DISCLAIMER:

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

Ok so let's just dive straight in with this one Artifacts of Damnation by @ST0RI3ST0T3LL.

While the premise is intriguing some polishing can be done to strengthen your writing and improve the reader's experience as a whole.

Let's begin with a little of the technical, Wattpad formatting is not the easiest to work with so I would recommend keeping the style simple, I read both on mobile and desktop so I noticed that there are some snags with the formatting and the way you play around with the actual word on the page. Formatting is really important as the easier it is for a reader to follow the work, the more likely they are to be hooked and continue reading. Relating to the style itself, I would recommend using single quotes or italics for internal thoughts as double quotation marks is usually reserved for dialogue and words being spoken out loud, it was initially a little confusing to me to see the use of double marks for a thought. Furthermore, take a moment to look into the standard stylistic structuring of dialogue for spacing and indentations. Having the correct style in that sense will also lend to making your work look more professional and read smoothly. As a final point on the more technical side of things, I will stipulate that you might want to experiment with looking into using contractions in your dialogue between characters, it will make things seem less formal and make your characters seem more realistic. Often there is some overlap between trying to blend the ease of spoken word with the aesthetic of the written one, so finding that balance can be hard but don't be afraid to experiment!

When first introduced to your work through the blurb I noticed that it was rather wordy and can be streamlined to read smoother. That being said, your blurb is effective and your story does do what you describe it as from the get go. It's always a good sign when you can convey accurately what it is your readers are getting into. Regardless, run it through Hemingway Editor if you hit any snags, I find it helps sometimes but everyone has their process, do what works for you.

All together you do need to run your work through a grammar checker both blurb and text. Doing so is good practice and can help you sort through mistakes and tighten up the writing. This is mainly for punctuation and general sentence length, as well as instances of random capitalisation. Your spelling and vocabulary are sound so keep it up in that regard! Although I would like to note, you use the word "bellowed" excessively and in instances wherein another word would, perhaps, be better suited. You can also clean up your writing by mentioning Azuriyah's name less when describing scenes.

In those scenes you have an engaging base plotline, I am curious to see how things are developed. That being said, I had some issues immersing myself into the world your pacing is rather rushed and I felt like at some points the plot was running ahead of the reader, leaving us to try and catch up. I understand that writing certain scenes can be super exciting and we as writers can get ahead of ourselves when it comes to getting hyped up about a scene and including it instantly- however, you should always keep a reader in mind while writing, your audience is extremely important. Drag things about a little, spend some time developing each scene and setting and slowly pull the plot out of the words. It would help build tension and reader engagement. I found that you bounced from scene to scene too often and that weakened the immersion for me.

On the point of immersion, the point of view switch to the Aunt was a little jarring, it was a switch too close to the start of a chapter to be integrated smoothly. In any case I found that her point of view is not exactly necessary as it gives away a pretty interesting plot point very early on. It would have more impact if the reader found out about her being affiliated with the Demons through Azuriyah's eyes and to experience her emotions as opposed to having it just given to the readers without the readers having to work for it a little. I will state it again, make your readers work for the plot reveal a little by staying with you on the story, it takes two to tango or whatever the saying is. In any case, keep writing its the best way to improve!