Prologue
Long ago, deep in the peaceful forests of the Realms of Ascar, thousands of creatures live in peace, respecting the ways of the Ancient Ones, the stars, whose voice guided them through their destinies.
When the creatures called humans appeared, the peace shattered, and the creatures turned to light or dark, the voices they followed changing. The humans were not able to hear the stars, for they had given up on the Old Ways.
In order to bring a fragile peace amongst the creatures the Leaders of the Light and Dark sides set their children to be married. The children were 18 year old, Kurhk, or Fear, and 20 year old Syksa, or Love. Both of the names were feared and respected by their enemies and comrades. The names were ancient as the stars and held unimaginable power if one knew how to use it correctly.
Soon the humans began to fear the creatures, spinning a web of lies and fears, binding the creatures as slaves or just diminishing their powers.
Soon the fight began; the war amongst humans broke out, and lasted for over 1,000 years, before the couple found out that Syksa was pregnant with the child born to destroy the darkness. This is who our legend is about, the one who could hear the original and first ancient ones, their true voices that would lead him to the distant lands of every Realm.
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125,006 Literary Works • 672,809 Reviews
I really don't want to completely repeat what the other reviewers have just said but I actually might :/.
I think the prologue is very interesting, but you unfortunately use so many clichés like people coming and wrecking everything for the poor animals.
I would like to read more and have a read of your new style of writing you talked about in your reply.
Overall: It has great potential but lacks a certain edge to make it a great.
Not my best review but hope it helps,
Thatboy
Thanks for the Reviews and I shall take your advice to work once I finish rewriting my stories due to a sudden change in my style as of late. I hope that you will be patient to wait till I have completed rewriting this when I have time. Thanks for the Reviews and Happy Writing
Hiya~ Rosea here, postponing my hunt for breakfast as I take time to review your work.
Let's start~
First off, I won't complain about this being a very short piece, since it is a prologue, and prologues are meant to be short. But the fact that it began in the sort-of fairy tale manner (meaning that it began its opening with the phrase "Long ago", which is often used for introducing children's stories aside from the legendary "Once upon a time") doesn't quite get my appeal. If you don't want to change that because you have something else in mind, it's fine as it is. Let's just polish up this sentence a bit...
Long ago, in the Realms of Ascar, deep in its peaceful forests, thousands of creatures lived in harmony. They respected the ways of the Ancient Ones, the stars, whose voices guided them through their destinies.
Now that I think of it, this certain piece reminds me of reading Stardust. Have you read it? It's by Neil Gaiman, if not... it's told in a similarly... naive manner, if that's one way to put it, and you can probably use his style as a reference to your writing, because it's easy to follow.
You are being redundant with the word "peace". You can try many adjectives to replace that, or maybe you can expand from telling to showing - you know, instead of just telling the readers these facts, paint a picture for them to show these events happening, as if it was occurring right before their eyes... put the readers inside your scene. Immerse them. This being a prologue is no excuse to not be too descriptive of events. You can be vague, yes, but there has to be scenes, not just plain information. Also, this sentence needs rewriting. Try:
When the creatures called Humans appeared, the tranquility shattered. The voices they followed began to change, and each one of them turned to either the Light or the Dark. The humans, however, were not able to hear the stars, for they have given up the Old Ways.
Rereading this paragraph caused me to ask a lot of questions:
-Why did the humans appear?
-Why did the peace shatter when they appeared?
-Why did the voices change?
-Even if you say that the voices changed, why did they turn to either Light or Dark?
-What is the Light, and what is the Dark?
-What is the effect of not being able to hear the voices to the humans?
...and so much more. There's a plethora of questions going through my head right now. It would take long to enumerate all of them here, and I understand that not all questions are going to be answered here yet because this is just the prologue.
I think the mention of the age ruined it all. The marriage to bring piece is, well... it's a tradition found in many cultures in history, but I can't help but point out that the idea of it is getting a bit overused. Polish this up more as well... more clarification in the part of the plot and the characters, their significances, et cetera.
Edited, this would be:
Soon, the humans began to fear the creatures, spinning webs of lies and fear, binding the creatures as slaves, diminishing their powers.
I realize that you skip from fact to fact without really giving an explanation on why that happened. Avoid that. It makes the passage clunky, incoherent. Also you tend to repeat the same words over and over again in this passage. It would do you well to check the thesaurus from time to time.
Cliche. Same comment as above. There should always be a what, first of all, in a story, then a why, and a how (it comes third in the priority, but it's still a critical part, and best not forgotten or else) then enters a when, and finally, the who. That's how it works for me, at least.
I hope you find this helpful! Have a nice one~
Peace is repeated in the sentence.
"Changing" should be "changed."
Normally when I see a prologue, it isn't actually a prologue; but just Chapter One. This however is a prologue. You've done it. That being said, there are a couple things worth noting.
1. Humans= Evil. This is a pretty cliche idea. Everything is perfectly fine... until the humans come and screw everything up. To be fair, the presence of humans can (and should) affect the other creatures; but should all of the other creatures be affected the same way (i.e. negatively?)
2. Arranged Marriages. Matching fear and love seems very arbitrary, which makes me wonder if you would have been better off by just calling them "Kurhk" and "Syksa."
3. One thousand years. Wouldn't it make more sense to have a shorter time span? It doesn't seem to matter one way or the other, except that in one thousand years of warfare, humans could become quite sophisticated in their killing.