Young Writers Society

This is Nikayla here dropping in for another review on this lovely Review Day! That's right, Lima Bean. I'm back again.

I wanted to note that I love how connected the chapters actually feel and at the same time--they're broken up with ease. None of the endings have felt awkward this far and none of the beginnings to each chapter have either. I love how flowing each one is into the next part because this does feel as if it's one large chapter that can possibly be read all at once without any feelings of awkwardness.

I was nearly done reinforcing the seam of a teething toy when I sensed Chandi’s husband approach, more intent on me at the moment than his family. Still, when he arrived in sight he put a hand on Chandi’s shoulder before kissing her lips. She smiled and brought him back for another, prompting Matul to stick his tongue out and scrunch his eyes closed in disgust.

Bahij smiled at his son, ruffling his hair before looking at me. Only one thing spread between us: the light yet oh so slick feeling of kalisi coated in blood.

I had to come back for more, goddamnit.

Also, I read over my last review and realised that Kerani's name was written as Kerani half the time, and Karina the other half. That was my autocorrect, so I greatly apologise. I'm not that forgetful (only just, though). I've saved Kerani as a word in my dictionary now, so hopefully that'll fix that! So yes, apologies for being a dumbass and not noticing as I was typing.

Lol imma be so useless this review.

Writing wise, this is probably your strongest part so far, in my opinion. Your character dynamics are something worth lusting over, and the argument is so intense and realistic and ugh, I love it so much. I don't need to tell you that the technical side to your writing is fabulous, as I note it in every review because I never stop being impressed. Kerani's little speech was very well written, and you voided the risk of her sounding scripted in what she said. It was intriguing hearing her side of things, and realising how she views what she does. You got some real empathy points with that, so well done there. I like Bahij's character too. He's an interesting fella with some interesting views, and I like how his personality clashes with Kerani's. I really could gush over this part for, like, ever.

I don't really have any critiques, in all honesty. I usually say that and then manage to conjure something up, but it ain't happening here. I certainly have nothing new to say, anyway. I somewhat agree with what windrattlestheblinds said in regards to pace because it did all seem to happen rather quickly. One moment we have Kerani hanging out with the kids and co, and the next she's in a fierce argument with her brother, only to return to speak with her father by the end of this (not especially long) extract. It didn't massively throw me or anything, though, and I was able to keep up with things. It just did seem to all happen quite quickly, which may be what you want, but somewhat uncomfortably so.

That's the only thing I really have to say. I feel super useless here, but I guess that's a good thing on your part. For me, at least, there aren't really any flaws here. Just a really solid piece of writing that continues capturing my interest! Goddamn you and your awesomeness.

Keep writing,

xoxo Skins

Hello! So I did really, really enjoy this part. This part really brings up one of my favorite things about novels, and that's having the contrast between characters and settings—not necessarily all-out conflict, but the reality of people not always being in perfect agreement or perfect disagreement. Because you bring in Bahij and his emotional output as far as the killings go, it evens out the almost one-sided distance that we got from Kerani in the very beginning, and it brings the readers closer to the emotional core of the conflicts and clarifies Kerani's personal distance as a necessary trait.

One issue I do have with the conversation is in the sheer amount of repetition that you have in your descriptive phrases. It's a little less on the side of Bahij, where you have alternate sentence formatting because it's Kerani sensing Bahij's emotions and movements, but looking at Kerani's actions throughout the conversation, you have a lot of subject-verb phrases and in some cases repeat action verbs in the same syntax within three paragraphs of each other ("I cast my eyes down, running..."—"I looked at him, running...").

I know it's a personal style choice not to have much in the way of description, but because you have a sparser voice with this character, you have to make every word count for the most, and repeating them not only weakens the word, but weakens the overall effect as well, because it makes the reader aware that they're reading words on a page.

(This is about the point where I scrolled down and went, "Huh. This scene is longer than I thought it was." So I have more feedback than I thought I did.)

Going into Kerani returning to the rooms and retrieving the healing stuff, then being called to her father's office—first off, "father" should be capitalized when you're using it as a name (that is, "my father's side" is correct, but "into father's office" is not)—but again you fall into the syntactic trap of subject-verb-object. A lot of "I did this" sentences separate the reader from the text, and they read like a shopping list. "I walked", "I made it", "I rubbed", "I pushed", onions, garlic, cloves... You have a few sentences with alternate syntax in there, but honestly not enough to break it up, especially with a first person narrator where you don't even have the virtue of being able to switch between name and pronoun.

I do like that you end this part of the scene with a very simple, short sentence that gives the scene itself a bit of flair even beyond the syntax repetition.

Funny story. At first I thought Jalil's name was Jail, and I was like, that's a cool name! To be fair, Jalil is a also a cool name.

Even though I hadn't read anything before this, I didn't feel too lost. I like how you've clearly defined your character's relationships with each other. Even after a feel paragraphs they feel really realistic. I also really like that you don't overuse dialogue tags. You mostly use action as transitions during conversation which really helps the pacing and flow of your story, and it makes things easier to visualize. Excellent job.

He blew past me and I forced the pollen saturated wind around me,

He stopped madly pacing the courtyard, looking at me with a mix of heated anger and ice cold hopelessness.

Hallo!

Reading this after having read bits and snippets of it already was weird. It all fits so much better as a coherent whole.

That said—this feels really *fast* to me, and while that does lend a certain amount of urgency to the situation it’s also—this isn’t quite the right word but the progression of events seems inefficient to me? In 1.3 Kerani was talking to her father about the kalisi fields and here she’s and beaded with her siblings etc., and then Bahij comes in to talk with her about the new information on the kalisi fields and then she goes to take care of her bandages and then she goes to talk to her father again, presumably about the kalisi issue for a second time.

And I get the impression that this is all happening in a relatively short amount of time; it doesn’t feel as if more than a couple hours at the most has passed between the top of the section and the end. Like… obviously a lot of stuff can realistically happen in a short amount of time, so that’s not… quite what’s bugging me. It might be that this section moves from place to place a lot faster and… almost randomly? than the previous three have and that’s throwing me off.

(Or it might be because I’ve just finished up with finals for this block and I’m more exhausted than I think. So take this with a grain of salt xD)

Anyway, other than that… hnnng the description in this section is amazing. “Only one thing spread between us: the light yet oh so slick feeling of kalisi coated in blood.” is probably the line that jumped out most strongly as being really vivid and evocative.

I’m completely in love with Kerani’s speech about how she’s going to avenge the deaths of the workers. It’s so eloquent that it almost comes off as rehearsed—not like she’s been practicing it to say to someone else, but like a dialogue she has with herself on a regular basis—and I love that. I’m also very pleased by the fact that she doesn’t keep track of the number of people she killed, for fear it’ll destroy her if she does; I see the inverse of that a LOT, with morally conflicted protagonists obsessively counting their kills and beating themselves up about it, so it’s refreshing to see an alternative.

Bahij’s magic might need a little more explanation just because it seems different than the magic we’ve seen so far; I followed what was happening, I think, but I’ve been able to talk with you about the mechanics of your magic and I’m not sure someone coming in cold would be able to do the same.

On to 1.5.