Title: Of Plots and Mischief 

By: @AnaqatRaschid 

Source: @TheBlossomCommunity_ Review Shop

Reviewer: 

Genre: Fantasy

Mature: N

Status: Ongoing

English usage: UK

First impressions: 38/40

Digging deeper: 77/100

Final thoughts: Complete

https://www.wattpad.com/story/365998455-of-plots-and-mischief

First impressions: 38/40

Title: 10/10
I'm always up for plots and mischief. 🙂

Blurb/Synopsis: 9/10
I have to echo what I wrote for the cover here. This is simply complex. You introduce the main character, the central plot conflicts, and all pertinent details in just a few sentences without extra info that really doesn't matter. Your grammar is clean, and the only thing I can possibly find wrong with this is the missing space between the two paragraphs. It would just look a little better with that. Otherwise, okay, seafaring merchant, naïve prince, political intrigue, personal quests—yep, I'm down.

Cover: 10/10
This is one of those covers that is complex in its simplicity. Just an image, a title, and the author's name. That's all. But it's the perfect image of sea, sky, and ship, and it's the perfect placement, style, size, and color of font, so it all works, and it doesn't need more. It speaks for itself.

First chapter: 9/10
Well, this is a very neat and tidy intro to this world and this story. You managed to give the reader a full background story for this particular time in this particular word without dropping an info dump on them, introduced the main character with a few pertinent facts about family, job, and magic, threw in some political conflict, and topped it all off with an epidemic reminiscent of COVID, without feeling overwhelming or too wordy. It all flows, and it all makes sense. The main character's Gift is intriguing, but it feels natural, and while the reader may question what it is, they don't question its place in his life and in this world.

Grammatically, this is very clean, but there are some areas of awkward or clumsy phrasing. Most commonly, these occur when you have two phrases using "as" in the same sentence, like: "In truth, it had been little over three years that he had come there, but he had frequented the ports in his childhood as he accompanied his father as he went about his work." Finding ways to reword so there's only one "as" removes repetition and improves flow. Also, in that sentence, I'd recommend adding an "a" before little and swapping "that" for "since."

Also, when you have a descriptive phrase following a noun or name, you should generally set it apart with commas on either side. So, for example: "His grandfather, the Sahora Garnvir had taught him..." is missing a comma after "Garnvir."

There are a few missed paragraph spaces, probably courtesy of Wattpad messing up formatting during copy/paste, so, unfortunately, you'll have to go in and fix those manually. Another issue I saw was using pronouns to refer to emotions (plural). You typically use "it," which is singular, and it would be more appropriate to use they/them to match the plural.

And one last thing. Bonus points for using "avuncular" in a sentence. 🙂

Digging deeper: 77/100

Cover & title: 10/10
See "First Impressions" feedback.

Blurb: 4/5
See "First Impressions" feedback.

Grammar & voice: 5/20
This number is only low because of 5+ SPAG errors per chapter, but they're all minor, and they're all inconsistent, so I chalk most of them up to proofreading misses. Things like a random misspelled name, or a misspelled common word, or a missing period or quotation mark here or there.

A more frequent problem is preposition choice. Sometimes, you use a preposition that isn't the best option or even the first one my mind jumps to, and it may be because that's how you normally use it in speech. I run into this issue with my own writing, too, and I only really discovered it through the use of an editing tool that catches such things. For example, in the phrase "unable to keep his mind over the strange incident," a better preposition than "over" is "off."

As with chapter one, there are some instances of awkward phrasing and sometimes convoluted sentences, often when certain words or phrases are repeated in close succession, as with "as" in the example I used in my feedback for the first chapter. Reading your work aloud when you're proofreading is a great way to catch this kind of stuff. You may stumble over something because it doesn't feel natural on your tongue, or maybe you correct it without even thinking about it.

There are some issues with dialogue as well. Most commonly, you just need to clarify who is speaking. All the characters introduced so far have been men referred by he/him pronouns, so when you have multiple men conversing, you need to add names in more frequently. A general rule of thumb is whenever "he" changes to a new person, use his name at the first mention. You don't always have to do that, as context plays a big part in determining who is speaking and acting, and overusing names can get tedious, but the reader shouldn't have to scroll back up and count lines of dialogue to see which "he" is up next.

Along with that, separating speakers will help with clarification. You generally do a good job of this, but sometimes, so-and-so speaks, and then the main character thinks for a paragraph about what so-and-so said—all in the same paragraph. Start a new paragraph when the main character's thought starts. That just helps to distinguish who is saying and doing what.

Another note with dialogue is to watch your punctuation and capitalization with dialogue tags. This is another thing I'm chalking up to proofreading errors, because you usually do this well, but when dialogue leads into a dialogue tag that directly describes how the speaker says something in a way that can't stand as a complete sentence on its own, use a comma to close the dialogue, and the first letter of the dialogue needs to be lowercase. Occasionally, I see you use a period or capitalize the first letter, but, again, it's not consistent.

Last thing is the pesky "it." As with the first chapter, "it" is a singular pronoun for a singular noun, so if the noun you're referring to is plural, use they/them instead.

Plot & pacing: 10/10
This is a great example of driving the plot with your characters. Everybody's in a state of limbo right now, prepping for the journey, but the plot is still moving. You're dropping more and more crumbs about the mysteries surrounding Phyllon, and you're taking the time to fill in more and more details of the world—politics, education, economics, Phyllon's Gift. You're not in a hurry, but the story does not drag. Everything is important, and the more the reader learns, the more the mystery grows.

Characterization: 18/20
Phyllon is the most well-described character, of course, being the main character, but it's interesting how I always feel like the more I learn, the less I know about him. He's still an unknown quantity to me. And that's a huge part of the plot, so I don't know that I should even dock points here, except I don't quite feel the connection with him yet. He's a walking contradiction. He's hiding in plain sight, close and distant with his family, protected by older men who have known him since he was a child but also looking out for younger men like the prince and anybody who seems vulnerable. His Gift allows him to feel what others feel, but he hides his own feelings well. And I know the other characters only as much as Phyllon will let me know them, so there's a lot hidden about them, too.

You describe the atmosphere and feelings underwriting every interaction Phyllon witnesses quite well, but visual character descriptions are a bit lacking. It's strange, but I didn't even really notice that until I stopped reading after chapter five to write this feedback. I couldn't tell you what Phyllon, or anybody else, looks like, and having that visual reference makes the characters more real, so I'd recommend exploring that detail more.

Harmony within genre: 15/15
This is one of those subtle fantasy books. It's not in-your-face magic with potions, dragons, mermaids, and floating cities. It's a normal port during a quarantine with merchants and politicians and oh, by the way, Phyllon's Gift. Which is something he shares with his grandfather. And the occasional mention of a stone with implied magical abilities that does certain things, like prevent eavesdropping on an important conversation. This is a fantasy story that assumes its normal is the reader's normal, and because of that, it does feel normal.

Originality: 15/20
Your originality is not in question here at all. This is very original and very interesting. But, as I mentioned under characterization, descriptions are lacking. Usually, I get a pretty picture with no depth to it, but here, I get all the depth in a black-and-white sketch. Filling it in with visual description and other elements such as sound, smell, touch, and taste will make it more vivid and more immersive for the reader.

Final thoughts:
Looking for a little mystery in your life? Or maybe a lot of mystery? With a touch of magic, a hefty dose of political intrigue, an epidemic, and more questions for every answer you find? Then this is the book for you. Everybody has their secrets, with none being more secretive than Phyllon, a young man trying to outrun his birthright. He has the ship; he has the crew; he has his self-assigned protectors; now, if only he can get out of port before he's pulled back into the quagmire of suspicion and scheming that he feels with every use of his Gift. One naive prince and one strange scribe later, Phyllon is further inland and closer to having to show his hand than he'd prefer. Maybe he doesn't need as much protection as everybody thinks he does.