Full title: Not Princess Material by Carter-n-Kaer
Source: Review task for interview with -Chrysalis_Realm
Genre: Fantasy
Mature: N (breastfeeding, strong profanity, violence)
LGBTQIAP+: N
Status: Ongoing
Special note: "This is a first rough draft of the novel! We are well aware there are multiple spelling errors throughout. We are looking for feedback on the story before we finish it and do any edits/rewrites! Consider yourself a beta reader! :) Please give us feedback on story line, characters, and so on! Thank you!"
Score: 49/60

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*****

Rubric:
- Title: 10
- Cover: 20
- Blurb: 8
- Grammar: 10
- Writing style: 5
Total: 60

*****

Total score: 49/60

Title: 10/10
I don't mind the damsel-in-distress thing, as long as she's not just a helpless wimp, but someone who normally can take care of herself. And I can already tell this is not that story, which is great, because I prefer a strong woman with a backbone. So yes. Already interested.

Cover: 18/20
The title already has me thinking along the lines of the Disney movie Brave, and the cover only enhances that with a redheaded woman. I like this. I like her no-nonsense expression, and I like the plain black background that draws all attention to her. The font choice, color, placement, and size are perfect for the title, too. My only suggestions here involve your name and whatever that is in the upper left-hand corner. Your name is too close to the edge of the cover. It almost feels like it's cut off a bit, although I know it isn't. Moving it up just a tiny bit would eliminate that feeling. And the thing in the upper left-hand corner is barely visible, so it actually becomes a distraction. I'm supposed to move on to read the blurb and start the story, but I keep going back to pull the cover up a different way to see if I can make it out. Now, that could just be me being weird, but in general, if it's on the cover, it should be visible. So I'd lighten the shade a bit to bring it out of the black background just a little - you obviously don't want it taking all the reader's attention. But if it's not important enough to do that, then you should just remove it.

Blurb: 8/10
Overall, this is good. It lays out the plot conflict nicely - or hints at it, anyway. It reinforces the impression of a Brave-esque princess already laid out by the title and the cover. I think there are a few commas missing, although that might be subjective. The biggest thing here is her name. You call her Skyletts, Sky, and then Skylette. I'm pretty sure the first one is misspelled, which is kind of a big deal, since this is the potential reader's first intro to her. With the last sentence, the question, I think you could improve your hook with a slight modification. Splitting the sentence into two with a question mark after "be" is one way to do it, or adding a hyphen after "be" is another way to do it, too. Personally, I prefer the hyphen. It adds an abrupt stop that tells the reader to expect a contrasting statement or thought, and it gives that final question more importance.

Grammar: 7/10
You already have a note in the blurb and in the author's note about SPAG errors, so I won't go into too much detail here, since you're aware. Consistent errors are the under-use of commas and run-on sentences. There's an occasional dialogue tag that's capitalized when it should be lowercase or lowercase when it should be capitalized. There are also quite a few misspelled words, including character names, which are definitely a major detail. And you always say "the both of," which is incorrect. No "the." But the errors are usually minor enough and infrequent enough not to detract from the story once it really gets going, so I didn't knock a lot off the points here. They're distracting, yeah, but not to where the reader loses the flow, or at least, not to where I do.

Characters: 2/5
Your characters are complex, relatable, unique, and memorable from the moment you first introduce them and throughout the story. I would like more physical description, though. You describe each character at their first mention, but then you don't talk about their appearance at all beyond very sparse reminders of eye color or hair color, so the characters become black-and-white sketch outlines that still need to be colored in for me. This becomes especially noticeable when Campbell starts eyeing Sky. Obviously, she must be attractive, but there hasn't been a description of her physical appearance since she was a little girl beyond the rare mention of her hair or her eyes.

But there are bigger issues with Sky than the lack of a physical description of her as a young woman. The blurb and title build her up as the main character who the plot centers on, and she's supposed to be the anti-damsel-in-distress, Brave-esque princess, but she ends up being a major disappointment. For me, anyway. She's just a spoiled, impulsive brat. Everybody thought her brother would become king, so everybody has let her get away with what she wants all her life, and she doesn't want to learn or do anything useful at all. She's irresponsible, and she keeps tossing the "I won't be ruler" thing around whenever anyone threatens her carefree, lazy existence. She doesn't learn how to use a weapon; she isn't particularly smart; in general, she thinks she's the Brave-esque princess, but she's the damsel in distress. Her ignorance and impulsive decisions have good intentions behind them, but good intentions don't mean much when everything falls flat, backfires, and puts others in danger. The people around her keep up this hope that she's more clever than she seems, that she's got some big plan nobody knows about, and I kept waiting, hoping that was true, but she just kept reinforcing and adding to the disappointment.

She's really gullible and flighty, too. The king sends Codey to train as a knight, so he stays away from Sky, and she doesn't even try looking for him. She just gives up and becomes the princess her father wants her to be. Arthur tells her Codey's in the dungeons, and yet she believes Campbell a few days later when he parades Codey in front of her with another woman? It never even occurs to her it was all an act. She believed Arthur before about Codey being in the dungeons, but she refuses to believe him when he tries pointing out the obvious game Campbell is playing, even though Arthur's proven himself to be much more trustworthy than Campbell. Her conviction to protect her country and take the role of queen someday grows throughout the situation with Campbell, but everything else she believes changes with the slightest suggestion, and failure is enough to knock her off her feet and reduce her to hopeless helplessness. Until she cracks the next plan, which falls through again.

Also...she isn't the main character. She is for the first few chapters, but then it switches to Codey. I'd say he's pretty much the main character for the rest of the book, except he's not, either. The perspective changes from Sky to Codey to various side characters make this less of a story about particular characters and more of a story about a particular situation in this kingdom. That's not a bad thing. It just isn't what the title and blurb promised.

Writing style: 4/5
I like your writing style. I do. It hooks the reader, it gets them invested in the characters and the story, and you're very good at dropping hints or apparently unimportant details, just to tie them into the plot later and show how truly important they are. I love the twists and reveals about Codey's background or Piper's location. It makes me focus on every little detail, wondering if this is important, if this will come back to change the story completely.

Your action scenes could use some work, though. They're way too tame and bland. Codey's fight with Campbell's guards is just a single paragraph that says he drew his sword and says he was outnumbered, and then he's just defeated and captured. With no description of the fight. It's really a let-down. And this is usually how the action scenes go throughout the story. There's an expectation and a build-up to them, and then...bleh. Using more description, stretching the action out over a few paragraphs, and using harder-sounding words and shorter sentences that emphasize the quick, split-second decisions would help with that.

Notes:
None of this really fits into the review, but it's important, and you stated in the blurb and the author's note that you wanted feedback on the story as a whole. So...here we go.

There are some pretty big plot holes here. Sky and company are in Kingsley and Campbell's castle for over a month, and the king never comes looking for his daughter? His only living child and the future queen? It's fine for him to not show up in Kingsley, but there's plenty of opportunity to note that he's looking. Messengers going to and fro across the kingdom should be able to pick that up. The knights coming to Codey's aid should have heard something about it. But nothing. There's nothing at all. As far as the reader knows, the king has just given up on Sky without even trying to find her. There is mention of a letter Campbell writes and sends by messenger, presumably to the king, but nothing comes of that, either.

Another thing is Campbell's background story. He spouts it off with very little prompting to Codey and Arthur, giving the impression he tells it often, and everybody in Kingsley knows the story, but he never tells Sky? And nobody else does, either. That seems really odd.

It's also stated right at the start of everything with Campbell that he keeps his mother locked away, so Codey's surprise discovery of her makes sense, although the location maybe doesn't. Her room is on an upper floor. Codey was searching secret passageways on the ground floor or potentially even underground. But, anyway, back to Campbell's mother - she isn't locked up. At all. Campbell sends her to her room when she's getting too irritating, but otherwise, she roams freely around the castle.

The swearing is another thing. There's no warning about it, and when it first starts, it's infrequent and mild. But it gets stronger and stronger until the f-word is thrown out. A note up front about this would be nice.

But your dialogue is excellent. It's natural throughout. I love how you modify it for little kids, showing the way they mispronounce words and have difficulty with certain letters, and the occasional use of dialect is well-done, too. Your pacing is also great. This is not too slow, not too fast - just right. Goldilocks would approve. And you're really good about incorporating new info that twists the plot or clarifies a vague point into the story without using a clunky info dump. I know this story has been stagnant for many years, but I'd love for you to finish it. I'm still holding out hope that Sky has more to her and her time to shine is coming.