Title: A War of Fire and Death

Author: Rtard_Cookie

Summary: 3/5

Your summary is pretty good! It introduces the world and how it is governed, and you briefly hint at the conflict to come – great work! The final line is quite dramatic, and all the fantasy elements that you've mentioned are sure to lure in some readers.

I felt, however, that your summary was too generalised. What problems are arising? Who are the main characters? What direction will the story take? These are important points – the reader should know what leads into the war, and what these 'challenges' you mention are.

Additionally, you change tense during the summary. Let's look at the following sentence:

"Many lives are taken and the bravest men and women must take on challenges..."

"Many lives are taken..." [taken = past tense]

"Men and women must take on..." [must take on = present tense]

You also need to watch out for your word choices when you're changing from singular to plural. For example:

"In a world where there is only two continents..."

Since there are two continents, a plural form is required. It should be:

"In a world where there are only two continents."

Grammar: 2/5

Okay, so I found a lot of grammar issues that need fixing up. A lot of them, to be fair, seemed to be typos, so I highly recommend you go over your work with someone else to catch those typos that you may be missing. I didn't jot them all down, because otherwise we would be here for ages, but these were a few of them:

First of all, let's talk punctuation and dialogue. If dialogue is followed by a verbal dialogue tag (such as 'he said', 'she whispered', 'she exclaimed' – or anything referring to how the character says the words), there should be a comma before the closing inverted commas. If it's anything else, this comma should be replaced by a period (or a question mark for a question and exclamation mark for an exclamation). For example:

"Yes sir". He said, looking at me.

Since 'he said' refers directly to the words being spoken, there should be a comma replacing the full-stop. Additionally, this comma should be before the closing inverted commas. It should be:

"Yes, sir," he said, looking at me.

As mentioned before, there were lots of typos I found. There were also instances where proper nouns weren't capitalised, such as 'I', and I you often mixed up words such as 'then' and 'than'. Sometimes, you wrote 'sir', and sometimes, you wrote 'ser' – even though you were addressing the same characters. You also have a lot of run-on sentences. Let's look at some examples of these.

"I choped it ckean off."

Chopped was spelt incorrectly, as was 'clean'.

"I am, as you know preparing to fight the Pagans."

You're missing one more comma in that sentence above. Read it aloud and see where you pause. It should be:

"I am, as you know, preparing to fight the Pagans."

Anther example:

"I don't blame for putting me under house arrest, O was testing a spell..."

You're missing a word between 'blame' and 'for'. Additionally, I think you wrote 'O' instead of 'I'. It should be:

"I don't blame them for putting me under house arrest; I was testing a spell..." 

Character Building: 2.5/5

You had a lot of difference voices throughout the first eight chapters of your story. What I like was that all these voices came from such different types of people – we have a Lady, a Captain, and a Lord. Well done on the diversity – it really helps build up the classes, and helps the reader understand the social dynamics within your world.

Now, because there are lots of characters, you have to be careful. I found it very difficult to connect with all these narrators, simply because you didn't slow down the pace enough to really let us get to know them. It felt very much like a, 'I did this, I did that' sort of narration. Make sure you pepper the story with little idiosyncrasies each character has, and make sure the tone and voice sound distinct.

Most of it, I think, came down to telling instead of showing. For example, even small bits like:

"My arm was hurting."

Don't tell us that. Show us. Make the reader feel the pain. Was it like a someone was hammering his arm with each step he took? Was it like there were thousands of needles buried right to his bone? Show it to us and make us invested. You're in first person, after all – you can afford to take us into the characters' heads.

I did really enjoy Jaime's perspective – I found him very engaging, simply because of how clever he was. The way he found the Pagan spy out by noticing the subtle mistakes – how there was no break room – was very thoughtful and witty, and I really loved reading that. Keep up the good work on that part!

Finally, a warning: you have a big cast, but also, you introduce a lot of names even when those characters aren't necessarily present. You need to be careful of this. Excessive name-dropping becomes very difficult to read and follow, and can be very detaching. You have to remember that the reader doesn't know your characters as well as you do – so please slow down the pace when it comes to them. 

Writing Style: 2.5/5

You asked me to mention descriptions in the review, and I'm just going to say that I don't think you had enough of them at all. Fantasy stories usually have longer word counts, and that's because of all the world-building that goes into the story. This encompasses descriptions about this world.

My biggest piece of advice for you is to build your world using descriptions. Don't rush from scene to scene. When Captain Arthur Sherman is riding to the castle, describe the journey – describe everything he sees. The weather, the smells, the hillocks and marshes and whatever else he does pass. Really take us there.

And while I love how fast-paced your action was, I definitely think you could flesh it out more to really milk out the tension. Describe the smell of the blood, the heat of the battle, the looks of the dragon as he wrenches back in agony from all the pain. Describe that pain to us, and really make us understand the intensity of the story and the stakes at hand. That will help you keep the reader gripping onto every word. 

Plot + Uniqueness: 3/5

A little hard to judge the plot due to the fact that you have only presented me with eight, short chapters. I will say, though, that the intensity of the introduction is great – straight into the action! I love that. It's thrilling and engaging, and a great promise of all the action to come. Well done!

Overall, the story is every fantasy-lover's dream. War, dragons, armour, castles, Lords – it's got all these great elements! You just need to work on your world-building and help the reader actually visualise themselves in your world by limiting the amount of name-dropping, and also increasing the number of descriptions within your story.

OVERALL SCORE: 13/25

Overall, such an engaging concept and impactful beginning. Just make sure you work on describing your world, and showing instead of telling, and you should be good to go! I hope this review helps.