Please remember that my reviews are just my takes on things, you do not have to take my advice at all if you don't feel it fits the essence of your story. After all, I am only reading a few chapters, other readers might have different takes.

Reverie's Review

Your prologue is very interesting in terms of idea and content. However, in terms of execution, it could be tidied up to have more of a gripping impact. To start with, keep the formatting standard, I understand the appeal or desire to work with a more unconventional form and have the alignment of text not be at the left-hand side, but unless writing a disjointed narrative or poetry then it is ineffective and draws attention away from the story. This makes it difficult to want to get hooked. From the start, the evidence of your raw ideas are very original and interesting. I especially found the part where plants were crawling out of their pots to be fascinating. This holds with the rest of your work wherein you blend our world with that of the Gods and their magics, the regional splitting and the language used to describe it are done superbly and well integrated, I also found the small details about these Gods to be very intriguing, the description of the statue of Setol in particular, don't be afraid to include more of this. I would strongly advise you to give us more information about these Gods and your magic system, you have created a very interesting concept, expand on it and the world you've created, your chapters are relatively short enough that you can integrate this without drawing out the narrative too much. Bouncing back to my previous point, in the prologue, I think your ending on the point that the character they are at odds with is her wife is very well placed.

The emotive aspect of your work is strong, you have distinct character voices and are clearly not afraid to amp up the stakes and dial things up to eleven on the proverbial dramatic scale. This is a very good thing in your case as it keeps the narrative at a fast pace with high stakes making it more likely to hook readers. In terms of your emotional aspect, I will give a few examples to show where you excelled, the part in which you state- "It was her room more than mine" is a great line and strong, cuts through the excess and really shows the strength of the relationship. The emotional linking between characters is done well, you can see that the main character is attached to Cherr from the get-go with very little- "I thought she'd look good in anything" is very powerful as a line especially to get this point across. I will point out that you do sometimes fall into the pitfall of having too much tell and not showing, your dialogue between the tattoo artist and V is good, emulate that type of tone, More through dialogue and action, less through backstory. Your character descriptions and visuals are also very striking, in particular, a paragraph in chapter 3- starting with "Light stealing black" is very strong, emulate this paragraph style more if you can as it is very distinct stylistically and is just a cool visual to have.

Your backstory sets up a good conflict and a great sense of discord, to capitalise on this you can condense the first four chapters into two. You will have to cut out some of the excess factors that don't lend to the progression of the plot. The whole first chapter at the party where the character gets spiked for instance, while the spiking might be plot relevant (but as I only read seven chapters I wouldn't know) the whole sequence to establish the character relationships/dynamic/world can be condensed into a few paragraphs before you move on to describe the relationship between V and Cher. Your real story and conflict kick off at Chapter 5, with the stolen blessing and how it doubles as a curse more than a blessing for V. Removing some of the party scenes or adding in a scene where the magic of the world is more discussed, in particularly the impact of blessings will allow the readers to understand the gravity of the situation more. The cliffhanger of the stolen blessing would be ideal as an ending for a third chapter. I will also note I especially like the subversion of how it acts as a curse for V rather than a good thing.

Your world is intriguing, your characters and interesting, but the work as a whole needs to be developed further in the actual narrative, it might all make sense to you as the writer seeing as it's your universe, but readers only know what you allow them to. Give us more especially in terms of world-building and dynamics but look out for the "show don't tell" trick as I mentioned before, don't info dump it to us if you do take this advice on board, but integrate it through dialogue and action. As I mentioned, this is a great world and your ideas are interesting, your execution just needs to be polished. You can do this by tidying up the grammar, in particular, the punctuation and the subject/verb agreement. Implementing more sensory input would help immerse readers more, the taste, touch, and sound of things go a lot further than you'd expect. Your visuals are stunning but you do need more of the rest. Don't rely on just one primary sense. Overall, I am extremely intrigued by this concept.