(PumpknHead)

WARNING: This review contains a lot of spoilers. If you are interested in reading this book, I suggest you do so before reading this review.

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"Shane, his mother and pet Meowth all take a trip to the Alola region for summer vacation. While there, Professor Kukui decides to give him his first Pokémon to participate in the Island Challenge."

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PLOT

At first glance, I knew this was going to be a rewrite of the game. The generic title, the brief summary-everything I saw before even reading this book screamed rewrite.

This remained true throughout the entirety of the novel. Besides a few small plot points and relationships that you threw in, the story was a complete rewrite of Pokémon Sun and Moon-and one of the least original ones I've ever read, at that. You even copied dialogue line-for-line. You had a few small scenes that weren't in the book, but you skimmed over them. Your writing was dependant on the plot of the games, and you seemed to struggle whenever you strayed away from the plot. The biggest thing that can solve this is practice. Keep writing, and practice writing more original plots.

This type of story isn't a problem for people who have never played the games, but it was boring for me. I already knew what was going to happen, so I had no reason to read your book. You need to add twists and originality to draw many readers in.

To add to the predictability of your stories, the name of your chapters and the media you added to them revealed what was going to happen. Naming a chapter "Dartrix" lets me know before even reading that Shane's Rowlett will evolve. This also happened with your media, when you'd add pictures of people or Pokémon that Shane would me. For chapter titles, I think you should make them vaguer or remove them altogether. For media, I think you should just remove those. If you want to have some type of media in your story, you could make one banner featuring Shane and his starter or team to put in every chapter.

There was a lot of things in this story that you seemed to write just for plot convenience. Why did Pichu want to travel with Shane moments after meeting him? He would probably want to know what type of person he is so he doesn't end up travelling with a criminal or a cruel trainer.

The biggest thing that bugged me was Shane receiving Ash's Greninja. First of all, why would Ash give one of his most powerful Pokémon away blindly? If you really want to keep Greninja as part of the story, I think Ash's letter should explain why he's giving him away and why he did so with no chance of ever knowing who Greninja ended up with.

Once Shane got him, I did appreciate that you made Greninja refuse to fight alongside Shane until he was stronger, but it still seemed unnecessary. There's hundreds of weak trainers in the world, so what gave Greninja the patience to follow Shane and wait for him to be stronger? Why didn't he go find a powerful trainer and stick with them? I think you should add some kind of motivation for Greninja.

I think Greninja should have agreed to fight with Shane later on in the book. It would have been cool to see it happen immediately before the battle with the champion, when Shane is about to prove himself to be Alola's most powerful trainer.

Another one of my biggest pet peeves was that the world bent to Shane. His ideas were always the best, people always let him do what he wanted, and he was always the smartest one in a crowd. He's thirteen. No adult is going to place their complete trust in someone that's just barely a teenager. He's going to say some dumb things. He's not going to be extraordinarily smart. I think you need to show adults being wary of him throughout the book.

At the end of the story, you had two epilogues. I think there should only be one. You could make the Ultra Beast chapter a normal chapter, or combine the two epilogues into one. I suggest the first option.

Overall, it's hard to judge this plot because it's not your own. That's the reason I've ranked it so low. I feel like you could do a lot better if you pushed outside your comfort zone and wrote more original plots.

LANGUAGE/STYLE

First of all, you shouldn't call a familiar trainer "the boy" or "the trainer". That's usually used for someone the readers don't know, or someone that the readers barely know. Calling Shane and Hau "the trainer" made scenes really vague, and made it hard to tell who was who.

Your word choice could also improve. When you want to emphasize a word, you use adverbs like "very" or "really". This isn't bad, but using stronger verbs can make your writing tighter and more mature. Instead of "really angry", you can say "exasperated". I'd suggest trying to implement this, but don't go overboard on it. You're trying to clearly portray your ideas, not sound like you're trying to use big words to sound smart.

The biggest thing I noticed was an alarming lack of detail. It felt like I read 39 chapters worth of "We did this. Then we did this. Then I said this.".

There were time were I could see you trying to be descriptive, but you never provided enough information for the readers to form solid images in their head. This made drawn out scenes like Pokémon battles boring, because every battle was the same. There was no creativity in these scenes, which you really should have in a book about battling to become the strongest trainer.

This also made everything to fly past the reader, because there was nothing to add pacing between everything Shane did. It felt like each time Shane travelled to a new location, the only information readers got was "Shane saw two trainers on his way. The first battle was easy. The second was a little harder, but still easy." In a book with a plot like yours, these scenes are your chance to let your creativity shine.

Adding description would add depth to your characters as well. Your writing made all your characters lack depth in their actions. I repeatedly saw scenes like "Everyone felt very conflicted. A few minutes later, we decided on this." Your writing should allow the reader to feel the characters' conflict.

This lack of description made your book very dialogue heavy, which isn't good, considering half of it was ripped directly from the games. This means that most of your readers are likely people who haven't played the games, which isn't the best audience. I think adding description sub-plots will help cater to both players and non-players.

The few times you did provide some description, you only provided visual imagery. I think you could make your book significantly better by appealing to multiple senses. What can Shane hear? Smell? Taste? Feel? Adding these types of imagery can help pull your audience into Shane's world, and make your book more appealling.

Stylistically, I could see you stepping out of your comfort zone and trying some new things. It was very nice to see the effort there, but I have a few suggestions that could potentially strengthen your style.

You used very basic sentence types throughout your story. This isn't a bad thing, but there are a few things you could use when you want to add emphasis to something.

The first thing you could use is dashes. These can be used to add emphasis to something, like a realization that a character has. For example,

"Something was wrong-Lillie was gone."

You can also use it to show someone being cut off, or someone cutting off themselves. Fore example,

"Hey guys, I think we should-"

"Let's go over there!" Hau interrupted.

And,

"Pichu-I mean, Pikachu!"

That's not the only way to add emphasis however. You could also use one sentence paragraphs to make a scene or a realization more dramatic. For example,

"The room was quiet. I didn't know what was going on, but something didn't feel right. I gasped when I realized what was going on.

Lillie was gone."

There are countless different sentence styles you can experiment with, but I explained these because these were the ones I saw you attempting to do. I hope this helps you understand these sentence types more, because they can certainly improve your style.

If you're in high school, I suggest taking AP Lang. Your style will improve tremendously in that class.

GRAMMAR/FORMATTING

You had a lot of small slip-ups, like consistently mixing up "to" and "too". "To" can mean "towards" or "until", and "too" means "excessively" or "also".

You also have frequent spelling errors. I suspect part of the issue might be autocorrect, because I frequently saw Ilima spelled like "Llama" and Shane spelled like "Shave". I suggest proof-reading your chapters, or putting them through a spelling check at the very least.

When splitting paragraphs up, you indent instead of double spacing. This isn't bad, but it made the writing seem a little messier than it really was. I think double spacing it and removing indents would make it look nicer. This point is just a personal preference, though, so you should only follow it if you agree.

You seemed to struggle with formatting dialogue. One of the biggest thing I noticed was you not knowing when to end dialogue with a comma or a period. If an action follows dialogue, don't end the dialog with a comma (ex. "There's no need to worry," Shane smiled..." should be "There's no need to worry." Shane smiled..."). Unless the sentence following the dialogue relates to how the person spoke, then don't use a comma.

If you break one sentence of dialogue into two parts, add a comma where they break. (You would write "This," Hau says. "is the heavenly treat called the malasada!" when it should be "This, Hau says, "is the heavenly treat called the malasada!")

When two people of the same gender identity are in a scene together, please don't be vague. Sometimes you'd have Lillie talk for a long time to Shane and Hau, and when one of them replied, you'd use "he said". I struggled to decipher whether Shane or Hau had responded.

Your biggest issue was your inconsistent tenses. Your book is mostly in present tense, but you frequently switch to past tense. You should go back and make sure everything is in one tense.

Most of the time you switched tenses, it was because you were describing emotions. Make sure you're using "feels" and not "felt", "seems" and not "seemed", to list off two I noticed a lot.

Lastly, thank you for accenting Pokémon! It made me very happy to see that.

CHARACTERIZATION

My biggest problem with Shane was how overpowered he was. You never even mention him taking time to train, yet he manages to blow through countless trainers with just one Pokémon. Winning every battle is one thing, but breezing through them? Even making him lose a small battle every few chapters can help make him feel a lot less overpowered and more realistic.

Shane is also a very boring character. His reaction to almost everything is a shrug. He shrugged in response to receiving Greninja when he knew how immensely powerful he is. He's thirteen-he's going to get excited over things.

Continuing on that last point, Shane is way too nonchalant. He literally watches as the sky turns purple as a giant crack in the sky forms and thinks nothing of it. Unless things like that happen every day, I think he would be terrified or excited about that.

There were a lot of things I liked about Shane, however. It was very apparent that he cared about his Pokémon, and that made me very happy. I loved the scenes where he would sit down and eat lunch with his Pokémon, or go through and hug all of them. It helped show the bond between Shane and his team, and was one of my favorite aspects of the book.

I also like how you gave Shane nervous habits. Many times when he was nervous, he would crack his fingers. Giving him nervous habits made him feel more realistic.

In the games, I adore Lillie's character. However, I feel like you made some changes for the worse to imply a potential romance between the two. Lillie was a very reserved character at the beginning of the games. You kept this consistent for the most part, but there were some glaring breaks in character when Lillie showed affection towards Shane. The first instance of this is when Shane saves Nebby and Lillie. In the games, she timidly thanks the player and introduces herself. In your book, she suddenly becomes very open and hugs Shane without warning. This happens multiple times throughout the story, and it bugged me every time it happened.

Your minor characters were very robotic. Not everyone he meets will be plain and kind. Obviously, it'll be hard to show a personality through one-sentence interactions, but you could do this in longer conversations. You don't need to be extreme with this, just change people's speech patterns and tone of voice.

You could fix this by using more descriptive words than "says". For example, "giggles" can make someone seem more lighthearted, "grumbles" can show someone is angry, and so on. If Shane has a longer conversation with a minor character, you can show them being snarky, impolite, impatient, etc. Again, it doesn't have to be drastic, but giving these characters slight variety can add a sense of realism to the book.

PRESENTATION

Title

I think you should change the title. When I looked at the title, I could immediately tell this book was going to be a game rewrite. If you make your plot more unique like I suggested, the title should definitely change to reflect that. It could related to the theme, it could relate to the main conflict, or it could relate to the fact that it's a journey across Alola. You have a ton of possibilities, and I think you should take them.

Description

How long is this vacation? How can his mom afford to not work for long enough for Shane to do the Island Challenge? I know the games don't explain some of these things, but I think you should take that opportunity to explain it yourself. I think the easiest solution would be to simply say that Shane and his mom moved to Alola.

Beyond that, you need to use your description to hook readers in. When potential readers are looking for books to read, they only see the first few lines of your description. You description needs to be interesting enough for people to click on your book. You need a good hook. What separates your book from every other Pokémon fanfiction on this website? Why should people read it?

Cover

I like what you were going for with the cover, but I don't think it fits your story. Your story is complex and mostly upbeat, so a simple cover doesn't really fit the plot. I like the art of Shane, because it does a good job of showing his personality. You could definitely incorporate your art into the cover, but I don't think you should have a plain white background

Also, if you're going to keep the title the same and use the logo as the font for the title, I don't think you should use the Sun logo and Moon logo separately. There is a logo for these games that has "Sun and Moon" together, so it wouldn't look as cluttered at the bottom. Though, depending on how complex you made your cover, you might be better off using normal text instead of the logo.

In-Chapter Media

The art was very inconsistent. Sometimes it looked like you traced over the official art for characters, and sometimes you just used the official art. If you're going to keep this in, either draw original art or use official art.

However, if you make a new cover, you could make banners that match the aesthetic of the cover to put in your chapters. These could feature Shane and his team, Shane and his friends, or a significant character in the chapter. You have a ton of possibilities.

OVERALL

I think that you have a ton of potential as an author. I can tell you're somewhat new to writing, and you're doing very good so far. I know I mentioned a lot of negatives in here, but please don't feel discouraged! A lot of the mistakes I noticed are very common among less experienced authors, and a lot of them will go away naturally with experience.

I think the biggest things you can do to improve are practice writing description and practice writing your own plots.

To practice description, you can go to somewhere like a park and try to describe everything. Describe what you see, hear, smell, etc. To practice dialogue, you can try to write two people discussing or arguing about a certain topic. Writing will improve these naturally, but you can do those exercises if you want to improve before writing a full story.