Run Away Home- Prologue and Chapter 1

Hey! Forever here with a review!!

This was certainly a very interesting plot and wprld-building we got to see here. Okay first of all the prologue. I am jot really against the prologues but I do wonder about the importance of this particular prologue. It just establishes one thing and that is everyone in the MC's family is dead. I really think that it is well understood if you just say that the person is in an Orphan Home. And about the father, you can include that too. Just make the MC think about the past. That's it.

Now to the characters. The main character is honestly not very unique. I mean the person should have traits or should behave in such a manner that the readers would be able to assiciate. Writing about orphans and making them the main character is a cliche in fantasy but a cliche doesn't really matter if the character has a strong presence in the story. I somehow missed that here. I think that you could work a bit on the personality of the character and flesh them out. Like, for example, people of the orphanage wouldn't just stop talking with the MC just bwcause of what you specified. We really want to see the MC's reactions to the incidents. Like if you talk about Janie talking to Penny, what did they feel about it? These little reactions count.

Next the flow. The story was indeed a bit rushed. While a relatively faster pace made everything happen quickly and added to the intriguing nature of the story, we missed a lot of details and descriptions which should have been provided to the reader.

And now finally the plot. The plot was most interesting. I liked how you managed to establish ghe goal of the character in the first chapter itself and also managed to establish the potential risks the MC can face while undertaking their mission. Hm... I wonder about the father here. Generally when someone is lost that way, they come back to the story. It might be of some use to remember the father. And now the rescue. Okay, it was bit rough around the edges. Like was the rescue thing totally unknown to them? That doesn't seem to be very natural. And why would they just plan to do it taking thousand risks when they can just go after one or two months? I would like this part fo be a bit clarified in the story.

Overall, this was a great start to a novel. I would love to read the next chapters.

Keep Writing!!

~Forever

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),

Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!

First Impression: Okay...so this is an interesting little premise. While the prologue doesn't quite do the greatest of jobs at being a prologue, I think the first chapter seems quite okay and it is something that makes me want to read more.

Anyway let's get right to it,

Everyone in my family, gone. Mother had died giving birth to my youngest sibling, who had died as well. Jasper, my 7 year old brother died of hypothermia last year over the longest winter Land D had ever known. That just left my father and me. We tried our best to survive for two years after mother and Jasper had gone. Father went insane. Every night, he would wake up screaming my mother’s name. Then he would go for a “short” walk, he would come back the next day, with cuts on his face and arms. One day, he went for a walk and never came back. I looked for him for months, my birthday passed not once, but twice before the police found me wandering around the woods. Because I am not yet an adult, they take me to the Orphan Holding (OH) building. At the end of every month, a train goes in the order of the cities (Land A, Land B, Land C, Land D and Land E) then take the orphans to Rida, the capitol.

I sit on my bed, mumbling to myself. I think I may have gone insane, as my father had after my mother died. Janie opens the door. She is my only friend I can talk to in the OH, everyone else pretty much ignores me because of what happened at the beginning of the month with Jared. He's okay, he just has a broken arm, but pretty much okay. Anyways. Janie comes over and sits down next to me on my bed.
“Kayne, you have to get breakfast.” She tells me. She grabs my hands and pulls me into a standing position. Then she sits me down on a chair in front of a mirror and braids my long, blond hair into a thick braid. “Come on!” She calls from my doorway.
“Fine.” I growl, following her out the door.

Breakfast is oatmeal with sugar, raisins and cream in it. I eat all of the sweet substance and start to walk back to my room when Janie stops me. “Garret and Graham are having a meeting in the library. Want to come?”
“No I’m going to go back to my room.” I say to her.
“Okay then, come on!” Janie drags me towards the library. I have no choice but to go along. When we get to the library, Garret and Graham are finishing setting up the chairs. People start coming in behind us, so Janie starts running up towards the front of the room. I slowly follow her. I flop down next to Janie. Once all of the seats are full, Graham talks to a group of remaining librarians and they leave. Garret hops up onto one of the tables in front of the group of chairs.

“Okay everyone!” Garret says, everyone immediately quiets. “The OR is coming tomorrow night! at midnight”
When no one says anything, Graham steps onto the table. “The OR is an Orphan Rescue. They take the orphans to a secret society South-East of Land C. The society is called Eripio, which means Rescue in Latin.”
Graham the only person I know who speaks another language. I stare at him and Garret. I never realized how alike they are, from their deep brown eyes to their wavy light brown hair. Though they are a year apart as siblings, anyone could mistake them as twins.

I start listening back to what Garret is saying.
“This time they are only taking boys to Eripio.”
“What!” Janie says, “I want to go!”
“Me too!” another girl says.
“Rules are rules!” Graham says, “Every other month, they take boys. The other months, they take girls.”
I grab Janie’s hand a pull her away. We go to my room.
“We have to go to Eripio.” I tell her.
“But we can’t! Your heard them! They are only taking boys!”
“I know. We have disguise ourselves.”
“But, my hair!” She holds her hand up to her black hair, “I was growing it out!”
“Sucks for you.”

The next morning I braid my own hair and walk to the cafeteria, I grab the usual bowl of oatmeal and find Janie in the mass of people. The sweet smell wafting from the bowl in my hand makes my mouth water. I sit down next to Janie, she turns away from me and starts talking to her other friend Penny. In silence I finish my oatmeal and return my bowl to the kitchen. For the rest of the day I wander around the library; find a novel; get half way through it before realizing it is a romance; find another novel that is a mystery; finish it; eat dinner and go back to my room.
At about 8:30, someone knocks on my door.

“It’s open!” I shout.
Janie opens the door and sticks her head in. “Can I come in?” She asks.
I motion with my hand and she walks in and closes the door. “Sorry I ignored you the whole day.”
“It’s okay, Janie. I know you can’t stay mad at me forever. My life would suck without you.” I say.
“Are you still going to try to go with the OR?”
“I don’t know. Are you?”
“I will if you will.” She says.
I pull out my pocket knife. I open it and run my finger on the side of the cold blade. Janie turns around the chair in front of the mirror and sits down.
“How long do you want your hair to be?” I ask.
“Um, I don’t know. Maybe a little shorter than Graham’s.”
I hold the knife to her dark hair and think of how I want it to look. Janie winces as I make the first cut, Locks of hair fall to the brown carpet. When I am done cutting her hair, we switch places. Janie takes the knife and looks at it. Then I feel the pull of the knife on my thick blond hair.

Right away one notices that this piece suffers from a lack of details. For example-

She is my only friend I can talk to in the OH.

When we get to the library, Garret and Graham are finishing setting up the chairs.