Young Writers Society

Hey callmeike! DragonGirl11 here with the requested review. Better late than never, right? Anyway, this was a great story. I’m hooked! You could, however, use some more description of places, like Esther said.
Ok, from here on out something in green is a grammatical error that absolutely needs fixing. Something in blue is something I think would make the story better, but isn’t technically necessary.

Crowds cheered and roared at the arrival of their King. He was carried by four men on each side of a beautifully decorated sedan chair. Azeal was on King James’ right while Cain, was nowhere to be seen. When he was of age, Cain left his father’s kingdom and had not returned since. Although the two brothers had a less than ideal relationship with each other, Azeal cared and worried for Cain. He pushed back the memory of his younger brother leaving and held his head high, continuing with the parade. He wore a subtle suit of leather armor with a white tunic underneath. His sword was to his left, along with a belt holding two daggers on each side. The mask of a smile that he wore to please others was slowly fading as the thought of his brother returned.

“Azeal,” Michael said, snapping him out of his train of thought, “Does something trouble you?” … “Yes I know,” he said, patting his friend on the back and returning to the celebration. … He went inside his chambers, escaping through the crowd unseen ……let his mind run wild with all the possibilities Cain could be … “Sir?” he said.
“Yes, come in.” Get rid of this line break, please.
His face was distraught. … He had his arms on the guard’s shoulders, … Azeal knew he was right, and reluctantly let them accompany him.

“Track them down and stop them from retrieving Cain! We can not have him tainting my kingdom yet again.”

“…son of King James and brother of I.”

They consisted of two paladins, two archers, and a knight. The King was impressed by them. They impressed the King.

The King looked down almost as if he were ashamed to speak the next few words to come out of his mouth, “You must track and kill three rouge guards that are trying to bring a fugitive into my kingdom.”

Hi callmeike! I am Esther. This is the first time I've visited this site in a few months, and your story caught my attention. I like your concept, and your writing style. This isn't perfect, but I think it could be great with a bit of tweaking.

At the beginning of your story, I didn't know what the setting was. I knew that people were celebrating the arrival of their king, but where were they celebrating? For some reason, I thought it would be outside. (a novel of mine has a similar intro where the case is such) Now I realize it must have been
in a throne room. You should always have a bit of description of where your characters are. It doesn't have to be massive, but right now it's characters speaking in front of a blank canvas, and it hurts the finished feel of your story. You have great descriptions of character nuances (like facial expressions and actions) so I can tell that you are a character kind of writer. I sometimes get carried away in character focus and forget to paint details. You, just like me, need to work on painting your world and character descriptions a little better. Try to use creative (but not overly-ornate) language when describing things to paint a better picture. You use common words like "beautiful" and "great". They get the job done, but these terms are pretty general. Why are things beautiful? Why are they great? See if you can go into more detail if you use general words like these, since they can hinder you more than help you.

Next, your pacing is really, really fast. It goes from next scene to the next, and it jostles the reader around a bit. Either you have a lot of plot planned, or this is going to be a very short book because you are going through events so quickly. It's a hard thing to ask, but I think you should even the pace out a bit. I've enjoyed everything I've read of this, but it jumps around so much and the individual scenes are so short that it has a staccato feel. A good way to even out pace is through descriptions and conversation. However, I don't want you just placing extra stuff willy-nilly just to make this longer. In the end, go with your gut. It's your best tool.

I think your grammar is pretty good. Go through and check your dialogue. Sometimes you don't punctuate that correctly. Sometimes you don't capitalize your "I"s -- an easy thing to fix. I think you have a really good grasp of grammar.

Finally, I'd like to talk about your dialogue. I like it a lot. I see that you are trying to capture the medieval speech pattern. This is one of the hardest speech patterns to tackle, and you do a pretty good job, but some of the dialogue is stiff. The best way to correct his is to read your dialogue aloud. If something said aloud doesn't seem natural, get rid of it. And . . . don't try to hard. If you find yourself adding a lot of archaic language because you are afraid the language won't sound authentic otherwise, you should know that readers actually don't notice that a whole lot. Readers prefer natural-sounding dialogue over overly-flowery language any day. So long as your prince doesn't start busting out the slang, you'll be okay.

Overall, this was great! I loved it! I haven't seen you around these parts, so welcome to YWS! I hope you continue to work on this story and work hard.

Regards,

Esther