Hello Johny
Congratulations on your Writing.com account anniversary this month! I'm sending this review in honor of the occasion.
Premise.
I'm a big fan of crossover fanfiction, as well as big tournaments, so the premise of this item was right up my alley. I think you did a great job coming up with a variety of diverse, familiar characters, and the setup of the tournament made it very clear how events were going to unfold. I was hooked right from the start!
Story.
The narrative was intriguing, and you did a great job of setting up a surprise twist in the first chapter as we follow Sora and Link in their own world before being transported to the contest world. You have a knack for writing well-paced, exciting action that keeps the reader engaged. I would have liked to have seen just a little more uniqueness and originality to the story (the evil being who kidnaps people to make them compete in his deadly contest has been done a lot), but overall this was an entertaining story that was relatively well told. Since the item sort of ends abruptly, I'm assuming it's unfinished, but I think it's pretty nice work so far!
Characters.
Along the same lines as the story, I would have really liked to have seen Thanatos with a bit more development beyond "evil demon contest organizer." Aside from that, though, I thought you did a pretty good job capturing the diverse personalities of all the contestants you brought into the material. There were a lot of characters that weren't utilized very much, but I assume that's in part because this story will be continued at some point.
Dialogue.
The dialogue didn't all work for me. Most of the back and forth dialogue between different characters worked fine, but the monologues (especially Thanatos' explanation of the tournament in Chapter 2) tended to drag on a bit and felt a little stale. The concept of this style of tournament is pretty well established at this point, so I think you probably could have pared down a lot of that dialogue with the mechanics of how the contest is supposed to work. Even if a reader isn't familiar with this particular subgenre of story, the rules could be explained during the contest as the competitors figure them out, which would save you a lot of the unnecessary exposition (and words!) before the contest begins.
Technical.
There were quite a few technical errors in the piece, mostly along the lines of typos and minor issues along those lines. For example:
The two heroes dove behind a bolder for cover. - Typo (boulder)
Sora charged Ganon while Link knocked and arrow. - Typo (nocked)
I'd definitely recommend taking another pass through your story just to polish things up and take care of all those tiny grammatical loose ends. Additionally, due to the language, this item needs to be rated as 18+. For more information on ratings, I'd recommend checking out the " Content Rating System (CRS)" for more information.
Overall.
I enjoyed this story. While it does need a fair amount of work, I think it's a really solid first draft and definitely something that you can work with. Some addition focus on developing the antagonist, better pacing the explanation of the rules, and utilizing all the characters you've introduced to the audience will go a long way toward making this item even better. But it was still a very enjoyable read as it currently exists.
I hope you've found this review helpful. If so, please consider paying it forward by reviewing the work of another WdC author!
Respectfully,
Jeff |