I'm running out of variations of hello/hey/hi without falling into the "Greetings!" or "Salutations!" territory, so--
Yo, whaddup, I'm gonna review ya chapter.
“That’s alright,” the man said, putting his hand up to keep Father from hitting Rana again.
“Father” works fine when the story is seen as more from Rana's perspective, but here you mention Rana directly, so it makes the use of “Father” like this weird. Maybe you could reword it to something like “putting his hand up to keep Father from hitting her again”.
“Yes… of course,” Father stammered,
So, you tell us he stammered, but that's not the feeling I get from the punctuation in the dialogue. With the ellipsis it sounds more like he's speaking distantly. If you used dashes instead (“Yes-- of course--” Father stammered), then it may get that feeling across better. But as it is, I'm just not hearing the stammer.
Also, Darrana. It'd be kinda funny if every time her father mentions her, he uses a larger version of her name. Like her name is secretly a ridiculous length and Rana is what she prefers to go by, and her dad just tosses out some shortened variation of her true name. Definitely not practical for a serious story, but a dumb-funny idea.
It's actually a nice show of how her father is all about that noble status by using her full first name and not a nickname, so nice work displaying his character consistently.
“Lady,” the man said, inclining his head. “I am Esmond Synakrein.”
This was a little odd. I initially interpreted it with a sort of exasperated voice (as little sense as that would make) and him tilting his head backwards a bit. It's written fine, though, so you can probably leave it as-is. Or you could swap out “inclining” for “bowing” to avoid readers with heads like mine getting it all mixed up.
Prince. No wonder Father hit her for speaking before she’d been addressed.
Uh, yes, no wonder, but he also mentioned that the guy was royalty before this, so maybe not “no wonder”? I guess it sort of works as Rana realizing who this guy is, but her going “oh he's a prince?” when her dad said he was royalty feels kind of goofy.
She focused her gaze on the tunic of his sky-blue tunic,
Oops, couple extra words here. “Tunic of his sky-blue tunic”.
Rana looked up at him guilty. “I, uh… well… I also quite enjoy fictional stories.”
The first sentence doesn't feel grammatically proper. You could either slap a comma before “guilty”, or change that word to “guiltily” and that'll fix the issue.
I... would explain why it's not quite proper, if I were sure of how to articulate that? But I'm not. I just know that it isn't proper? And I'm sure if you read it over again you'll get it, too.
I really wish I were better at articulating these ideas and whatnot, but I'm working on it!
She either had to lie or admit her cardinal sin. “Of course not.”
This is a pretty minor thing, but it might help with the flow of the scene to add in a short sentence like “She opted for the former.” and then move her actual dialogue down to its own line. I think that'd give this portion a stronger feel and make her words read less... abruptly, I guess.
Wyl and Jaerek looked at her curiously as she returned, cocking an eyebrow at her disheveled appearance.
This sounds like they've got one shared eyebrow (or a shared pair of eyebrows). You might consider rewording to to “each cocking an eyebrow at her”, if you want both of them to be doing that. Or “the latter/former cocking an eyebrow”, if you want just one of them doing that, depending on which of them you pick. But ya.
He was all but a recluse; a ghost locked away in his lonely castle.
Gettin' Howl's Moving Castle vibes from this description. I like it.
Also, this prince guy's name is pretty cool. Definite antagonist vibes from both the name and his behavior, but I get the feeling you might also not make the antagonist so clear, and he might be someone else entirely. We'll seee--
But on the whole, Gnamrey remained a mystery that no one dared to solve.
I feel that going for “that no one dared try to solve” would have more of an impact.
The boys escorted Rana to the doors of her manor, then took their leave.
I'm not sure the exact circumstances, as you've got them planned, but my understanding thus far has been that Rana's father doesn't think it's appropriate or acceptable for her to be buddies with Wyl and Jae? I know she's definitely not supposed to be sparring with them, but I thought he also wouldn't want her befriending them. That leaves this portion kind of inconsistent with the story, since wouldn't he have taken Rana home along with him and the rest of the family? Rather than let her stay long enough that Wyl and Jae escorted her?
He also may have said something upon finding her with them on the balcony, or said something to Wyl and Jae at the least, since Rana was whisked away by the prince.
I'm not sure if you were meaning to imply that her father doesn't approve of her friendship with the boys, and if you didn't mean that, then feel free to ignore this! If you did, though, then you may wanna reconsider some of his behavior on the balcony (have him eye the boys when he's lecturing Rana about royalty), and this scene.
“Have you taken a leave of your senses?” she asked indignantly.
This is some very sudden “posh” speech from Rana. I'm assuming it's to do with the fact that she's talking to her father, but if you didn't intend for her speech to change whether he's around or not, then you may wanna reword this a bit.
Especially considering, as I read on, that the rest of her dialogue in this exchange is relatively normal and doesn't seem to rise into such “noble-esque” patterns.
Sometimes they would go to Atraian events, which was nearly as far away, but then all four of them would go together.
I get that the “which was nearly as far away” here is probably in reference to that country, and not the events themselves, but since the country isn't explicitly named (says Atrian, not Atria? Or whatever the name may be), I think it would read more smoothly if you were to word it as “[...] Atrian events, which were held nearly as far away,”.
I'm not sure how you feel about that, or if it makes the sentence too much (I don't think it does), but it sounds a little smoother. Just a small suggestion, though!
Rana started running the instant the door closed behind her.
Since we were left behind for a moment, to see Mama and Fae's reactions, I'd suggest wording this as “Rana had started running”. Either way, even though “started” is past tense, without the “had” this sentence feels vaguely present tense in an odd way? Not sure why or how, but yeah--
Her side still ached terribly, but in her informal dresses she didn’t have to wear a corset so she could actually breathe.
Comma after “corset” would be good. Without the comma it sounds a bit like the corset allows her to breathe, lel.
She burst through the front door and ran up the hill, through the small stand of trees, and to their sparring ground.
Although I can infer who the “they” is in this scenario (“their sparring ground”), neither of the others who use it has been mentioned. So unless it belongs to her father or family, I'd recommend making it “the sparring ground” in this instance.
Aldik watched her then strode towards forward.
Oops - “towards forward”, haha.
“How’s the side feeling?”
“Like I got whacked by a big stick?”
Hahah, roasted. Nice ending.
This chapter was paced equally as well as the others. There's good plot progression and not too much goes on that it feels dragging. It's a good amount of story in the space you use up. Nice work on that. One comment I do have about the endings – though this one was good – is that almost every ending so far seems to end, or start to end, with “oh no who's gonna show up?”
There was the door with Rana thinking her father was coming through, then the next chapter showed “nope! Just a boy with a bucket”, and then the previous chapter to this one ended with the mysterious prince before we knew who he was. Now this one starts to end with the bushes rustling and – “Oh no who can it be” – “oh, it's Aldik”.
It's not terrible, but if you keep going with these sorts of endings, it'll probably get a little stale. I'm definitely guilty of these kind of “cliffhanger” chapter endings, so you're not alone, lel. But yeah, if you can tackle that, you're gold.
Also, this isn't to say that you should go back and edit any of the previous chapter endings to exclude those. They're perfectly fine. Just suggesting that you try not to fall into a pattern of ending chapters like this.
Anyway, good flow, great character interactions and behaviors. Everyone remained true to their personalities thus far (minus Rana's noble speech at the breakfast fight scene, but that's a single slip up and it's only in her voice).
I really enjoyed this. Great job!
I hope this review was helpful.
- Hatt
Points: 34531
Reviews: 141
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