Title: Faceless

Author: orchidals

Genre: Fantasy

Quick Summary: Finally, a girl is no one.

Thoughts:

Yaknow, I really liked this, once I warmed up to it. The problem is, it took me a little to warm up to it. 

I see what the author was intending to do with the prologue. The problem is, just like a lot of other books I've read, it gives readers details that could be given to us through other, better means. And also, most of the "paragraphs" were a sentence long. Why are they a sentence long? There's places where sentence-long paragraphs work [see: chapter 1]. It does not work here. 

Once we got over the bumpy beginning, though, the story ran well. If anything, this start is the book's greatest weakness. 

There are, however, other weaknesses.

The second-biggest is the tenses. This story is supposed to be in present tense, but there's a lot of slip-ups. Just pulling a quick example, from Chapter 22:

"Adelia is running. She didn't know where she would end up, but it needed to be anywhere but here."

That second sentence is in the wrong tense. It should be "She doesn't know where she'll end up, but it needs to be anywhere but here." Or something to that effect. Things like that. Present tense can be tricky, and I commend the author for making such a bold move, but that said it needs a lot of refinement.

As for general writing, it's good but could also be refined. I noted a lot of adverbs that could've been cut out and the sentence rephrased for a stronger effect. Odd phrasings. Things like that.

There were also a few things that confused me. For example, why does Adelia get free reign kind of to go wherever she wants? There's no real stake keeping her from running away. She's healed now. She can shift however she wants. She could run away and never be found again. I mean I guess she cares and all, but... Also, Neria. I'm very confused about what the hell is up with her. I won't delve into details because spoilers, and I understand most of it, but what's the deal with the mirrors?

As for the characters... the characters themselves have a lot of depth, which I can appreciate. Adelia isn't a perfect person; she fucks up a lot. I'm not sure about how I feel about her juggling being three separate people, though. Cassian is trying. I'm a bit surprised he was already on board so quickly, but that's a personal thing. Darius... I don't know how I feel about him so far.

As I said, the characters themselves have a lot of depth. However... the worlds they come from really don't. This plot feels like the classic "good kingdom versus bad kingdom" setup, except MC finds herself in the bad kingdom this time around. This kingdom is full of Nazis. The other kingdom is marrying in to... help stop the Nazis? I'm not really sure. Either way, the kingdoms themselves feel incredibly shallow, a classic "good versus evil" setup. Perhaps this will change later, but for right now, that's what it feels like. I'd love to see more depth to them... Give the "good" country some faults to it. I don't want to say give the Nazis good qualities because fuck that noise but... "evil for the sake of evil" is a tired trope, honestly.

Overall, it's a decent read with a lot of classic first draft pitfalls. Nothing some editing won't fix. I really want to see how this ends.