Title: Those Who Would Not Be Gods

Author: milee_s

Genre: Fantasy

PRESENTATION ✿✿❀❀❀

I hate to say this, but the cover is not very appealing. It's a text slap without consideration of how the design works on a whole. The author font, the color of the text, and the lack of clarity in the actual photo all result in a pretty meh cover that I would scroll past. Because it would be sleazy to try to promote my work by bashing your current cover, I will not mention that I am a graphic designer who is currently open for business. But. Y'know.

You've earned yourself two whole points because I'm that proud of you for not crowding your chapters with random images you found off of Google. Your chapters are clean and professional. Go you!

HOOK ✿✿✿❀❀

The good news is your title is awesome and would totally make me click on your book. It's so far out of the realm of all these "A Blank of Blank and Blank" titles that the creativity in and of itself warrants my attention.

I've got mixed feelings about the blurb, though. On the one hand, I like the idea of this invented religion and you've got a hint of cool worldbuilding going on that I'd like to know more about. On the other hand, if you really get down to it, the way you've described the plot is just "find magical object before evil people can so the world doesn't end" and that's one of those plots you can copy/paste out of the Fantasy Cliches Guidebook. There's not much in here that makes your story stand out from the hundreds of others. You need to include more of what makes your book unique.

Your first chapter opener is pretty awesome, though. If I was feeling generous and decided to look past the cover and blurb, your opening would keep me reading. For now.

GRAMMAR ✿✿✿✿✿

I spotted a couple minor issues; "mom" instead of "Mom", and "a ounce" instead of "an ounce". Small things like that. Not enough to really detract from the quality of the writing.

PLOT ✿✿✿✿✿

Your writing style is not my favorite. There's a lot of italics, and some sentiments and phrases were repeated too often. But holy Hannah does this plot have me hooked. It's not at all the boring reincarnation of a thousand other fantasy stories that I was expecting. I want to know what happened to Edith, if she's connected to the mysterious point of view in the third chapter, and if that means she's good or evil because I got the feeling that the unknown POV is not a good dude? I want to know why Raff's fire is supposed to be a secret and what happened in Sab's past that he doesn't want to talk about and if my suspicions are correct that he was the one who made the relic they're going to be chasing after.

Basically, this is really well-written and I'm thoroughly enjoying myself which I don't usually do in reviews. I can tell you've put a ton of time and effort into your world but you spared me from infodumps and for that I will be eternally grateful. There was a lot of information and I probably didn't retain it all but I don't think there was any time where I was given information I wasn't interested in. Nicely done.

CHARACTERS ✿✿✿✿✿

I love them all. I want to adopt them and keep them safe forever. Edith? Sweet, precious, bravely defended her mom. Raff? Funny, not going to back down from a fight, good to his friends. Sab? Giada? Milo? All my faves. You've managed to make your characters not feel like the standard archetypes, seen it all before, Auditioning for the Role of Snotty Friend #1 that I dread in books.

Also for the record the whole thing with Griffon and Edith's mom was so sad and raised so many questions for me.

ENJOYMENT ✿✿✿✿✿

Um don't take this the wrong way but I'm shocked I liked this as much as I did. I was prepared for another low budget Frostblood, but instead you've created a much more detailed world than some published authors I know, who tend to just capitalize random words instead of coming up with names for things (cough cough Cora Carmack cough). And your plot is very intriguing. I so dearly hope the end lives up to the hype.

CONCLUSION:

Edith's mom's death was enough trauma for me and if you kill any one of Raff's friends I will never ever ever forgive you.

Except Milo. I'll sacrifice Milo if I get to keep Sab and Giada.

TOTAL SCORE:

25/30