I hope you find my third review helpful. Bring on chapter two....



Opening Paragraph:

This is a nice beginning. You describe the surroundings well, and succinctly.

However, she's been asleep for four days! You die from dehydration in three! Perhaps try and explain this somehow. Maybe she came round with someone dabbing her mouth with water and floated in and out of consciousness. I learned about this in school, so some any reader with general knowledge will find this unbelievable, and question the story. Even if she had had a little water, she would be barely able to function after four days. I'd check with some sort of medic on this.


Again, phrases like ““I guess, ” seem to modern for this world.
““No Thanks to me,” ” You do not need a capital for thanks.

“it shops plentiful ”~ its shops plentiful?

“Ok in Oceana” ~ again, OK is terribly modern...

“mailbox ” this is very modern American, and I haven't read it in any fantasy story. Authors usually use “letter”.


The dialogue is fantastic! You write dialogue really, really well. The story moves effortlessly, with the last few days cleared up, and the new character~Tyrang ~as mysterious and dashing a hero as any teen girl could wish Again, I got so wrapped up in the story, I forgot to review.

The letter from Tyrang moves the story on apace, which is nice. The reader now has some structure and direction to follow and begin to conjure up.

“The Pride of the Lion, Inn ” You don't need a comma here, but I thought it was the Bloom’s Inn?

“Roma is counting on me to prep the soup ”. You haven't told us who Roma is, and again, “prep” is a modern way of saying preparation. I’m not sure it works here.

“One evening she was watching the duels and witnessed a young Gnome girl defeat a truly furious looking warrior, who was three times her size and weight. The gnome girl made his defeat look as effortless as getting out of bed.” ~ here you capitalise Gnome, then you don't. Chose which way you are going to go, and stay with it, otherwise it makes it look like your work hasn't been proof~read.

“Joselynn Troyer a young priestess trainer who lived at the Inn, Rainey and her had become close friends ”... yet you haven't mentioned this close friend yet, That makes it look like she has just been invented to move the story along. Speak of her earlier: perhaps she walked with Rainey somewhere, or they sat next to each other watching the duels, and Joselynn explained the skills of the fighters, and they made friendly bets on who would win, Joselynn always guessing correctly.

“ “My dear Israel you have been a father away from home ”. To give this more weight, you could spend a little more time earlier showing scenes of their growing tenderness and fondness for each other. As it is, it sounds as though she is being polite, so you are trying to inject emotion into the story where I don't feel there really is any.

 “Joselynn shook her head ~ no need for the speech mark here.

“Because, if he doesn’t, on his next visit to the Inn. He will find my bed, far too cool for his liking.”

The punctuation here makes no sense. Trying speaking it as you have used the commas and full stops, it doesn't make sense.
Although your description of the forest is nice, it's a little over done. If she can see nothing but trees, how can she also see streams, creeks, ponds, and lakes, all full of fish? Dense trees tend to block out everything else, if she was looking down, all she would be able to see would be the canopy of leaves, and perhaps a large body of water.

You leave with a more gentle cliffhanger this time...Rainey is heading somewhere new, to learn to be a Battle Mage...

Overall impression and reason for my rating:

I thought this chapter was nice, although I would have liked to see you build up the relationships more in the village. Rather than just tell us they feel close through dialogue, create some scenes where the friendship, love and trust really shines through. That will create much more attachment to your characters.

However, I’m not too sure of your use of punctuation. I'd get it reviewed by someone with specialist knowledge in this area.

I enjoyed reading through the beginning of this story. This is my favourite chapter- i think the dialogue is superb. I am giving this the Dialogue merit badge.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Go Noticed" .


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