Hi Wolf-Man.

This review is from Showering Acts of Joy. Thank you for the opportunity to read your first chapter of "A Day of Darkness". I hope my comments are helpful. However, you are always encouraged to follow your own instincts and always KEEP WRITING!


First Impression:

My first impression was I liked the title. I had a split second's pause due to the 18+ rating but I was glad you mentioned it was for violence. I am not a fan of gratuitous violence but some violence can lend intensity to a story so I jumped right in. :)


Suggestions:

This start to a longer work is obviously very well-thought out. Your main character is well-developed for a first chapter. You give me just enough information about him to support his behavior in the whole chapter. Your setting is described with just enough information so that I could picture it, without giving away too much and without telling me too much. The descriptions of the "shape-shifting" I found to be particularly interesting and imaginative.

This is a very strong story with characters that are not "traditionally" sympathetic. In fact, there is no one that I felt all squishy about but your main character is quite strong and I found myself intrigued by his confidence and demeanor. He seems ruthless and focused as he goes about his task in this chapter. However, I felt that the descriptions of how he "handles" the various obstacles, i.e., people were a bit too detailed for me. I do not feel I need to have a detailed description of where his arm went, where his foot was, etc. as he dispatched his "duty." They did not offend me, I just found that focusing on the actual specifics of the attacks detracted from the flow of your story for me.

Punctuation/Spelling/Grammar:

Your story is very well written grammatically and I found no spelling errors or problems with flow, except what I mention above. This chapter is very densely packed. The plot flows smoothly. Because the story is so dense, I would suggest making the paragraphs shorter to enable the reader to really focus on each point.

Final Comments:

I liked your story and will definitely read more chapters. You are an excellent writer. I am looking forwarding to your next chapters revealing more of the story. What other clans are there in this world you created? While this is Dagur's rite of manhood, will he continue to prowl the "human" world and dominate there in some way? What is the 3rd "shape-shifting" form? As you can see, you have inspired great interest in me with this first chapter and that is a good thing for a writer to do, keep the reader interested.

Best Regards,
Elaine
hebxii