Title: The Butterfly Effect

Author: beyoujm

Reviewer: Prince_Pretence

Blurb: 2/5

My reaction to the opening line of the blurb was 'okay, that's epic, and this is going to be great' until it came to the part of 'she said as her brown orbs stared into the distance'. It not only broke the whole rhythm of the first good line, but it also confused me immensely on further reading the book where the narrator turns out to be 'he' and not she. So, what was the point of introducing this 'she' here?

Moving to the entire blurb; it is more like a summary being narrated by one person to the readers. Until you had planned to keep this narration consistent throughout the book, i.e., tell the entire book in this format, this attempt at blurb writing made it feel disconnected, and it does not reveal much for the readers to interested in the book. 'The two brothers were always treated as equals by family and friends'—was there a reason for them to be treated differently? 'As the world splits them apart'—why did the world split them apart. The problem here is that among the four essential points of information that must be present in a good blurb, we only get to see a glimpse of one—the characters, who are two brothers. But then again, there is the 'she' as the narrator first, and then the blurb is told from an omniscient point of view. There is the solid aim, stake and setting or even one of the other three for the readers to care to know why and what happened to these two brothers, who may or may not be at all different than any of us.

That could've been ignored for once, if not for "your" suggestion with the line 'find out by reading—' which takes the essence of this whole blurb, rendering it to be a mystery that the readers must solve by reading. The Taster Quotes part, at its best, is distracting. The conclusion is, while there are questions present in the blurb, they're forced upon your possible readers because readers themselves obtained no information whatsoever through the blurb to ask any question.

Cover: 3/5

Not terrible, per se, but I had to look and relook at it. By the looks of it, the cover seems for a romance cover, while the blurb speaks of two brothers' story and then you've yourself emphasised that the book is mystery/thriller, which puts me in a state of confusion.

Grammar: 2/5

If grammar is simply about spelling mistakes, The Butterfly Effect has almost none. But throughout the book, tenses swap with every paragraph. Literally. The story opens with a past continuous tense, moves on current tense and keep deflecting all the time. While one of the characters speak [which is rarely], suddenly everything is happening in the present tense, and then it goes back to past participle or continuous. The author of the book must choose a tense and stick around with it. From the looks of Ram and Shyam, the two brothers are in the actual presence of the story, two grownup men, because there is often foreshadowing while their childhood stories are told. Since the book opens with their childhood and is possibly moving towards adulthood, it's not compulsory that childhood must be present in past tenses. Especially when up until the seventh chapter, it seems like whatever is happening with the two brothers is already tearing them apart. Part of the problem here is narration and point of view, which is not allowing the tenses to stay consistent. [More on narration and point of view in the Writing Style section.] There are too many 'the's throughout the story—lack of dialogue tags in every single dialogue through the book.

Character Building: 3/5

Merely speaking, Ram and Shyam have developed until the seventh chapter well enough then they had started, but it's not very impacting. We still don't know how is this going to prove useful with the story further, and it's even confusing because we don't know what the story that we are dealing with here is. Is it merely about how Ram and Shyam will turn out in the future? If so, then there is not enough provided about the two brothers for the readers to care about. Sure, we read their stories right from when one is 9, and the other is 7 years old. But what after that? This is a problem of mostly lack of an actual story here, so more on this in Plot section.

Ram is the most developed character here, but his development is not shown to readers. It is told. His motivations for doing what he did is told to the readers, for instance: when he gets his parents' thumb impression on that blank piece of paper, it's already established that he wants to work to earn money for Shyam's further training. But the readers aren't provided with any emotional connectivity up until that moment, for any of them to care much about Ram's motivations. After the first mention of his age in the pilot chapter, there is no information of how old he is during the whole 'meeting old woman and moving to city' fiasco, which is something that left me thoroughly confused because, for a boy of nine-years-old, Ram understands a bit too much about money and hardships, despite having lived a seemingly beautiful childhood and then comes the 'empty-sheets-of-paper-with-thumb-impressions' which is, of course, a trap. And Ram fails to notice it. Neither his parents do. It is understandable that they want a good future for Shyam, but why exactly? For the mere sake of the story? Why don't they care about Ram enough? Why don't they dig deep into what's the old hag up to? Don't they worry about their son's fate, who is probably leaving his house for the city with a stranger? The only proper development about Ram's character is the introduction to the part where he is about to be trained as a pickpocket, which is the first real connection with the blurb of the book.

Shyam, on the other hand, is a cardboard character who is favoured by everyone but hasn't shown any actual development up until the seventh chapter. He is the eye candy, a forced eye candy. He is there merely to make his brother look kind or underprivileged or hardworking; he is used as a leverage to push up Ram. Every other character apart from Ram is a two–dimensional character; his brother, their childhood friends, their parents, instructor, the guy Piyush, the girl Meghna. Plus, we never understand so far into the book why are they even present, which is why they're only showpieces. All in all, the character building is jumpy, but since I can see where the characters are going, this is the least problematic thing of the book.

Writing Style: 1/5

It's not basic; it is simply confusing and doesn't have any emotional captivity in it. As a reader, I did not connect with the story, the characters, the aim, stake, et al., because the writing style did not let me understand anything. Things are described to the word, and not in a reasonable manner. The best example is the opening paragraph, where the village is described. Everything going on in the scene is described, said to the readers to imagine, and not shown. I'm unable to copy–paste, so all I can say is that the writing style is dull and overly–stretched. Ram and Shyam's relationship is tried to show as a close one, but one character is glorified or described through other's point of view in certain scenes. Two things are involved here: lack of narration and point of view. See, in the opening scene where Ram devises that they all go to watch the cricket and then their principal catches them? Here Ram is shown to be the good, caring and ideal brother by Shyam's point of view, which might not have been a problem, only if he was the narrator of the story. Throughout the book, the point of view changes in every chapter, with every paragraph, and I have absolutely no idea who is the narrator. If it's being told through an omniscient point of view, it's not proper because the 'telling' everything; from the characters to the scenes, to the dialogues, to the story itself—is done by one character in lieu of another. Ram and Shyam exist to push up each other's character [which is not valid, though] but seems the very way because of the author's writing style. The supposedly most essential parts of the story are emphasised through minor actions like Ram pulling himself together in the memory of his mother or Shyam trying to move on by realising that he won't be with his family anymore. There is a big question here of 'why', and it's not even a question posed by the story; I'm asking this question because I don't understand the relevance of these actions to the bigger story here, which is absent until this point. Piyush's character is an excellent example of cardboard characters who are defining other characters or situations by mysterious quotes like the one he uses when Ram says that he will help other people and he [Piyush] can't do anything about it. Why will Ram do so? Why will other people need sympathy or help? Why does Piyush think that kindness is idiocy for them [I've no idea who is 'them']? No answers.

All in all, the writing style is bogging down whatever what we've gotten so far from the blurb to character development. Another big issue here is 'timeline'; it does not exist, at best. At one point, Ram and Piyush way back to their little mattress in their quarters and the next moment, he is looking for his partner through the crowd. From what I have gathered, what you mean by the first line of that para [in the sixth chapter, I'm assuming] that they are going back to their cramped quarters and mattresses from earlier that morning, but the way it is written, it seems as they've already reached their quarters and Ram is now again searching for Piyush in the crowd. In the next line, they are asleep. Now, I agree that there is no point in describing minor actions from the point they reach their quarters to the time where they are in bed, trying to sleep, but the contradictory writing style is not helping. The timeline gets ruptured time and again throughout the book, and after the second chapter, I've no record of how much time has passed since the first chapter.

Plot + Originality: 1/5

All of the story that I've read so far is building towards the idea of two brothers, separated by fate. One is going to be the good guy, and the other is going to the bad guy. And that's what the blurb has told me. So, very well done. But what is all this developing towards? Now, I understand that the author cannot reveal all this information in the first ten chapters, but the aim and stake of the book must be hinted at, at least in the first three chapters. Seven chapters into the story, all the four critical aspects of a 'book' itself are incomplete or absent. Blurb spoke of three characters, and I'd like to think that I know who the three are, but what's their aims and stakes in the story? What is the setting? How is all of this going to lead to that 'murder' part? Absolutely no idea. There is no plot at all in a sense for your average reader who will read the first chapter of the story, and decide if they're in or out for the rest of the book. And in the first three chapters, apart from a wee bit of character building [which, is again overshadowed by lack of aims and stakes and a plot], there is no information.

The idea of two brothers becoming each other's polar opposite is a trope, doubtlessly, but their development is a little bit unique. I've some knowledge of Bollywood movies applying the formula of two siblings turning out to be each other's opposite, for each other's sake. But Shyam's character here is a little different; with him being trained as a badminton player. So yes, uniqueness exists. It would also exist for me, on the whole, another level until I got an Indian colleague on board, who listed out at least five movies with the same idea of siblings from village getting torn apart due to their poverty and then ending up against each other.

OVERALL SCORE: 12/30

This review might not be any help to the author, other than realising that as a reviewer, I did not understand the book at all. I would've tried helping out with jotting down of what could be changed or improved, but the issue is that I could not pinpoint on an independent point of the book whose change or improvement can help make the story better. In a few words, for a mystery/thriller book, the mystery is enforced by the author on the readers. There is no mystery or thrill at all because we don't know what the story is. There is the aim, stake or setting in the book. We are to wait for that murder which is supposed to become the most significant difference between the two brothers. But why should we wait for that? Why should we read the book? The question here is not 'why does the end comes the way it comes'; the question is 'why should the readers care'? The narrative is relatively troubled, with the author directly addressing to the readers at point [the part where Meghna is introduced]. Why? The timeline is jumpy. The foundation of the book—the plot, is not clear. Readers are told stuff, rather than being shown. Description of tiny, unimportant things like the environment is overwhelming.

The way characters are written, the readers are supposed to sympathise with them, because of what they [the characters] feel. But readers can't sympathise with something they [the readers] can't feel—lots of 'telling' and almost no show. Again, the lack of a solid plot, aim, stake and setting. City—what city? How is it mean or kind to the characters? Simply because Ram chose or rather, was forced to become a pickpocket, does not mean that the city is terrible. And yes, how the city or the village treats the character is important because I relate to the idea of the story starting and ending with the 'village' when I read about Ram and Shyam's time in that place.

Overall, the book 'The Butterfly Effect' could use some work to become better. Although, on a personal note, I have rock-solid ideas of where is the story going. Credits to my Indian friend, who explained to me the great Indian cliche of 'Karan–and–Arjun'. I am sure you know that one.

My intention was not to hurt or harm you in any way. All my comments and critique are about your book, your story and not your talents or skills, in general. You requested me to be as brutal as possible, so I decided to cut to chase and just tell you what you wish to know. My sincerest apologies for the delay; I was in the hospital for quite some time, and returned home two days ago. Still, I'm sorry for the inconvenience due to the delaying and if my words have been uselessly harsh. That is not my intention in any form or manner. I wish you all the best for your future writing endeavours.