Author: nmdean

Genre: Fantasy

What I liked:
- Well, a lot.

So Katia was very well-written in just the first few chapters alone. Immediately, we are introduced to a patient from the experimental logs, then we get to read from the view of a prison cell, and we learn of the Kazitsila's cruelty and the gravity of the situation. We are instantly thrust into the world of Arcana and we get to experience every scene through masterfully well-worded descriptions, and it's realistic.

Altogether, this book was just so aesthetically pleasing. The cover is gorgeous, the description perfectly ties the knot for the reader, and the introductory chapters are clean and get straight to the story, where things get interesting. There is no lack of description or mental imagery. There is no bland writing or wasted time on mundane activity. We're planted into the action at just the right point to get the feel of the story before it's even begun.

I also really liked Katia as a person. She is relatable and sensical, and she has a history. I loved the fact that she remembers her old life to cope with the difficulties of her current one. It's a powerful statement, to say the least.

The vocabulary is excellent. Magnifico.

What I didn't like:
(1) I feel like it wasn't really necessary to add hair, eye, and skin color to the profile introduced in the experimental log. It didn't seem like something that would really be relevant to the people experimenting on Katia and kind of read as a way to shrug off the work of introducing Katia's appearance. You may have heard this before, but hair and eye color when in descriptions by themselves are pretty cliché character image traits. Realistically, this isn't all that much of an issue, but if I had to take something to nitpick, this would be it.

(2) I've actually read a few books here on Wattpad that I really liked, but after a certain point in the book I would realize that my mental image of the story is kind of hazy and the story becomes that little bit less interesting. I finally found what it was when I read your book, so don't be offended, but books with a writing style similar to yours have probably gotten a higher rating in the past because I couldn't pinpoint what that was.

It's description. I went through reading your whole book, loving each part individually, but as a whole after I'd read more and more of it, my image got fuzzy. This is because there's too much description, and I have never said this in a review in this sense.

For a lot of people, description is something to strive for, but if you have too much, it might be a good idea to remember this: some scenes can be blunt, and some scenes can be flowy, and some scenes can even be choppy, if that what your character is feeling. There needs to be a sense of variability in your writing throughout the different moods in the story as it follows the behaviors and mindset of your protagonist. The poetic feel to your writing fits Katia's emotions in chapter one, but at some point, she needs to feel something different in order for the readers to follow along, and when Katia feels something different, the writing needs to show it. When she's afraid, for example, the narration of her thoughts should probably get shorter and more blunt because at that point, she's running on fight or flight instincts and isn't noticing too much about what's around her. At this time, the description would go down a notch and things would be more frank so as to illustrate how Katia is thinking. I can really only see Katia describing all of these things like you do when she's perfectly calm and somewhat analytical; if she's feeling any strong emotion at all, she won't be paying too much attention to her environment.

The dialogue in chapter one was the first example I could find of what might count as variability. For that whole conversation with Silvie, Katia is focused only on the little girl, not on her surroundings, so we pretty much just get the dialogue for a page and a half of blissful writing. But at some points in the story, I felt like the description was actually clouding us away from Katia's emotions, acting as a barrier instead of a vehicle in which to describe them. You can mix Katia's feeling in with the description, too. A good example of this is in chapter two when you describe Katia entering the laboratory:

"Stomach fluttering, Katia averted her attention to the rattling tubes that ascended from massive furnaces burning with coal. With each one that passed, she felt a noose of heat coiling around her throat."

This portrays the way she feels through the description very nicely, but at the same time, Katia is supposed to be terrified and if we're to be scared of this place as well, Katia needs to at least internally show some of her emotion. I wrote about this in my last review, but pacing might help remedy this issue also. If there's something at doesn't really affect the story in the description, you might consider leaving it out. A lot of these facts about the environment around the characters become excess at some point, and then it becomes a hindrance to the readers, so for as beautiful as it is, you really could stand to tone it down a little.

Suggestions:
(1) I would remove the hair, eye, and skin color portion of Katia's profile in the experimental log.

(2) Change the flow of the writing to follow the protagonist's mood so we can escape the fog of poetry every once and a while.

I would rate this a 8.5/10.
So I would definitely suggest this book to those who are searching for a read. It's incredibly well-written, and pretty much my only critique is that we hear more of Katia's thoughts and inside opinions. Other than that, this is just as good as my very first impression of it, which was really good. From author to author, I would suggest you brave through writing to the end, though—even if the writing sucks—instead of posting a few chapters and editing and so on and so on. After you're done editing, I'm sure this will be a great book. Good job!

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.