Author:- Bunzy161

Reviewer:- alexanderusanov

Let start my review by paying tribute to the author of the book. If we don't go into too much detail just yet, then the beginning of «Silver and Evergreen» is inherently indistinguishable from the introduction of some purchased book. I don't know if the author had any editors, but the first chapter (let's skip the episode that would be censored in a printed publication for now) draws us into the world of suffering, an inescapable dream and sympathy for the main character from the very first lines.

And also, Im sorry for this review is written in a solid block without dividing into any evaluation points, as prescribed.

The reviewer, who is not able to impress with the refinement of speeches and professionalism, would like to just write as it is, and be as close to an objective opinion as possible, where it directly suggests itself. But basically, the review indicates only the subjective opinion of one of the readers, who, unfortunately, read only three chapters, therefore I apologize in advance for what you will read further, since there will be no indulgences or any flattering speeches if there are no grounds for this. After the main block, the overall score will be displayed, as it should be, but for now...

Let's talk about what was surprising and upsetting in what was seen and read.

First, I'll start by saying that I like this book, strictly speaking, not because of the cover.

By the way, a few words about the cover. To put it bluntly, it gave me two different feelings. On the one hand, it is unsightly, simple, and it feels like even your reviewer, who is completely ignorant of visual arts and graphic design, could make such a cover. When compared to many other covers that precede books here on Wattpad, and are made by self-taught people or people who show talent and professionalism, this one is too modest - a discreet title, as if made in a standard font in Microsoft Word, though the background is interesting because it slightly resembles an old seascape. (Hope I'm not the only one who got this impression). But I'm afraid that it can't compete with many book covers on Wattpad, but in general, it's not at its full potential, and sadly, it can get lost among the crowd of more "professional" covers.

(Reviewer's note: It may seem strange, but on the other hand, this cover simply doesn't fit in with the trending concept. However, it seems that this cover lacks a more serious designer; I would not like to reproach the author of the current one, but that cover, I would tell you frankly, is terrible.)

But who cares about the cover? Covers, as everyone knows, are like clothing. Beautiful covers are fashionable clothes: attractive and eye-catching, but under it there may be a completely stupid type. And in a nondescript and unsophisticated cover, a sleeping and silent masterpiece can be dressed. As a matter of fact, the reviewer was convinced in that. Partly.

It's hard to tell from the title what to expect from the book. "Silver" and "Evergreen" can refer to anything, each potential reader will have their own associations, and this is an undoubted plus, but at the same time, a sophisticated reader, I'm afraid, may not find anything remarkable in the name. This does not mean that the name is inappropriate, but where a limited number of words are used, if we are talking about any name, each word has a huge meaning. It's hard to tell if the title is good or bad, but it attracts less attention than the author would like, I think. There seems to be some intrigue missing, something that has raised more than one question. In truth, the main question is like a riddle: what is this evergreen and silver, guess, dear readers". Maybe many people will like it. After all, the reader will know why the book is so named if they read the book, and will not make guesses to no avail.

The most interesting thing is that if a potential reader passes the cover, and if he is a passionate fan of fantasy, then the blurb is unlikely to displease him. This can only happen if this person has some personal biases about the standards of writing a blurb. It seems to describe a mini-story, after all, the first part of which could be inserted into the book without hesitation as an epigraph or a full-fledged prologue.

However, in the second part, the key turns of the plot are stated, frankly speaking, and a certain path is created from the beginning to those events in which the Girl (let me call this the main character, whose name remains unknown for at least three chapters) learns about her origin and so on, which this kind of invites us to go through. But whether it was necessary to lay out trumps on the table in order to captivate the reader is also difficult to say. It seems that this kills a large part of the intrigue, a kind of spoiler happens there, and everything will depend only on the reader's desire to go further individually. At the very least, the reader will have a general understanding of what is waiting for them, and if they don't like the story idea, then you will know for sure that they are not your reader. Still, it does not seem worth revealing the storyline from the very beginning. By and large, this can confuse many and discourage any desire to dive deep into the unknown world. Though the reviewer was not confused.
(Reviewer's note: But that wasn't my goal, so I didn't attach much importance to this part. Perhaps it was better not to mention much of what is mentioned in the second part of the blurb, and the most important thing is not to mention that the main character is planning to escape, but simply to mention some information from the situation in which the girl was at the very beginning, that she lives in unbearable conditions, but wants freedom. A slave girl has a patron who is always there for her, and who knows how to help her and fulfill her dream. But the problem is that she is in the same position as the girl herself. Intermission. I don't know about you, but I would be intrigued. Although this, you know, is quite reasonable, given that the adviser should like what he himself advises.)

Now about the most important thing. Of course, about everything that is hidden inside the binding.

Well, to be honest, about the first half of the first chapter was able to do something that most of the books here can't do that much: it gave me confidence that the book was going to be mind-blowingly interesting. It was especially pleasant to read, as if it would be a good idea to describe the life of the main character and her surroundings throughout the book in this way, even without having a famously twisted storyline. The oddity of all this is that it is difficult to say what made it seem that if no one would have told the reviewer that this book was not written by a famous writer with a lot of awards for achievements in the field of literature, then he would have considered that the book was written by a such writer.

There is nothing complicated about the opening part, but the introduction to the characters was so amazing that I can only applaud standing up. The difficulties that the main character experienced, going from the circus to the Drakons manor, made me "fall in love" with this girl. Her character is so innocent, and she is so pure and inquisitive, that we can imagine her as a very realistic character, which only a complete idiot could not empathize with.

By the way, all the primary characters progressively and purposefully revealed their character traits. The author of the book clearly coped with the creation of character images flawlessly. The images and appearances of Elyse, Drakon, even Lord Hearthgrim, this hideous man, although his appearance was episodic, all of them have distinct contours. And their description is presented not in an ordinary enumeration, but at the right time and in the right place. In this component, the book, at least for three chapters, would not be inferior to the best-selling books.

As for the mature scene with the lord's, to put it mildly, indecent behavior. Yes, the preparation for what happened in the text is carried out long before the event itself, little by little on behalf of the main character prepares us for something extraordinary, and yes, the warning that a sexual scene will be shown is at the beginning of the chapter, but, still,right away after the prologue, this scene confused a lot. I would say more, this is the most controversial episode, which is difficult to attribute unequivocally either to the necessary moments of the narrative, or to the unacceptable ones.

It would seem that thanks to this scene, we are increasingly convinced of the motivation of the main character to end all the torments, in addition to the fact that we become uncomfortable. I suppose anyone would personally punish the lord for what he did.

On the other hand, I was shocked... with such details. To be honest, I personally don't see the point in describing the act of rape in such detail. Yes, let's say the narration is conducted by the heroine herself, which adds even more drama and it seems that everything that happens becomes highly unpleasant to imagine in our mind and it seemed impossible to avoid it, however, after reading those few paragraphs before, I would say sincerely, the girl's frank and uncensored humiliation caused mixed feelings. I still believe that softening the scene would only be beneficial. Seems that the essence and ensuing effect on the reader's empathy would not be diminished at all if everything were less straightforward and open. But the author knows better, and I don't see much point in doubting her idea.

Towards the end of the chapter, the pace of narration accelerated, which was expected, because the chapter ended and all that remained was to convey "cliffhanger" to the reader. A kind of escape from the custody of a fifty-year-old slave owner and his business colleague-a rich, depraved old man.

At the end of the chapter, annoyance befell your humble reviewer. It seemed to him that there was no reason to criticise, because if we take the first chapter as a whole, then we could hardly say a bad word about it.

Speaking about fox ears. About those ears, thanks to which the main character heard the approach of the Lord. The question is, how did she achieve such an acoustic effect? As we know, she can change the shape of its body, similar to the appearance of animals that she has met and, as we found out, people, but the fox has good hearing not only because of the shape of the ears, but also because of the structure of the ear. But I don't think the main character dissected the fox to find out all the subtleties and then recreate everything exactly for herself. A little odd, don't you think? But this is fantasy, I suppose it's acceptable.

But what really upset the reviewer was the subsequent events. In four days, the fugitives had to come up with a clever escape plan. Their immeasurable desire to get rid of the harsh life in the company of a greedy tyrant who tells the girl to her face that she is only a source of income will not be disputed and cannot be questioned. But is it so?

The girl's motivation is more than obvious. Lust for freedom, oppression, bullying. The girl is put on a collar with an electric shock, she is raped in any way, the master wants to sell her to someone who just sees in her certainly not the first love. But besides the fact that you need to have an aspiration, it is desirable to have an end goal, because in the end you need to run to a certain place.

The ultimate destination for the fugitives was predicted to be a city where there was a loyal king who opposed slavery, but in that city they had neither acquaintances nor friends, there was absolutely no one. But there are two people who want a better life. Well, about the girl with exceptional abilities, young, energetic, everything is quite clear. But I was wondering what the motivation of the older woman is. It seemed, and here everything is obvious, she has been living in slavery for many years, her "husband" is an oppressor and despot. She also wants a better life. But is there another side to the question of motivation?

Let's add more details to the picture for a better understanding. Look, an elderly, low-energy woman, who in thirty years could get used to her position, decides for the company of a "superhero" to exchange a warm house for something abstract, for a place where only she can beg so as not to die of hunger.

Im sorry, it's full of exaggerations, but is the motivation of the old woman as great as described in the book? I mean, she didn't express any concerns or thoughts about it, like "Am I strong enough to hide in the woods and escape from possible pursuers? Yeah, what the difference does it make? I just want to escape." At the very least, I would subject her incentive to serious analysis.
Finally, the time has come when dreams will come true, and the magical creature with the woman who almost became her mother, will gain independence.

They came up with a plan, and nothing seemed to stop them from putting it into action. All goes well, Elyse persuades Drakon to become a kind of intermediary in the deal and guarantee its execution. But if we look closely, here we have: the master sells a slave with magical abilities for a huge amount, and naturally both the merchant and the buyer are interested in the effectiveness of the transaction and in the safety of the "items" of exchange. The carriage is equipped, the coachman is in his place.

But, dammit, the only guarantor of compliance with the deal and in general the only passenger of the main character is an old woman who wants to escape from captivity at any opportunity, tired of enduring her slave position. Not a very reliable intermediary, is it?
You know, I don't think Drakon is so stupid and irrational, given its financial situation and the ability to use slave labor, to send slaves without protection, even without some lousy dogs, but only with some other servant-coachman Charles on a long journey full of surprises, realising perfectly well that they are slaves who are ready to escape at any moment, especially after first keeping the main character in disgusting living conditions and instructing the old woman to put on her collar before private shows, as well as undoubtedly guessing that their region is not the safest and most peaceful place on the planet.

But the plot should go further. Unfortunately, then some oddities begin in the behavior of some characters and logic, mostly.

(Reviewer's note: Let me add something very subjective. The dreamers we know had four days to develop a plan that actually turned out to be quite logical. Although there could be quite a few variations of this plan. For example, it was possible not to invent stories about someone needing to go to the toilet at all. When the carriage stopped, they could just leave without permission. The question is, how could the coachman prevent them from carrying out their plans if the Girl turned, say, into the same beast that neutralized the robber who attacked them? Their close-knit duo could easily deprive the frightened Charles of the carriage and continue the journey themselves, wherever their eyes look. But perhaps the Girl is too kind-hearted to take away the driver's vehicle.)

The tree blocking the road was just as welcome. And it seems that the driver thought to look at the trunk and see what caused the tree to fall on the road. A bolt of lightning, or it was cut down by a gang of robbers who did it for obvious selfish purposes. But he didn't have time, because...
Because the next thing we could imagine how a gang of robbers sitting around a campfire (after felling a tree to block the road, obviously) and sending a novice to check if a carriage was trapped, because that guy attacked the stagecoach all by himself.

I must say that the scene of the fight with the bandit and the death of Elyse is very dramatic and poignant. But after re-reading the series of episodes that followed it, the reviewers eyebrow began to twitch in a literal sense of confusion, and he wanted to shout something like: "Does this girl even have an instinct for self-preservation?" Well aware that at any moment the friends of that brave robber may be drawn to the place of skirmish, she decides to take a risk, long and painfully applying herself to the body of the old woman in order to take it away from the battlefield and bury it with dignity. (Reviewer's note: Unfortunately, not having a shovel at hand, she simply put the corpse in the forest and covered it with everything she found nearby. It may sound cynical, but it's strange that she would put her life in danger for such a funeral.)

Horse. This is a special topic. The horse itself is as common as a sunny day, but the idea of bringing the body of a murdered woman on its back was a good one, given that the woman was too heavy to move it by the forces of the Girl herself.

Let me bring to your attention one physical task.The conditions are as follows: a fixed block, the weight of the load is greater than the weight of a young girl, as well as the force that she can give out for a long period of time. The load must be lifted to the height of the back of a mature horse.
Question: Can the main character lift a lifeless body there, as she did in the second chapter?

To find out the answer to this question, open the Mechanics section of the physics textbook.
(Reviewers note: Of course, after all the troubles that happened, the forest robbers apparently noticed that their colleague was lost and decided to explore the area and came across the main character riding on a horse (or were they the Hearthgrim's people, the truth remained undisclosed). According to estimates, it took the robbers a long time to realise this, because the Girl managed to reflect on the difficulties of life, make the horse go to the forest and"bury" her second mother.)

Despite everything, in my rude and heartless opinion, inaccuracies are important, but the atmosphere and descriptive content without regret overwhelms and overshadows them, which makes them almost invisible. However, there is something that has raised one of those questions that probably only the author would give an answer to.

Why did the Girl always remain in human form?

I can't find an answer to this question. One transformation into a fox, for example, would be enough for her to avoid many troubles (besides, the fox sees well at night). Why hadn't she thought of that? I agree that at first she wasn't up to it, but why she would remain in human form, knowing that at that moment, it was the form of the most wanted creature in the area, remained a mystery to me. And a big plot flaw, which is not so easy to ignore.

Speaking of the third chapter, I must say that it combines many different sensitive moments: a heartwarming funeral rite, some variation of a river-crossing chase, and a meeting with forest dwellers. However, the strangeness of what was happening in the second chapter and at the beginning of the third, as well as the fact that the intrigue slowly reduced to a somewhat quiet and flaccid narrative, for the first time made the reviewer feel bored, and so much so that he read the third chapter superficially for the first time, with the only desire to return to reading something that stood out. The first half of the third chapter is written quite well, but compared to the prologue, it is somewhat worse in terms of descriptive content, despite all the tragedy that continued to develop. The action began to stretch, preparing the reader for the long and tedious wandering of the Girl in the forest.

Surprisingly, the enthusiasm and singularity of the action was resurrected from the ashes when the girl met a pack of wolves, and they did not bite her. That's where the real fantasy started. The belief that the girl has superpowers is ingrained in her as well. Moreover, we seemd to have found out what the word "Silver" refers to in the title of the book. And there was a familiar feeling that the author had returned to writing as before.

And until the end of the chapter, the desire to postpone reading or close the book almost did not appear at all.

Well, the main character, having passed all the trials, eventually reached the walls of the city she was trying to get to, which means that now is the time for the reviewer to apologize for such a strict review. As you know, everyone can criticize, but not everyone can give the right advice. Knowing this, I won't even try to sound intellectual. But perhaps if in the episode with the attack on the carriage, instead of one robber, a whole group ran out, and the stagecoach was accompanied by a detachment of cavalrymen, it would be more realistic, in my mind. Maybe the bandits would have decided to attack because of the ambush on the coach and the aftermath of the clash, and it could have happened what happened in the story or something. In this case, it is impossible to do without correcting the plot, unfortunately.

Perhaps if the rape scene had not been so "high-quality" described, the impression of reading it would not have been divided into contradictions. Perhaps the story goes much better beyond the third chapter, and the story will take on new emotional shades, but to be honest, at the moment when the reviewer read the last sentence in the chapter, it seemed to him that with such a plot development, there would be more dark spots than light ones. But this is a subjective assumption that should not be taken seriously, since it is based only on...
...assumptions. (However, during the writing of this review, he began to treat the opportunity to read further more positively than before.)

It seems like a good time to take stock:

Title: 6/10

Perhaps it could be called better, though it could also be called worse

Cover: 3/10

I'm sorry, but this cover attracted the reviewer's attention only because it was stylized as labels on game cards for a Sega console.

Blurb: 7/10

Everyone will have their own opinion about it, personally I think that it would be appropriate to hide a couple of spoilers.

Sensory Details: 8/10

The only thing that distracts from the wonderful atmosphere of the story is some confusion and discrepancies in the reactions and actions of the characters.

Setting: 9/10

As I read it, there were practically no questions like: where are they located, what does it look like? And if there is nothing to complain about, then I need to pay homage for this.
Character Development: 9/10
All the characters in the first three chapters can be found without problems in the real world, in the sense that each of them is represented as a living person, with goals, aspirations and desires, and appearance, and all this considering that the emotional range of the main character naturally came to the fore.

Plot: 7/15

Hopes for an unpredictable and non-banal story were partially justified, though everything came down to an "everyday" escape, and the apparent oddities (illogicalities) in different situations shook the firmness of the plot.

Grammar and Spelling mistakes: 8/10

There are no serious questions about grammar, except for punctuation, a lot of necessary commas before conjunctions are omitted, and in some places "it's" is used instead of "its".

Overall Impression: 9/15

A dramatic and sad, but sometimes ambiguous story that seems to hide a huge potential somewhere in the depths of itself. Unfortunately, the further the story goes, the more it seems that everything will continue as in the average book, here on Wattpad. But the manner of presentation and original style, if I may say so, which can be traced here on an level of feelings can only cause admiration. Some magic tricks are also good and well-founded. Turning to the author, I would like to say that you have done a great job.What you definitely should not do is stop, and you should write more and more. Regarding your book, I would personally suggest that you work on the plot, correct the apparent gaps in the logic of what is happening, even if this entails significant changes in the plot. And the current cover, I suppose, may scare off some readers, because of its simplicity. But not because of the simplicity that attracts other people's eyes, but because of which you want to find something more complicated. These are probably the only two stumbling blocks that have raised serious questions. In other components, I would not advise you to look for any categorical alternative, because only the sky is higher.

Total: 66/100

Grade: B/B-