Author: ayo723

Genre: Fantasy

What I liked:
- The prologue starts out very nicely. There was a good hook, good introduction, and just good writing in general. Same with the first chapter. The story starts out in a sensical place—not too far from or too close to the inciting incident—and with a good introduction of the characters.

- The way you write reminds me a lot of the first draft of the book I wrote in 2017-18. This was really disorienting to read at times, but I also come to see the story in a different light because of it.

- The plot was promising. I can definitely see a point of tension between the Standards and the Aurelians, and the characters are nicely written, even if they do have some weird points in the story that don't make much sense. I don't think I cared personally for any of them in particular, but that doesn't mean others wouldn't.

- Despite all that's written below, I did actually continue to read your story after writing this review, which spans through chapter 2d. And I don't normally continue to read review stories after I'm done with the review, which is saying something.

What I didn't like:
(1) In your blurb, the quote at the beginning, "The sound of glass shattering. The screams of terror and pain. All hell breaks loose." is a little unnecessary. I would start with the rest of it and cut that portion out. Otherwise, the rest of the blurb was decent, although the end might need a bit more of a hook.

(2) The first published part of your story, Them, is a bad idea. You already have a prologue, and it doesn't seem like any of the information in Them is at all necessary or even relevant to the rest of the story. My suggestion would be to take it out because enough people aren't going to read the prologue.

(3) You addressed this in chapter 2a, but the prologue and chapter 1 are still incredibly long. I mean, I normally read prologues, but I was seriously tempted to skip this one. It showed up as 32 pages for me, which is also why it took me so long to even start reading your book. It was a daunting endeavor. (Note: I know pages doesn't mean a lot because there are different fonts and sizes and things, but to put it in perspective, my current chapters average 1,700–2,300 words and are about 8–14 pages long.)

Also, why do you have to have sections of a chapter? When you split the chapters up, couldn't you have just made them separate chapters? It just didn't make a lot of sense to me.

(4) When I did get around to reading your book, one of the first things I noticed was the lack of description for some of the characters—though not all of them, oddly enough. When you introduced some of the characters, you mentioned their hair color and sometimes another choice detail, but not really enough to construct a mental image (like for Jax, Finn, the twins, and Prince Aydrin—also, we never got a description of what Carolynn looks like so far as I read).

Try to mention specific details that would give your readers more of a mental image, like their stature or their demeanor (he let off the air of a hungry dog); how she wears a pair of thick, horn-rimmed glasses or how his little white mustache scrunches up when he looks down on people. Describe a scar that sticks out or how this character makes the protagonist feel (his arms hung by his side not unlike an ape; he seemed to tower over people even though he wasn't particularly tall; though a mask covered the lower half of his face, you could tell he was never smiling from his eyes.) Write a description that evokes an emotion, whether it be endearment or intimidation or annoyance.

(5) There were frequent typos riddled throughout the book that were kind of distracting at times. "hHe said", and extra "i" after something or other, a comma and a period in succession—just fine-tuning things that take down the quality of the writing a little. Also, I noticed this at a few points, but when you interrupt dialogue with an action, use em dashes on either side of the action outside of the quotation marks. This makes it seem more like an interruption than a break between the two parts of the sentence. For example, a sentence from the prologue:

"All while you," the woman pointed an accusatory finger at the girl, "have been sitting up here..."

Would become:

"All while you"—the woman pointed an accusatory finger at the girl—"have been sitting up here..."

(6) When Carolynn is fighting against the guards to stop them from taking Jax in the prologue, I felt a sense of disorientation and the scene itself was very inconsistent. Firstly, after Carolynn jumps out from her hiding place, there's really no more mention of the environment, and so the reader's mental image kind of melts down to just people—we don't know where the people are or what's happening. Are they still inside the orphanage? The characters are moving, but where are they going? Where are they relative to each other?

Also, I felt like as you were writing this scene, you maybe became too focused on the main characters and that caused the scene itself to become unrealistic. In other words, it felt as if the scene was bent unrealistically around Carolynn. First, she gets the guard holding her to hurt himself so she escapes, then she runs to the guard holding Jax and gets him to let Jax go, then more guard come to apprehend them... but if there were more guards to begin with, why was dealing with two children ever an issue? Also, all other surrounding characters completely vanish. No mention of them at all. There was never any mention of how large the lord's entourage was to begin with, so we don't know how many guards Carolynn has to go up against and why exactly they didn't just overpower her from the start, which would the sensical thing to do.

Something similar happens in chapter one when Lynn is trapped in the smoke. We don't really get a good sense of the environment past her overwhelming thoughts. I get that part of this was purposeful, but the environment should always be at least hinted at, to ground us if nothing else.

(7) The foreshadowing is really obvious. I understand the struggle of foreshadowing to heighten the tension and to make the plot twist not too jarring, but give us some credit as the readers. We can figure some stuff out on our own. Some examples are in the prologue where Carolynn mentions the warmth as she escapes her attacker, chapter one where Lynn mentions not being able to see the crest on the black carriage, and again when she mentions the crowd moving toward the center of the market. These details are unusually specific things she wouldn't otherwise mention or notice, which makes it feel unnatural. The whole scene with the mother getting shot, followed by the man who tried to uncover her secret was probably the strongest example of this. It was hard to read that scene.

(8) Kendraislit mentioned this in chapter 2d and I full-heartedly agree: The scene with Lia's backstory is nice and all, but it's totally misplaced in the story. Keep in mind that it's curfew and Lynn still has to find Finn before returning home. It felt entirely out of whack to have that slow scene take place at such a fast time and it was a major drop in tension. Also, when she ran into the Aurelian boy in the alley, her reaction was so blown up it was hard not to cringe.

(I don't know where else I was supposed to put this, but I totally called the boy in the alley being the prince from the moment he ran off. I guessed he was going to be the love interest, but the story hasn't progressed that far, so idk, might be wrong.)

Suggestions:
(1) Delete the first three lines of the blurb.

(2) Take out Them. Unnecessary beginnings are not often highly tolerated.

(3) Shorten the prologue and Chapter I, and number the chapters without the use of letters (just my opinion).

(4) Add onto the descriptions of some of the characters.

(5) Proofread before publishing and incorporate em dashes in dialogue interruptions.

(6) Remember all the elements of a scene when writing action—be it the environment or the side characters or the unnatural way the situation curves around Lynn.

(7) Be more discreet with the foreshadowing and remember to let the readers figure some stuff out on their own.

(8) Move Lia's backstory to a more fitting niche in the story and tone her reaction down some after running into the Aurelian boy.

I would rate this a 6.5/10.
An Ember Bright came off to me as a promising first draft, but a first draft nonetheless. I liked where the story was going, but it seemed at times that we could have gotten there a lot quicker than we did. There were several unnecessary detours and subplots, but there wasn't really anything a good bout of editing couldn't remedy. I can't say the premise is the most original in the world (something very similar is seen in Victoria Aveyard's Red Queen, for example), but I can't say I didn't grow attached to the story throughout the span of reading it. To the readers, if you don't mind the use of these popular tropes, I think you could come to enjoy An Ember Bright, but be warned that it remains ongoing and hasn't been updated in a year and a half. Good job and good luck!

This is merely my opinion and my advice, please do not try to correct it. This is what I thought of your book while I read it and it is entirely your choice what to do with it. That said, I worked really hard on this. Please be nice and remember that I'm trying to help you improve your writing.