Author: AHigherExistence

Reviewer: OutOfMyImagination

Genre: Fantasy

Hello, and thank you for your request, sorry it took a bit longer to finish this review. As you asked I focused on the plot, characters, world-building, and overall impression of your story.

The ancient power of Draconem was awoken and used in a war, leaving trails of fire in its wake. Cyrus is pushed into the world of spell weaving after surviving the aftermath of a draken fight and trusts Zimm, a spell weaver who is running from his past. Meanwhile, Princess Ellyn tries to fight against pirates by making alliances with High Elvens. The stakes are high in trying to salvage broken empires.

The cover looks good, though the white background does not stand out too much. Even adding a sliver of colour could help. Otherwise, it relates to the story, and the fonts look good, too.

The book's description reveals just enough to know the key details of the story. Good job!

The pacing of the story seems right, it's not too rushed. For Fantasy stories, the plot is often slower since there are more things to explain than in other genre-based stories and it can feel like the pace of the story is much slower.

The plot of the story seems complicated and sometimes it's hard to follow the story, it has nothing to do with the plot nor world-building per se but more with the way the story is written, which I will explain later.

The characters don't stand out too much just yet, but they seem layered enough for the start of the story.

This brings me to world-building, it's not too clear just yet, though I appreciate that there are no info dumps over-explaining things, letting readers discover the world alongside the story. I would say implementing the "show, don't tell" tactic would help further the worldbuilding, but so far it looks unique.

The overall quality of writing. Your vocabulary and grammar are good, though I would suggest looking into dialogue punctuation. The dialogues in general sometimes feel unnatural, reading them at loud can help to determine if they sound like something a person would say.

Try the "show don't tell" technique, this concept is easier to understand than it looks. In simplicity, use all senses to describe the scenes, not everything needs to be written this way but it makes the story more immersive. For example: "Snow crunched underneath his boots." this shows that there is snow around, provides the sound for the scene, it can even trigger smell, and it shows that a character is wearing boots. Simple sentences can show more than a bulk of text. It can be challenging to use this technique and grasp it at first but the more you try the easier it becomes.

Another way to "show" is by using dialogue, it could make the story less "info-dumpy" You did that in the first chapter when Cyrus and Zimm talked in the tavern, though it could have been a bit more, to specify the part about the Endless Mountains was showing enough, so try to do that more often.

This is more of a Wattpad thing, but try to make the paragraphs smaller, and split them so that when you write they would have around 5-7 lines on the computer. The majority of readers use phones so bulky paragraphs are harder to read since 5 lines on the computer screen are around 10 lines on a phone screen. Similarly, chapter sizes could be smaller since readers often read "on the go", additionally more parts transfer to more possible reads and votes, try to keep your chapters around 2.5k words, if they are larger you can split them and make "part one" and "part two".

I would give this book three out of five stars. I can see a huge potential with the plot and world-building, but it's a bit hard to follow the story now.

I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy magic, dragons, and complex politics in fantasy-based worlds.