Trials Of Shadow Review

[DarkShadow]

A review topic for my epic. CC is appreciated.Story topic: http://www.bzpower.com/board/index.php?showtopic=2860

Edited January 12, 2012 by DarkShadow

[Grantaire]

Honestly, after reading this, I would rate the story between mehish and okay. I liked the introduction, but I felt that the story did not live up too well with it.The writing, while not terrible, was riddled with quite a bit of spelling errors, and on the whole was not the best; I found it hard to really get into my head what was happening. Stories are words used to paint pictures in the reader’s head, and if that can’t be accomplished properly, then there’s something wrong. Not that this is unchangeable; when you write a scene, particularly a battle scene, it is very important that it makes sense in the text, not just in your head.Next, the characters. Okay, I haven’t seen much of them because the main character has basically been caught in a long series of battles. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it doesn’t leave much character development in the readers head. Overall, I’m not very pleased with the characters, as they seem, well, 2D. Again, this could easily be because we haven’t seen much of them.When it comes to combat, you have my all out biggest problem with this story. In all honesty, the combat was extremely poorly done. The hero was far too overpowered, and although you mention him being wounded etc, he never seems to be effected. The next problem I had was the lack of description. So why can his sword slash through steel with ease, while a blade 10 times as powerful can’t slice straight through his shield? My biggest problem however, was with invulnerability. Your character gets shot with lasers, acid, massive blasters, and crossbows, and he’s hardly affected. The team leader gets hit repeatedly with a sword that cuts through armor like butter and yet is hardly effected? I will not mince words; the combat was dull and boring for me; it needs complete reworking. Also, swords are not throwing weapons.When it comes to grammar, my biggest problem was not so much spelling errors as it was the overall writing; run on sentences I notice quite a bit, and it does not do a good job describing the narrative. Also, you switched from present to past tense in the first chapter, which was confusing. So I would not say it needs individual touching up on specific spelling errors as it does a nice paint job, if you get what I mean.Lastly, formatting. I have two problems; first is you seem to switch between font size. Second, you need to master URL linking.Review TopicStory TopicThis is very simple:1: Copy the URL for the topic ( I will use Review Topic as example).2: Write 'Review Topic,' or whatever else you want to title it, in the post.3: Select what your wrote, then click that handy little URL feature right below the size option. Paste your URL into the text space, and hit OK.My overall thoughts on this story: It seemed to me that it was almost a draft more than a finished story; it has a decent framework, but the building built out of the frame needs to be redone, and painted better. Do some rewriting on the overall wording, and do a lot of reworking on the fighting, and this