THIS
IS
WAY OVERDUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
which is why I am reviewing it now, after finally finishing your first three parts (ask me if you want me to review those too--I have a couple of things to say about that, but not now at the very least).
I felt that Ruby of Revenge, up until this point, has something going for itself like all works, but it blunders somewhat in how to introduce this concept and make the readers genuinely appreciate the work. Most of this involves how the characters are fleshed out (at least from what I've read--I feel like I ought to have read other works in preparations for this, but since you published it as a short story I'm forced to treat it like a short story), the somewhat murky worldbuilding, and the motivations overall. However, that's for the second part of this review. Firstly, the highlights:
-"Destiny went down, and found she was a bit taller than he." Honestly, this isn't wrong on a technical level, but since we're not using fancy language here I suggest you change the 'he' at the end to a 'him'. I don't know, maybe you are aiming for very high language, but as a whole I didn't get that feeling so to have the almost archaic (but not wrong) use of 'he' instead of 'him' pulled me out for a bit.
-"She didn’t know what to say and silent seemed the best option " Silence, not silent.
-"She has passed the first test, and as we have decided years ago, there should be a following second test." There's nothing wrong grammatically in this sentence, but it just didn't come out as very natural to me because it was coming out of a character's mouth. It just sounds like random exposition to me, and it's very obvious.
-"They didn’t provide allow much light into the house" Delete 'provide' or 'allow'.
-"it seemed to her Virre like his house dimly-lit" Liked, not 'like'.
-"He gestured to Destiny to sit at the chair in front of them." I think you should use 'on', not 'at' in this case.
-"I have been waiting for this moment, for the stone to be in the worthy hand." 'The worthy hand' sounds a little off. 'Worthy hands' might be better (without 'the').
-"any action from her that annoyed him would give perilous result Maybe he had his own magic" Period between 'result' and 'Maybe'.
And now, to the nitty gritty:
Okay, so I just wanted to talk to you about some issues I've had overall. Take my word with a grain of salt, as I have no idea what I'm doing, either, but I just wanted to point these out.
-Characters: Okay, so what I've observed from this short story as a whole is that the characters speak like the text. This would be all well and good if a) it was in first person, which means that the character is thinking up the text, so it makes sense that the character speaks the way they talk, or b) the text is very informal and seems more like dialogue than anything. However, in your case I can't say either is true, so it is admittedly difficult to get into that dialogue. "But Ellstar!" you scream, "Fantasy is supposed to be made up of people who speak very fancily!" I will admit that, for the most part, that is true, fantasy has variation in language. A peasant won't speak the same way as a king, a knight won't speak the same way as a rebel, and so there's enough color in the world that the text doesn't feel monochrome. However, as far as I've seen, there's very little variation between how Destiny speaks, how Vierre speaks and how Regalia speaks.
It would be another matter entirely if the character actually spoke like Yoda, or a classic book where everybody speaks incredibly gravely, but the problem is there isn't much difference between your text and your dialogue. Your characters sometimes don't speak like characters, they speak like an author putting words in a character's mouth. The best writers know how to lie well enough that the readers act like their work's the truth--we have to believe that your characters are 'real', as in we actually feel their struggles and want them to succeed. Dialogue is important in achieving this 'realness'--the more characters talk like normal people, the more you believe they are people. There are special cases, of course, but even then those special cases still fall to a pattern. A wise person may not talk like a normal person, but they will generally speak in aphorisms and quotes that show the audience that they are wise, and they'll stick to that pattern. A lower education person won't speak like a normal person, either, but generally they might get their grammar wrong or speak in slang, and they'll stick to that pattern. The audience still believes it. It does not come off as incredibly strange. However, in your case, it's very difficult to believe that.
There are many ways to fix this. If you don't know how to make the dialogue sound a bit more natural, character development is the way to go. Right now, while I do know that the main character wants to help the children at her orphanage with a powerful stone, I don't know much else about her. I'm looking at her like a person doing something instead of a friend doing something, it's hard for me to care. So if you could develop that relationship between the main character and the audience a little more, that would mostly apologize for the strange dialogue.
-Worldbuilding: Generally speaking, the worldbuilding here is a little iffy. I'm still not sure about the mechanics of the Ruby of Revenge, or the history behind it. Usually, I wouldn't need to, because there's something more important to occupy my attention, but seeing as there is little else to occupy my attention, the focus is shifted onto the ruby itself. Maybe you already have, maybe you haven't, but from what I've read I think you could use a little bit more description regarding the lore surrounding the ruby itself--what it's supposed to do specifically, how it came into existence, that sort of thing. It would make everything overall more interesting and lively.
Okay, so so far that's all I can say about this work. I might go on to review the fourth one if you like, since I've done goofed and delayed this one for so long, but that's up to you.
Sincerely,
EM.
Points: 19607
Reviews: 383
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