the wrong dash. You use dashes like this:

Masts - all those still upright - grew like a forest ablaze.

Basically, it should be the long dash for something like that, and there shouldn't be any spaces, like this:

Masts—all those still upright—grew like a forest ablaze.

So that's just a formatting thing, but on my laptop I just type - - those two dashes without the space between and it makes that long dash. I'd recommend figuring out how to fix that if you want it to be correct. It's really not that big of a deal, but it does mess with the flow a bit.

Next, the only persistent grammar issue is your use of the comma before 'and'. I'm not sure if the few times I saw this it was a just a mistake, but make sure you remember a comma only goes in front of 'and' if the second and first clauses are both independent.

Example:

From chapter 2:

'Nightingale recognized Whitehead's young son, Robert, barely twelve years of age, and already following in his father's footsteps.'

So that isn't correct use of the comma there, because the last part of the sentence isn't independent. (That means that if you were to separate it, it wouldn't make sense on its own.)

So the correction would be either without the comma:

'Nightingale recognized Whitehead's young son, Robert, barely twelve years of age and already following in his father's footsteps.'

Or if you wanted to keep the comma, then you need to make the second clause independent by adding in a subject (he):

'Nightingale recognized Whitehead's young son, Robert, barely twelve years of age, and he was already following in his father's footsteps.'

I like the first one better, just because it flows a bit better. In my experience, you should always choose the comma-minimalist approach. The less commas, the clearer the writing. Again, this was not a persistent issue. I saw it maybe four or five times in seven chapters. Just remember that the way you used that comma above is technically wrong, but you can choose from the correction versions which one you like better.

Next, dialogue. You've got it all down very well, but you sometimes incorrectly use a dialogue tag to introduce dialogue. If you're putting your dialogue tag before your dialogue, you still capitalize the dialogue and introduce the dialogue with a comma. Ex. from chapter 2:

Finally, in a nervous flurry – "can I see it, sir?"

Correction:

Finally, in a nervous flurry, he said, "Can I see it, sir?"

Maybe you would want to put blurted or mumbled instead of said just to make that better, but the comma and the capital would not change.

The next problem you had with dialogue tag was distinguishing between action tags and dialogue tags. From chapter 2:

"It is in a safe place at the moment," Nightingale smiled.

So 'smiled' isn't a dialogue tag, it's an action tag, because it does not describe something spoken. You would either write that like this:

"It is in a safe place at the moment." Nightingale smiled.

This still implies that he's spoken, but you just can't have the comma. Similarly, it would look like this if you had to deal with the lowercase dialogue tag:

"It is in a safe place at the moment." He smiled.

Or you could just slip said in there and keep the comma:

"It is in a safe place at the moment," he said with a smile.

Last thing: your capitalization of words like 'captain'. Now, in Canada, we capitalize words that are referring to a specific person. So that means when I write 'the Captain did this', I capitalize it, which you do not. Rules are below:

"Captain John said this..." – capitalized in all countries, because it is a part of the title.

"A captain's job is very important..." – not capitalized anywhere, because it is referring only to the job and not a person.

"The Captain was a strong man..." – capitalized in Canada & UK, not America.

If you're not from Canada or the UK, you obviously adhere to your own rules. However, I'd like to briefly take a moment to explain why Canada does this and why it makes so much more sense. When you say 'the captain', it's referring to a person, and you are using the title in place of a name. It should be capitalized, in my mind. If you have trouble distinguishing when to capitalize, a cool trick is to replace 'the captain' with 'Nightingale' and see if it still works. If you can substitute the two and it makes no difference, then the title should be capitalized as well. Again, it's a choice, just make sure you stay consistent.

12/15

Story Flow: (transitions & pacing)

Your transitions are well-done and natural, and your pacing is rather perfect. Your story flows beautifully, and you have a very clear talent for writing metaphorically in an advanced style. However, I believe there is one thing that might help your story flow. You often avoid contractions such as 'he'd' in your writing, which makes sense because that's how English sounded a long time ago. However, just because you need your characters to speak that way does not mean you have to narrate that way. Most of the time, I didn't even notice your lack of contractions. But take this sentence here, from chapter 2:

'He would not believe it if Nightingale had said he had stared into its aureate glow for an age before departing England, wracked with indecision—only to stuff it to the bottom of his chest.'

Note, I've fixed the dash there. Anyway, this sentence is wordy and I had trouble getting through it the first time, but I couldn't place exactly why. Then I tried to think of the way I would write it, with contractions, and I think that fixes the wordiness in the first part there.

'He would not believe it if Nightingale had said he'd stared into its aureate glow for an age before departing England, wracked with indecision—only to stuff it to the bottom of his chest.'

Simply putting in that contraction really made the flow better. However, if that's simply not the way you write, and you want to keep it the way it is, try readjusting the 'it' in the beginning, which also clears up the sentence:

'He would not believe Nightingale if he admitted he had stared into its aureate glow for an age before departing England, wracked with indecision—only to stuff it to the bottom of his chest.'

So that's changing the sentence more, but it works better than all those small words you had grouped together. You have a few wordy sentences caused by your lack of contractions, so you can either put in the contractions, or just consider rearranging some sentences.

So obviously that's super picky, but it does affect your flow a bit, so I though I would mention it.

9/10

Description: (characters & scenes)

Description of characters (not scenes, your scenes are perfect) is pretty much the only issue I had with your story. Please let me know if I somehow missed it, but I didn't see a description of Nightingale or any of the other characters, at least for the first three chapters where I was scrounging for it and couldn't find any. You excel by giving emotional description and developing the depth of the character, but I really didn't see any eye colour and hair colour. If you're not a big fan of that kind of thing, try to just slip it in naturally once in a while. Like 'he widened his light blue eyes,' or something like that. To a lot of readers, that type of info is really important to them and how they imagine your characters.

7/10

Originality: (plot & tone)

Your plot is original to me, because I don't find myself stumbling upon historical fiction a lot. I think the genre has a reputation for being a little boring. However, your book is anything but. I definitely think you set yourself apart from your genre in more ways than one.

Your tone is uniquely yours and extremely developed. I'm interested in seeing how you write other perspectives—I'm kind of just obsessed with the way you write. I like your metaphors, obviously.

10/10

Final Comments:

I was greatly immersed in this story from the first paragraph. I find the writing refreshing and the storyline interesting. At one point, I even found myself picking at my nails because I was nervous as to what was going to happen. You could fix up the occasional comma and dialogue slip, and you could add in some description. But your story is beautiful the way it is. You got over fifty points, so I'll add your story to my reading list!

Final score:

51/60