INTRODUCTION

Hello Dragonbane ,

Thank you so much for your formal review request for your item "Return of The Banished Sorceress" . I am really excited to get into talking about your story, which I think has a lot of potential.

WHAT I LIKED:

Descriptions

I think that for the most part you really captured the feel of a high fantasy novel, which will probably be very well received by your target audience. One way that you really succeeded in accomplishing this was by including vivid descriptions and letting the atmosphere contribute to the story.

Intrigue

One thing that I really like about the piece is that the titular Banished Sorceress, Maeyon, has a lot of intrigue to her. Her backstory about being banished has a lot of appeal to me, as does the source of her power.

I particularly liked that she went by a different name when she introduced herself. The inclusion of her alias when she is picked up really adds to her character because it adds the tension of discovery, and the little tidbit about how that's what she had been called by the people closest to her makes her current situation all the more tragic, because we know that she wasn't always isolated.

World-Building

A lot of the world building in what you have here was done with scenery descriptions, which I've already mention, but I wanted to bring it up again because there was one line that really caught my attention:

She had her scarlet gown one of the trappings of her former status as a court sorceress


It was a small thing, but it was really interesting to me because it alludes to her former life and lets us see just a sliver into what the world is like off of the boat and island that we've seen. When the captain sees the robes, he too seems to understand the meaning in them, which lets us know that the court sorceress is a position that's easily recognizable.




Editing

The first thing that I'd recommend (something I almost always suggest to people) is a little bit of polishing up.

I'm a big advocate of not self-editing too much early on in the story, because I think it's more important to get entire drafts done. I certainly wouldn't suggest major edits at this stage.

That being said, there was just a little bit of clean up work, and some technical editing to be done, missing commas, typos, etc. I wouldn't worry about it too much now, but I would keep it in mind if and when you move this project to the next draft.

Structure

The biggest issue that I noticed was structure. The first chapter cuts off in the middle of a conversation and the second chapter is very, very short (is it perhaps not finished?) I think a better break might be after the boat makes it to the island so that the entirety of her conversation with the captain can be all in one chapter. The hook for continuing won't be quite as obvious, but I think it might make for smoother reading.

CONCLUSION:

All in all, I think you've got a really good start to something here. The story has a lot of potential, your character is interesting, the style is consistent and aside from my structural issues with the way chapters were broken up, you seem to be doing fantastically.

I hope that this is something you continue working on, and that you'll let me know when you have more done.


-Cat
















My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .