BEST FANTASY/ADVENTURE STORY
(2015)
SCORES
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First thoughts on Shine Through Shadows Title and Summary The title already gives off elements of fantasy to the story, which makes the story all the more appealing to readers. The title matches the summary perfectly and is very powerful in our point of view. The summary gives the reader a sense of what they’ll be reading about and it’s a very intriguing as well. Your full summary is very captivating also, but it may come across a little bit cliche, since the hook about keeping a balance between good and bad, or light and dark is quite common amongst films and fantasy fiction novels. Plot/Storyline We do find the plot a slightly cliche but it’s difficult to be original these days. There are many stories that carry similar plot lines yet this story is still very interesting and fascinating. It manages to attract readers, nevertheless. Although the plot is still being developed, it seems very promising. It’s not difficult to understand and follow, and there is no confusion. The plot becomes more complicated and harder to follow in the fourth episode, but it is understandable. We are able to tell that a new event will be happening, and will be the main focus because the fourth episode foreshadows it well. Story content and flow The story explains the general idea of the world and the things that are happening to Jessica. We’re given very useful information about Jessica as well as other characters in the story. The story has a reasonable pace to it and is quite slow but takes its time. There are a lot of aspects to this story and so many faced-paced events even though the episodes were quite short. The cliffhangers were enticing and kept us hoping that we had more passes so we could continue to read. The plot is unclear so far (which is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s good to take your time to set up the world and what’s going on), we actually like this because it seems like a real and proper story. The story slowly moves up each stage, and every detail builds up to the end point. The big idea. Shine Through Shadows is like that and seems promising for the near future. The content itself is well-done and we found every scene important and necessary to the story. Errors Spelling and grammar were almost perfect with only a few mistakes here and there. (Second episode) We found a few spelling mistakes and missing punctuations; “I though you came here to be a full time artist” “I thought you came here to be a full-time artist?” On a directing note, some actions of characters could be made more realistic. For example, in the first episode, we don’t think the father would just leave when Jessica leaves, he’d probably stand there and watch her walk into her new apartment, cry, wave good bye (or something similar) and then leave. There was an adequate amount of choices, but there could have been more choices added in to engage the readers. In the second episode, we were given to pick the choice to “shop at the mall’. As readers, we’re expecting to see our character actually shop and not just have the narrator tell us that the character “shopped till she dropped”. Readers would prefer to have had the ability to shop, making the episode slightly longer and providing more entertainment. In the third episode, there was only one minor directing problem. Impact of the story based on the genre submitted The story managed to make our neck hairs prickle up and give us goosebumps (during the bracelet scene), due to the author’s amazing writing skills and the ability of choosing music the suited the scene perfectly. Her writing skills are amazing and we would like to see the author expand her use of descriptive words. The author definitely has the potential to turn the detail into an even more hooking story that can make the audience feel more emotions. The genre matched perfectly and we wouldn’t want to change it. Although, the story could have improved on the amount of choices, the depth of characters and more background context for characters. Recommendation It is definitely a hidden gem in the sea of the trending section. The story was full of suspense, drama, and it was perfectly placed in this category. The cliffhangers were very suspenseful and the sound effects are used well in the story. We like the fact that Jessica is supposed to be the next guardian of light, yet she looks more like the opposite! This story was very well executed and we found it hard to fault. We can’t wait to see what you do with this story in the future and we would love to keep reading! Overall Shine through shadows is a very well executed story. Cliffhangers are placed at the end of every episode! The author never disappoints and keeps you itching for more. This read is for fantasy, adventure and mystery lovers. With almost perfect grammar and spelling and you won’t have to stop every five seconds to try and figure out what on earth the author is on about. We would like to commend Marissa on her efforts and the enormous amount of work she put into this story, spectacular effort! Cheers,
Note that this review has been edited and proofread by Aisha.
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