Empty Draft

Hey, Kara! Scythe here again for another review ^-^

First of all, I loved the beginning so much!

“Mama?”
No answer.
“Mama?”
Nothing answers except for the silence singing in the trees.
“Mama?”

Nothing answers except for the silence singing in the trees.

Heyo! Fea here to review!

Grammar/spelling/punctuation is pretty much flawless, which is good to see. The ending was nice, and the plot looks promising.

The one thing that I noticed was that in two places the sentence spacing got a bit odd. Here:

"Of course, then I didn’t realize

my mother didn’t have the same abilities that I did- still do, in fact."

And here:

"She had fainted

from exhaustion."

With the second one, I would have kept that with the first paragraph, as well.

The other thing I noticed was that in the very beginning.

"No answer.

“Mama?”

Nothing answers except for the silence singing in the trees.

“Mama?”

The only answer was a bout of sobs and pain pain pain pain and bare feet cutting themselves and cracking branches."

It says answer a lot. That may be deliberate, but it doesn't add much poetry here as it can. I would change it to use more synonyms such as 'replied'. The other thing is that 'pain' is repeated many times. If this was on purpose, I'd use commas to break it up a bit.

"The gigantic splash must’ve alerted the guards, because the shouts and the sounds of swords swinging in the air -like the guards were testing them- filled the air."

When you mention the guards' swords swinging in the air, it was a bit awkward to read. I understand what you were saying, but honestly, I'd just take out that bit of metaphor. It can be great to use metaphor to describe things, but here, it just makes things a bit clunky. Also, saying 'air' twice was a bit repetitive. Perhaps something like: 'The gigantic splash must've alerted the guards, because the shouts and the sounds of swords swinging through the air filled the forest.'

That's all. Nice job!

-Fea

Hey! I'm here to write a review for you. Just going to give you a little reminder that these are all just suggestions

"Nothing answers except for the silence singing in the trees." I understand what you were trying to write here, but I think maybe you should take out the singing in the trees part, because if it is silent, there really isn't anything singing let alone in the trees.

"This childwas me." You forgot a space in between child and was.

"She held me out." This is kind of awkward. Maybe you could write "She held me out in front of her." Just to make it more clear.

"Are you okay, child? She thought." Maybe you could italicize her thoughts. "She’ll find out sooner or later, I thought with my toddler mind. But for now, I will keep it a secret." Also here.

"The gigantic splash must’ve alerted the guards, because the shouts and the sounds of swords swinging in the air (like they were testing them) filled the air." This was kind of weird to read with the parenthesis there. Also, the swords in the air filling the air was strange too.

Now was the time to show her, it seemed. Maybe I could still hide it... I nodded yes. Her astonishment was pretty funny. Now she knew that her daughter was gifted. Gifted with the ability to understand her own mother. She wasn’t saying random words like “Mama.” She was able to understand.

" 'Not what, who, Moyna. Our Goddess. The one you must always swear too.' " In this, too should actually be to.

"She had fainted

from exhaustion." I don't know if you did it on purpose or not but I don't think this needs to be on the same line.

"Yuck, spiders. They’re disgusting, a thought came. It was from one of the guards. Sooner or later I’ll get stuck in a giant web." This also confused me. What was from the guards? Why would she be stuck in a giant web?

"I jumped, and hooked my fingers on one of the vines." You don't need the comma there.

"It was nearly invisible in the rainforest floor." Rainforest is actually two words, rain forest.

"The guard that was thinking about spiders ran into the web." This sentence clarifies from before what the character was thinking, but maybe you could imply that sooner.

"Stupid me. I wish I weren’t scared of them, his mind grumbled. Jeez, Masood, I can’t put up with this. You screaming about spiders... what a silly thing to be scared of. At least being scared of jaguars is a normal fear." I really think you should italicize their thoughts. It is kind of confusing to follow the story, plus all the different characters and their thoughts. "I hate you sometimes Durward, Masood’s mind spat. How would you feel if a jaguar just suddenly pounced on you from on top of a tree? How would you feel if that happened, hmm? You know what, I’ll sit here and laugh while the jaguar rips you apart." Same thing here.

"Of course, then I didn’t realize

my mother didn’t have the same abilities that I did- still do, in fact." Again, you did the thing with the double line in the middle of the sentence.

So now that I am done reviewing and criticizing, I really did like this story. I enjoyed reading it, and it is an original idea, which I like even more. There aren't too many stories that are like this. I hope there is more to this story because I want to know what happens to Moyna and her mother, and why they are running. Also, I want to know more about this tribe that they are running from. Is this set in the past or future?

I hope this review was helpful

Hey there! Review time!

I like the premise of this story. Mind reading would certainly be a difficult power to handle, especially for a child. I think it's pretty hard to write about, so good job tackling that challenge! I want to see how that impacts Moyna's interactions with other people iff you decide to keep writing this.

The first thing that immediately bothered me was that you occasionally began a sentence in one paragraph and finished it on a different line.
"This child
was me."
I understand that you did this for impact, and in poetry it's a good way to put more emotion into your writing, but in a novel it sounds very jarring to switch from a solid, flowing paragraph to a two-word line. I would suggest moving these short phrases into their own isolated lines. It would achieve pretty much the same impact but wouldn't interrupt the flow so much.

Another thing that I found a little awkward was the abrupt changes in writing style. The general style and the way Moyna and her mother speak are both very formal, so to hear the guards use such colloquial language sounds rather out of place. If these people all come from the same tribe, we'd expect their speech patterns to be fairly similar, right?

I'm curious as to why Moyna still hadn't spoken to her mother by the time she was four. Most children usually talk by this time, and you already demonstrated that she can form sentences very fluently. This isn't criticism, I'm just curious!

One last thing to think about is how you introduce the world. This was a prologue chapter and was obviously intended to introduce Moyna's backstory, so it's okay that there's not much information here, but it would be good to know more about the world this is set in. There are a few details you could mention to give us some better ideas of the time period and setting. Are the guards armed with bows or guns or bolas? Are they armed at all? What sort of clothes are Moyna and her mother wearing? Do they have anything with them? Little details like this would make it much easier to imagine the setting.

I'm really enjoying this! Your style is interesting the conflict you've introduced looks promising. You could take this in a whole bunch of different directions. I look forward to reading more of this! Good luck and keep writing!