This Realm of Sinners

2

Prologue and Chapter 1 of The Night Rider

H (Harsh)

Note: The author has requested and agreed to this via a sample critique given before the full review. So no death threats please.

Doesn't sound like an adventure book. It sounds like a dark fantasy book. Not really sure about including the 'This.' Realm of Sinners sounds fine and adding it just gives me overly fancy or poetic vibes and it doesn't really work for me.

Adventure

An ex slave merc is hired by a weird fighty guy to find a necromancy talisman.

That's it. That's all I got. Really? No character names? No reasons why? No inkling of why he's weird or why they were a slave or whether we're talking about a dude or a girl or a half chicken man thing? Come on, you gotta give me more details than: two unknown people do stuff which is bad. It reads like a bare bones idea for a DnD campaign and it's kinda frustrating.

Just a longer version of the vague summary. Your overall blurb...it's boring. It's boring because these characters have no names. The first three lines are an OK hook but you spend FAR too much time on the artifact challenges ahead and nothing about why this is important to the characters. If I knew...anything whatsoever about the characters.

Secret Service. Really? Really. Come on. If it sounds like it's already a well known concept then try something else. Heck the Secret Police would've been better than an already existing government agency.

If you are genuinely using the term to add some modernism then OK, I can accept that but when you have a slave merc and a warrior then my first thought is not modern fantasy. Make it 100% clear that this is set in a modern retelling and not one of your own design.

Naming conventions don't have to be complex but it's key to have them unique, easy to remember, pronounce and understand their goals as soon as you say their name. Borrowing from an existing concept can be risky but well done if done properly and changed in the right way. E.g. The Ministry of Magic. Easy to read, understand and you automatically remember how incompetent they are. Simple.

That's an image from Pinterest. I know that because I have that exact image on my NR board. It has text. That's it. It tells me absolutely nothing other than creepy hand thing. Font colour is barely visible and is super basic. Serves a purpose and nothing more.

You need to get yourself a cover designer. There are plenty on Twattpad and it's doing a disservice to your book. If you need any advice on where to find a cover artist, feel free to ask but even using the search bar should help you find some even if they are closed. Some even do favours so shop around. Please. People are fickle here and no one wants an image paste cover.

Note: I decided to copy/paste this advice not out of laziness but because it's so common and I'm not writing the same thing over and over in every review. So there we go.

CHAPTER 1 - HER PROPOSAL

It starts...in capital letters. OK that's a first. I take it it's a type of header introducing other lore before the chapter begins? If so, that is really hard to read without picturing a drill sergeant screaming random lore at my face. Ow. Not fun.

I'd recommend using bold or italics in lower case text as normal if you want to do that kind of intro. Remember this is the first glimpse into your story and it's literally screaming at you to READ ABOUT PEACE DYING and THE GODKING RAWR. Not a good look.

If you don't like bold or italics for a stylistic reason then even a simple page divider of a few dots could help establish that hey, this is an extra bit for you to enjoy. I know some people who actually put those little headers in separate parts for tension but it's up to you. Just...take it easy on the caps, OK? My brain still hurts from trying to read it. Also the title chapter sounds like a marriage proposal. Try a different word.

Screaming aside, your paragraphs are very nicely structured with a hearty amount of lore right from the beginning. I love lore but it's quite wordy at the start so you feel the need to kind of skip ahead to 'Where's Wally' the characters and I think if you swapped the paragraphs around to introduce them first it would work a lot better. I counted at least 5 paragraphs before we got to the heart of the chapter and that's a bit too many to act as an intro.

That first line doesn't work for me.

'The Hideout was all alive that particular night.'

It reads like you are telling a story and you're not really sure how to word it. It's hesitant and unsure of what the situation is which is a shame. Simply saying, 'The Hideout was alive tonight' could suggest a lot of things: is it alive as in a creature or was it the people in it? This would give you a clean cut way to introduce your characters and weave that setting in between.

Your descriptions are nice but the way you go about adding things make them feel twice as long. You mention the party, the hallway, the upstairs and then oh hi miss random cloak lady, you are OBVIOUSLY bad news so why include that party stuff if you just want to introduce this character? Save yourself some time.

Also, cloaks normally have hoods. Saying it was attached with a hood is strange. Cloaks are cloaks. All of your descriptions are setting based. There's no 'worry lines' no action or stealth scenes no 'menacing snarls' or 'sudden weapons being drawn at the intruder.' Setting isn't the only thing description can be used for. Description builds character. Repetition of the same stuff doesn't.

For example: I have no idea what kind of person Mercury is. Use it to explain his character and show his motives. Have him start the party and finish it by showing two sides of himself: the sauve kind and the manipulative kind. Something as simple as that would be a good place to start.

The descriptions at the start drag the chapter down to the depths and then the dialogue keeps it shrouded in confusion which makes you want to skip. The dialogue is well spaced out but this entire chapter is two characters we don't know talking about stuff we don't know. It's going to drag.

The dialogue feels a lot more long winded and far more casual than it's supposed to be considering these two have never met before. It doesn't feel like a high stakes deal. It feels like a randomly friendly chat that goes sour when Azira removes her hood just because Mercury says so.

No weapon or threats, just words that have no intention behind them other than 'look how rich I am' without actually saying it. Why go after an artifact we know nothing about if he's already rich? The structure of the chapter slows from the beginning and skips ahead with details that are apparently important but with limited character description or set up as to why it falls flat.

PIRATES. Why isn't that in your blurb? I LOVE pirates and finding a book like that is few and far between on Twattpad especially done properly. Damnit, screw the merc warrior adventure. Gimme more piracy!

That aside, Mercury and Azira are prop pieces. You need some way to get this deal going ahead to start the story and that is all they are here for. No build up, no conflict, not even a hint of personality other than demanding rich boy and glowy eyed hood lady. You could replace these two with anything and still get the same result.

An event is supposed to build character and plot and how to do a deal depends on showing the readers on what both characters want and how it is going to be resolved. It shouldn't be boring and predictable. It should keep you guessing until the end result is climactic but amazingly obvious after all the build up given.

Here's an example:

Jack Sparrow and Cutler Beckett might have been filmed as a deal but it sets up stakes, two opposing characters and what they want while establishing enough common ground to make an easy to understand deal. It has a large amount of intrigue, deceit and who stabs who in the back first. After all, business may be business but it shouldn't be boring.

Jack purposefully gets caught, makes a deal, searches for what he wants, assesses the situation only to come up with a deal and a distraction as an escape route whether it was improvised or not. Beckett flaunts his plan, wealth, superiority, foolproof plan and gets the info he needs while bragging about the info Jack needs the most so not only does he understand but so do the readers.

The film overall might be confusing but this one scene is not. Jack is constantly moving, talking, thinking and although Beckett isn't moving as much they both have a reason for being there and a reason for the deal to happen in the first place. The reader needs to understand everything EXCEPT how it'll end.

If Azira is mysterious, unknown and trying not to be found while achieving her destination then don't have her go through the front door like nothing is wrong. Have her use magic, sneak in while someone else needs to see the Captain, have her eavesdrop or knock the guy out only for her to be caught. Have her be convincing, have her motives unclear but well known to us but have us question her motives with body language, actions, threats and not just sudden changes in tone and suspicion. You switch POV's right at the end to the Captain so either choose his POV or Azira and don't just throw in that Mercury is suspicious at the end.

If Mercury is the Captain with a history with this artifact and is well known as being a threat then show him doing that. Have him lock the door, have him in complete control until this deal peaks his attention. Have him aware of threats, suspicious of betrayal, actually have a weapon on him and not flaunt his idiotic richness for any bozo to steal. He needs to react to all of this and keep his composure while HE acts as the threat, not just her. He is supposed to be a formidable pirate Captain but right now he is nothing more than a spineless man with a title. His greed needs to completely outweigh the risks, not just agree for plots sake.

Something, anything needs to happen and right now they walk, sit, stand, speak and one of them glows. That's it. Both of these characters need to be competent enough to live up to why they are who they are and set up why this meeting should take place. Right now, it's an event that takes place with two people. Give us more to latch onto and give us a reason to read.

Now the fun starts. There. Is. So. Many. Naming conventions here with regards to the lore we know nothing about. Let's name them, shall we?

Nirimian.

Captain of the Revenant.

Kariva.

The Seeker.

Dakars.

Lian.

Now, I can guess from the context what most of these are BUT when you have a first chapter including all of these terms you need to give readers time to learn at their own pace. Instead of us being thrust into a conversation with all these terms and none of them explained you need to show how they are used or how they are important. Explanations are easily forgettable but once we know what they are the lore can be explained.

We don't know your world, your story or these characters and the only glimpse we get is a conversation entirely dedicated to a mess of dialogue all about these things without a hint as to why we should care about any of it. The only thing that has a leg to stand on is the vague clan/tribe sigils on Azira's arms and her mysterious glowy eyes. That's it.

Use that setting you've built to start the characters development along with these terms. Have them bet dakars in a card game, have them warily talk about this legend and their scary Captain, have them mention movements on the Nirimian fleet to do with Lian only for them to be shut down immediately with extra dakars to keep them quiet. All these small details need to be done as build up before the meeting can even begin to happen.

I don't understand the logic with these characters or this setting. We're in a Hideout yet Azira decides to waltz into this study in a bloody hooded cloak no less with no guards to deal with, more attention on the architecture of the room and how she wants to open a door than the fact these people might want to kill her and we go from a threatening look to a...civil conversation?

No. Pirates aren't civil. Mercenaries aren't civil. Hell, if someone barged into your room in a discount Halloween cloak you wouldn't be civil either! So why are they? We start with a normal conversation and he let's her lock the door! That ain't smart! He has no escape route, no weapon, no crew members present and he SHOULD be dead. He isn't a pirate. He's a dumbass.

The deal itself is extremely unclear because there's no reason to know why any of this is important since the characters just talk about stuff with barely any reason as to why they are reacting in such a way to what is being discussed. Dialogue is just dialogue, emotion is just emotion without understanding the incentive behind it. Why is the Kariva important if it needs a dumb artifact like the Seeker to find it? What IS the Kariva and why did a random magic lady come here to talk about it? Why remove a hood if it's so important she doesn't want to? Why is this deal so important to her if she has powerful magic and doesn't just get it herself?

Since this entire scene is context about stuff we don't know about in the first place and it takes up the entirety of the chapter. From intro to conclusion there are no stakes other than 'this random woman showed up and oh I don't trust her cuz she looks weird and wants something.' The only reason I'm still reading is the well structured paragraphs, the glimmer of potential of more piracy and finding out why Azira's eyes glow. That's it.

An attack ain't gonna be sudden if you spoil it in the chapter title.

At least there was some kind of structure in the first chapter. I've never seen so many page breaks and POV switches in one chapter. You have three characters and at least four or five POV switches in one chapter and...nothing happens. It's a fight scene...that's it.

The POV switches make the supposedly sudden battle very choppy and with every page break it stops and starts and ruins the flow of the previous one. Over and over again. Once again it's overly wordy about unnecessary details instead of engaging in a ruthless battle it's meandering through paragraphs of equipment and masses moving but no real characters actually doing anything in the battle.

When you use different terms for the same thing it's gonna get confusing. You went from men to crewmen to sailors and normally the term sailors is reserved for navy and the like in this kind of setting. Also, no pirates are this well behaved. It's so mundane it's not even worth mentioning in the chapter.

Clear differences between normal sailors and this 'legendary' crew need to be established because right now they'd be better off sailing in a dinghy boat than a formidable pirate ship. As for the fighting itself, it doesn't serve a purpose. It is vague, boring, hard to follow and you spend more time describing what the weapons look like than actually fighting with them.

That isn't a fight scene. That's a scene. Fight scenes are incredibly hard but every time you talk about ship detailing or sword handles it will take us away from the action every time. Every time you POV switch or chapter break it's a completely hard reset as to what is going on and every time it happens people will get less engaged with what's going on.

Descriptions during a fight are always about doing, not thinking. In a fight there is no time to think about how many holes are in the ship or how disabled a character suddenly is. Yes. I'm annoyed at that because you set it up as not being a hindrance and now all of a sudden it is. It slapped me in the face when I read it and it was in her own POV. I didn't care either way and now I'm conflicted on how to feel about it.

She has a limp which is already interesting but the way you go about it contradicts the POV switches from Azira to Sybil.

Either make it a small detail at the start and continue with those small details about her or make it a big, noticeable thing that needs to be overcome for her as a person or even how other people see it. It is important but you need to decide on how important it is in a fight that ultimately goes nowhere. Her limp didn't matter to me. Now I have no choice but to draw attention to it.

Overall, the descriptions completely overtake the fight scene and without a purpose it just reads like stuff just happens for the sake of it. If there's no point to a fight then why have it in the first place? It's not needed.

The pacing isn't as slow as the first chapter and right up until the first page break it flows relatively well up until the fight scene. Then you have at least five POV switches and some of them switch characters while in the POV of another character so it drags with every change. The limit of character POV's in one chapter for me is normally two.

Oh boy. Let's start with the best of the worst. Sybil. Her intro is perfectly fine but her dialogue goes from formal to informal at the drop of a hat and that first bit of character we get from her is about her not calling Mercury 'Captain' because they are 'friends.' Now this irritates me for obvious reasons but the vibe I got from that one line was: 'it's gonna turn into a love triangle.' Considering Mercury's random worries over Azira during a fight no less, then I'm probably right.

But the reason why Sybil is the best is because she ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING in the fight scene. And then she didn't. The musket wielding badass is suddenly worried about being crippled in a fight and she's useless and gets knocked out and that's it. That is really inconsistent and it's jarring to read. Characters are hard but you set up her limp in a good way (in Azira's POV) and then pummelled her with sudden feelings and description about it later on just to make it hurt. But I've already mentioned that so I'll leave it for you to decide.