Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for language and violence.
"So, what now?" Gabrielle sighed, sitting down on a nearby red velvet and gold chair.
"The others are waiting for you upstairs to introduce themselves. They are in one of the side rooms," Shai said, gesturing towards the left staircase.
Gabrielle gripped her dress and got back up. "What others? There's more than one Light Maiden?"
Shai laughed at Gabrielle's question. "No, there is only one Light Maiden, but there is more than one Maiden of Battle."
The Mystic nodded. "In this world, it’s become apparent that women are more adept at magic than men, that's why there are Maidens of Battle, they were created to effectively fight the forces of darkness, and even the Lords themselves. Though, Parliament has extremely high standards for who can be one, so there are only three, including you." She gestured at Gabrielle, warmly smiling.
Gabrielle nodded and walked up to the steps of the left staircase. "So which room is it?" Gabrielle asked, looking back at Shai and the Mystic.
"They are in the first room to the right when you walk up, they decided to go there so it would be less confusing,” the Mystic said, motioning her to go forward.
Gabrielle looked back ahead and climbed the stairs. As soon as she reached the top, she looked to her right, two arched wooden doors adorned with gold. "Gold, like everything else in this place." She shook her head, going up to the doors and gave them a push. When the doors creaked open, Two girls turned to look at her. The room itself looking a lot like the rest of the inner sanctum. checkerboard marble floors, two gaudy red velvet chairs. One sat in the left corner closest to the door, and one in the far right corner. A similar gold chandelier hung from the ceiling.
"If you’re here, you must be strong enough to fight the armies of darkness!" One of the girls said, brushing back her long cherry red hair, her fiery red eyes sparkling in the warm light. "I'm Fira, and this is Lunara." The red haired girl gestures to the other girl who sat in one of the red velvet chairs.
The other girl was playing with her hair band that kept her ponytail up high on her head, near the part in her hair. The girl caught herself and kept her hands busy by crossing her arms, brushing her hands over her fair skin. "She hasn't been cleared by Parliament yet, don't get too excited Fira," Lunara grumbled, frowning and crossing her legs.
"You don't seem that happy to see me Lunara," Gabrielle said worriedly.
"She's just having a bad day, she'll warm up to you eventually," Fira said, laughing awkwardly, gripping her short red dress.
Gabrielle raises her hand.
"Yes?" Fira asks.
"Will the Mystic and Shai be joining us later?" Gabrielle whispers.
Lunara shakes her head "Not today, it's much too late, we need to get back to bed to wake up, since it's night time already," she warned, taking her hands off her arms and unwrinkling her long black dress.
"Going to bed to wake up? How does that work?" Gabrielle asked, covering her mouth with a closed palm.
Fira went up to her up and puts a hand on her shoulder. "We need to get you into your new bed before too long, because we can only go to this world while we are asleep, when we wake up we go back to Earth."
Gabrielle nodded. "So it's daytime here when it's night time on Earth, and it's night time here when it's day time on Earth, right?" Gabrielle pondered.
Fira noddeds at her. "Yep, so we need to get you to your new bed where you’ll wake up each time you come here," she explains, lightly shaking her.
"How are you going to do that? How will I wake up in the same bed each time? Don't I wake up back at the Field of Dreamers?" Gabrielle asked, confused.
Lunara got up and went up to the door. "Nope, once you wake up initially you don't go back, that would make things very difficult for the people here, since it's a long walk. We just use a spell to make your new awakening spot the bed instead of the Field of Dreamers." Lunara motioned for Gabrielle to follow her.
They all went a few doors down and opened the door. A large and plain looking king-sized bed sat in the middle of the room. "This is your room," Lunara said, walking up to the bed. "Get on the bed so we can cast the spell."
She gestured towards the bed. Gabrielle went up to it and got on. Lunara held up her arm, white sigils materialized from her hand, Gabrielle looked up with a slightly worried look on her face, only just met Lunara, and yet she had to allow her to cast some sort of spell? Before Gabrielle could protest, the sigils burst and dissipated, Lunara lowered her hand.
"The spell is done, you can go to sleep now. We'll be returning to our rooms too, good morning," Lunara said, walking out, followed by Fira, who gave her an excited wave on her way out.
Deciding to get under the covers, Gabrielle thought about how all this was supposed to work, and if she’d still have the markings on her finger when she woke up, if the markings would fade in time, or if it was permanent, she looked at her left hand and sighed. She worried about how all this would affect her new job, and how she would find time to fight the forces of darkness here while being a nurse in the real world. She decided then that worrying would just make her sleep through her alarm. Trying to clear her mind and focus on her breathing, clearing herself of all thoughts, she relaxed, and drifted off to sleep shortly after.
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Canary word: Present
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125,024 Literary Works • 672,762 Reviews
Hello, AneiDoru! I apologize in advance if my review isn't helpful.
I love how unique your world is. You took three of my favorite things and put them together in one incredibly interesting story - a chosen one, the battle of light versus darkness and dream worlds! I love reading each chapter and learning more about the specifics of the world that you created.
My thoughts on the grammar of your story are the same ones as the last chapters. I did notice less descriptions in this chapter, though the ones that you did include were pretty good! Don't be afraid to tell more about what's going on. Also, I definitely saw more of Gabrielle's emotions and thoughts in this chapter, so great job on that - just remember to do that in other chapters and you should be good!
I'll move onto specific points I want to cover before ending this review.
I love the concept of maidens of battle! I've seen it played out in other stories before, so I'm curious to see what your take on it is. I'm also curious about what Lunara and Fira are maidens of, if they are maidens of anything.
Like I said at the start of this review, I love stories that include things like this. It'll be interesting seeing how this world affects Gabrielle's day to day life, as well as if there's going to be any overlap between the two worlds. Will she run into any of the other people she meets in Elega?
Also, I have a question about the people of this world that I forgot to ask in my review of the previous chapter. Are all of the humans in this world dreamers like Gabrielle? Or do some of them always live on that planet? If you're not planning on covering that in future chapters, maybe you could add into the story when doing rewrites?
This reminds me of a saving point in a video game! (To be more specific, beds in Minecraft.) I love this creative little detail! Can everyone do something like that, or is a skill that only the powerful people can do?
It looks like she's a hero in both places! I also love how you included her thoughts on balancing her two different lives. I'm excited to see how you handle that in the future chapters of this book!
I really enjoyed reading your work, and I'm sorry if any part of my review seemed harsh. Also, please feel free to PM me if something I said doesn't make sense. I'd be happy to explain it to you. Keep up the great work - which I doubt you'll have trouble with - and good luck on your writing endeavors! I hope you have a wonderful day/night!
I'm glad you liked it! I think I put as much as I could into describing things, thank you for your review!
I went through with a spell checker and didn't find any bad grammar, can you point me to where it is?
You're welcome!
I think the main thing with the grammar is the dialogue advice I went over in one of my other reviews, and your run-on sentences. Which are all pretty easy to fix!
This is one of the run-on sentences I found. Also, what spell checker do you use? Is the one that comes with a writing program, or did you download one?
I used a web one, i thought you meant grammar like spelling.
Oh, okay! I was just curious. Usually, I consider spelling a different category. I'll be more clear about that in my future reviews!
Hi there AneiDoru.
I've come to give a quick review and rescue your work from the green room!
I haven't read chapters one and two of this so please forgive me if I comment on anything you've already addressed previously in the novel. Hopefully, as this is only the third chapter, nothing should be too hard for me to understand.
Firstly, I think it's important to review the rules of speech when writing. No matter how many times all of us have written pieces of prose, we still all make mistakes. Here, the most obvious one is that you've combined your speech into paragraphs when it's actually correct to have a new paragraph each time someone new speaks, regardless of whether they're all talking about the same thing or not. It also helps to break up your work and make it easier to read. Interestingly, when publishers/agents look at your work for the first time they actually skim read to look at how many blank spaces there are in the novel. The more blank spaces, the better! It sounds ridiculous, but that kind of formatting is very key in a book.
I feel that the pacing of this is a little off. Everything seems to happen very quickly and it leaves your reader wondering what just happened. You go from introducing your characters to having them suddenly act like old friends and it just doesn't fit. The reader needs to get a little more insight into your characters, get to know them slowly just as you would get to know somebody new in real life. Otherwise they simply won't care what happens to them. None of your characters seem to have much emotion, nor do we really see them react to things that happen around them. I understand you want to get the story moving but setting up things like characters and scenes is just as important (if not more so) than the actual plot of your novel. If people don't care about these kind of things they won't continue reading and that seems a shame, especially when you have so many ideas.
So breathe, slow down and really take your time with this. It's a cliche but remember to try and show your readers what is happening rather than simply telling them. You have a lot of 'this happened and then this happened then they did this' and not much else. There are some excellent articles online about the power of show vs tell and it might be good to read one or two.
Overall you've got an interesting premise, but don't forego description and emotion for furthering the plot.
Hope this was helpful.
Icy.
I was told to stop describing things by someone else so I may have undercut that by a lot.
I would like you to add some examples on 'showing not telling' because I don't know where you would want me to put that, I am trying my best, and I'm confused what to change, please give me pointers.
Hello AneiDoru!
I hope you're doing great today.
I haven't read any of your previous chapters to this, so I apologize if I get anything wrong, but seeing as we're only three chapters in, I don't think it'll be too difficult for me. But, that aside, let's get to work here.
A Few Nitpicks
When two people are speaking, a good rule to remember when posting your work, is to separate their dialogue up so it's not all in one paragraph.
As an example, this:
should look more like this:
Do you see how much easier that looks to read?
Leaving it all combined into one paragraph is frankly, confusing. I suggest you split these paragraphs up by their dialogue as I showed, in future stories.
But on that last sentence... "The mystic nods", I noticed that Paragraph 2 began with the mystic speaking. So, I don't find it necessary for you to separate "The mystic nods" from Paragraph 2. It could easily be:
I crossed out "the mystic", replacing it with a "she" in that last sentence because it wasn't necessary. We know who you're talking about. You can just use a pronoun there. I noticed you tended to use the proper name instead of the pronoun in a couple other places, as well.
Lunara got up. Lunara started talking. We don't need that ending phrase you have to clarify who is still talking, because we know. You could just as easily say: "Lunara motioned for Gabrielle to follow her" and leave it at that.
Here's another example:
If you're still talking about the same person, and it's not going to be confusing or tedious in any way, replace the proper noun with a pronoun. "Lunara quickly gestures towards the bed" can simply be put as "She quickly gestures toward the bed."
Now, one more comment before I finish this section. You switch between the present and past tense a couple times here. I think you intended for this to be written in present tense since that's what the majority of your verbs are, but a few present ones slipped in as well.
For example:
You begin with present (exit, walk, stop) and then you throw a past at us with that "motioned". Which should be "motion".
Another example would be in the opening paragraph, where you use a few "said"s but then we see many "says"es later on. Just stick with one tense, and you won't have reviewers spending a while pointing out the mistakes two tenses make. Like me.
The Actual Story
I'm not entirely sure what the point of this novel is right now, though I'm sure if I continue reading I'll find out soon enough. I'm unsure about Light Maidens and Maidens of Battle are, so I'll look a few statements in here that didn't make sense to me. Or just briefly puzzled me. Same thing.
I thought it was interesting she used that "We" as if her and the mystic were going to introduce Gabrielle to them, when actually, she just goes on up by herself. I don't know why. That was a little weird. Why'd they stay behind and watch her go up the steps and not introduce her to the other girls?
Why would it be less confusing? I'm not sure what this setting exactly looks like, how everything in this - are they in a castle or something?- is set up. Is it set up in a confusing way? Why would it matter? I'm not sure how long these girls will be here, but I don't see why having a room in a certain place would confuse them, considering they could be here for a while.
You say "women" on describing them at first, but later use "girls". Right now, I see them more as teenage girls, not actual women yet, you know.
I'm also curious about the set up of this room. You say Lunara is sitting in one of the chairs, so there must be more. But that's all I know of what this room looks like. I understand it isn't necessary to the story but I'd like to know where Gabrielle ended up. Was it a weird room, or was it plain boring? It also almost seems as if those girls were waiting for her... it's like, they weren't even surprised to see some other girl there.
Well, this is pretty blunt of Gabrielle, considering she just met Lunara. xD It was rather amusing, actually. No wonder Fira laughed awkwardly.
Oooh. Back to my nitpickness notes. This REALLY confused me, though, because at first glance, I thought Lunara was the one asking the questions. Then, I realized she answered it, so I thought it was Fira. But it wasn't, was it? It was Gabrielle. You didn't even mention her name! Please do. This baffled me for a bit.
Sooo, what happened to Shai and the mystic? They kind of like, disappeared, not important anymore. Gabrielle is left in the hands of Fira and Lunara. You seem to be doing good on describing those girls and their personalities. Lunara is cool and composed and bossy and Fira is animated and bright and lively. I can see it.
But one thing I don't see is Gabrielle's character. There was that little piece of bluntness with Lunara, which amused me, but other than that, I feel as if she's just... there. I don't see a lot of reactions and emotions from her. Like, was she nervous when Shai and the mystic left her to climb the staircase by herself? Was she scared about meeting the girls, or was she excited? Did Fira startle her when she opened the door with that loud declaration? You gave us a little hint of Gabrielle's discomfort in her question, with a little thought that Lunara might not like her. That was good! Lunara seems as if she could be intimidating.
But back to the questions... especially concerning the magic, when Lunara cast the spell. Gabrielle literally just jumped up on the bed and let Lunara do her stuff. Did she have any doubts? Was she afraid Lunara might do something else? What are her thoughts? Emotions? Reactions? She seems to be the main character here, so I think these elements are essential to the story. We need to feel like we know her. But I don't.
You're doing a lot of telling, and no showing. The last sentence bothered me a bit.
First off, though, this should be two sentences, not a run-on. "Gabrielle is left alone in the room. She decides to get under the covers, falling asleep shortly afterwards."
Secondly, we see she's alone in the room. Why not tell us her thoughts? How's it feel, being alone? Is that what makes her want to dive into bed? Show us how this all works out, don't tell us.
----
Oh my. That was a bit of a lengthy review, wasn't it? Hope you found it helpful!
I haven't done something this long in a while. xD
Have a fantastic day, AneiDoru!
And do keep up your writing
cheers!
-rosette
This is the second review I've seen on the third chapter, if you want, you can review the second as well! Thank you for your input! I will be updating it soon enough!