Swan Song (1)

Hey Snoink! I'm here to review.

Well this won't actually be a review because for one fact, you already have so many other awesome reviews that my review would just be pointless but I want to write one anyway so I can get points- I have proof that I actually read this. :3
Anyways, I still think it's gravely important that you hear my thoughts on this because I swear my thoughts are extremely important.(Lies.)

H'okay. To start off with, I think that this diary form is done quite well. You captured the girl's personality very well and she definitely sounds like a child. Her thoughts are so cute and interesting to read. She seems smart and childish all the same so it's all good. Yeah...I'm so awesome and I know this review will PWN.

Half way through this though, I got really sad for her. :'c
Sometimes I feel like she mature and then sometimes I feel like she's just like a regular kid. I'm not sure how to critique this really. Overall, it's a wonderful piece. Hardly many flaws and I'm terrible with children POV's so I can't even take a dip in that water. Wow, I'm so helpful. But at least you know that I like this so far. ^__^

I was a bit confused with who the White Swan was though. At first I thought her brother was going to turn into a swan! XD How crazy would that be? But apparently that's not the case. I was secretly hoping for it though.

As far as characters go, we don't get to see much of them since it's a diary form but you do give hints of sadness and bits of anger and frustration with Granidid. Okay - as mentioned his name is very weird. xD

I do think you should have mentioned her name a little more. By the time I was half way through I had already forgotten her name and for some reason I thought it was Kathy...

Alright, so what you have is good and I'm quite excited to read more of this. Hopefully I'll be of more help later!

-Pink

Okay. So first, I almost died! XO this chapter was so long it might have taken me a half an hour! Though I wasn't paying attention to the time so I could very well be exaggerating. But really, I almost abandoned ship, it was very long and half of it didn't really seem to have a point. But even so, I really loved this, and the way it's written it just fantastic! I'm glad I didn't stop reading this in the middle because now I'm interested!

There are some things that I really don't understand though. I get that it's the first chapter and all, but it doesn't really seem like there's a lot of description and I can't really understand what's going on or how it connects to everything sometimes. Overall, I really liked it and I'll definitely try to review each chapter as best as I can! :3

Even though you already have many many reviews, I'll still review (cough, cause we're winning, cough) though some things may be redundant X3

Lin got me a diary today. She said it was the proper sort of gift that young ladies should have. I agree with her. Daddy never gave me a diary, but he’s not very good with little girls. I don’t mean to say that he’s a bad daddy, because he isn’t. He’s a very good daddy! But daddy doesn’t really see the point in writing diaries. He has a diary though. It’s a great big diary! He calls it his ledger and he logs all the purchases from the shop from there. He showed me how to use it too. I learned how to add and subtract from it. He said he would show me more, but he’s very busy.

You said daddy quite a lot in this. It got a little annoying. You said it about four times in seven sentences, and it was almost one after the other, it was like BAM! another "daddy!" lol

There was one thing that I didn't like that came with the whole "diary" style. It was that I didn't know who half of these people were. I knew the little girl *who I don't know the name of*, the "Daddy" and Grandid (which, when I first read the name, I thought she was talking about her grandfather XP) but everyone else, I just don't understand where they came from haha.

I love your names! Granted, they are hard to pronounce, but they're very unique and I'm a sucker for all things unique! My favorite names are the ones that aren't repeated a thousand times! I also like your characters. Well... okay, I don't exactly like the brother very much since 1. he punches little girls, 2. he's a player (and not very careful about it if his kid sister finds him frequently) and 3. he's in JAIL! Pahahahaha

I'm very interested. I want to find out why Grandid is in jail. I also want to know who these "Black Swans" and "White Swans" are and what they do. Also, why are all these towns people calling this poor little girl "cursed"? I feel bad for her. Is it because her mom died while giving birth to her, or what? Oh, and I liked S... Sss... Saa... Siii.... Erm... THAT WHITE SWAN DUDE!! Yeah. That dude *forgot his name* he's so nice :3

So thank you for these hundred points! I'm about to get 100 more so BE PREPARED!! O.e

This story is 12 years old? Really? Wow...I'm impressed. I'm sure it's gone through a lot of revision but it's still really good. The only thing I didn't like was I didn't really know what was going on. I didn't know the back story; didn't know what Black and White Swans are. I've read books where things happen and they don't get explained until later but reading it on the computer is always different from me and it stands out more that she's talking about these things happening and about Potentials and people praying to a Black Swan and we don't really know what those are. I know she's only seven but she obviously understands a little bit about the way things work and about what is happening to her brother in terms of being a Potential maybe she could explain what that means in a very very simple way?

That was the only thing that bothered me. I really liked her voice and thought you did a great job with writing from a P.O.V that is so much younger than you are. I've tried that and it didn't really work that well. So kudos for that. I'm off to read some more parts of this and I hope this helped a little bit. I don't really know if what I've said is any different or if it's just a repeat of what other people have said. PM me if you have any questions(:
~peanut~

I really enjoyed this!

The diary entries were simple and clean cut, which was good, considering that the girl who owns the diary is young. The diary entries still left you wondering a few things as well- who was the woman that was 'Expensive to hire?' How did the girls mom die? And what exactly is a White Swan?

Awesome job.

Snoinkus, I am here. It is 10:25 pm. My essay is edited (read: I have up on the essay once it reached turn-inable) and I am tired, but I am here. Because I love you. (And because my tea isn't done yet, but mentioning that would potentially ruin the drama of the parallelism in this paragraph and the dramatic fragment headed with the subordinating conjunction 'Because'.)

Anyway, this was interesting to read, with me already knowing what's happened as she's writing this. For the most part, you captured the young girl voice well. I could probably go through and nitpick out what I thought worked and what I thought didn't for the capturing of the 7-year-old voice. My main thing is that there are some moments of insight that might need to be toned down some. The others might not have picked up on them, but I did because I know the significance of the events she's mentioning... I can remember some of my diary entries from 6th grade, and I have some of my writing from 2nd. I'm glad you've spelled everything correctly for us, but you'll have to watch the syntax and word choice like a starving hawk to get the effect right. It seems advanced for seven structurally even if the voice is right.

But, I'm digressing...what I was trying to say is that she has no way of knowing what's important. My diary entries from when I was eleven included things like, "We had pancakes for breakfast. [Sister] was really mean to me today. I wish I had my own treehouse." Random stuff. Not a lot of flow between thoughts.

Back to other matters.

I like the names a lot. I'm particularly fond of Granid, as the sound symbolism puts it in with granite, gravel, ground, groan, grip, grapple...rough, course words. And then there's the second half, reminiscent of 'kid' and 'katty-did' and nit as in nitwit... so you get the immaturity. A good name for the brother, overall. (And yes this is mainly BS but it's my major and I reserve the right to exploit it when I want to.)

The other names I like for similar reasons. All good fits. Though your spelling of Diamea was too close to diarrhea...which would be an unfortunate misread.

But as far as things fitting the events, I think it works beautifully, and I'm excited for further diary entries. And for the upcoming things you told me about. Mayhaps I'll come through another time and point out the areas where I thought she was showing too much insight or too aware of things?

Or maybe you should pester me with questions. That might work better. Because with me knowing everything, and this being diary entries from a kid, and you knowing what you're doing as well as you do...I don't have all that much to say.

(And my tea's finished. But the love remains.)

Rach

Yay for tea!

And your major definitely allows you to BS everything. It's awesome like that! And I'm glad you like the names. ^_^;;

Mayhaps I'll come through another time and point out the areas where I thought she was showing too much insight or too aware of things?

This would be awesome. Or, maybe it would be best during lunch?

This was very interesting... It's a unique way of telling the story, and I liked her childlike language and way of speaking. I noticed lots of exclamation points, but she's a little girl so that kind of makes sense. The thing is, I'm not sure I'd want to read a whole novel written this way. I'm assuming that as the story goes on she'll get older and more mature and we'll phase out of the little girl talk, so that'll be fine, but yeah...

The other thing was, the action doesn't pick up very fast. I mean, yes this is a little girl's journal and she's writing about the things that matter to her. That explains why we don't have as much description of her home, and the people, and all the other stuff that she already knows everything about. I liked how the conflicts with Granid progressed, and how we were able to slowly figure out what was going on with him, and what reasons he may have had for not wanting to be a White Swan, ect. But one thing that made me pause was the first mention of how she's cursed.

It didn't come until we were a good ways into the story, but it seems like something that would've gripped me more if I'd known about it from the beginning, along with the fact that she's not actually Granid's sister(?). We don't have a whole lot of information on this yet, and again, she knows all this already so she's not going to spend too much time talking about it... But there's got to be a way to get across a little more information in order to grip us and make us keep reading...

Anyway, this was interesting. Lots of potential, especially if you are going to phase out of the little-girl speak. All I really want is more hints about the curse and stuff, earlier on in the story.

Keep writing! ^^

Hi friend,

Okay, a few things here! You kept saying 'I told.... this' and it got rather irritating. She said daddy a lot too. I personally do not like her brother's name. What is a White Swan? That had me confused, as did many other things. Who were all those people? I kept seeing new names and was so confused. What are the 'Twelve'? What do they do? Why is he really old? How old is he? Why is she cursed? How is she cursed? Heck, what IS the curse? I personally found it entertaining that you had her say the were 'fighting'. I have heard that a lot throughout my life. Makes me laugh every time. Haha. <--See? You need to work on the grammar and spelling in this a little. Grammar especially. I like how the sentences were short and sweet. The story, overall, was quite good. Confusion every nowandthen, and lack of description, but that's okay. The story was very clean. Kind of like how chefs, when they put soup in a bowl, they wipe the edges so there isn't any extras around the edges. At points, though, I felt like you stuck a super absorbant paper towel into the soup/story and took away too much. too many imporrtant details were missing. Especially when you said, "They say I'l understand when I am older..." Well, how old is she? I should probably end this; I tend to get carried away. Good job, friend! (Sorry if I sounded harsh at all!)

Farewell,
A.

This was really great. I love how you broke the story up into diary entries! I usually dont like that, but you made yours flow so well that I barely realizd that they were diary enteries at all. I love the variety of characters you have in this book, like Granid and The White Swans and the Black Swans. But I have a question about them too. What exactly are the White Swans and Black Swans? I looked for an explanation in the story but I didnt see one, maybe I just skipped over it? I laughed at the scene where the little girl thinks Granid and the girl were wrestling with thier clothes off when they in fact are doing something much different haha. The only scary thing was at first I thought he was raping her by the way you describe the ripped dress but then I realized that he probably wasnt by the way the father was so calm and even laughing. Anyway, I really like this. I am sooooo reading all of the chapters after this :-p