Dragon Sold
-The-Architect
Science Fiction

Cover
10/10

I'm rating your cover high. It's got a great font, seems to fit your blurb and opening lines, and it's well-made. Congratulations to your cover designer. ;) The only issue is that it's a bit dark on my computer, but that's just my computer and not worth taking points off!

Blurb
6/10

Blurbs are hard. I ain't kidding. I hate most of my first blurbs. I still hate some of them. So the fact that I'm rating yours a six is great. :)

To begin with, I like the aesthetic look of your quote, and I rather like the quote itself. I'm definitely not going to slam you for beginning with one when that's my favourite way to start a summary XD However, it could be made considerably more hooking.

Your last phrase contains a grammatical error, "I better" instead of "I'd better". That alone is off-putting. As for the first two phrases, you can make them more streamlined and concise by deleting the first comma and the following it : i.e. "... requires feigning ignorance any longer and means that others are forced..."

Congratulations! You now have a much improved quote. :)

The rest of the summary, while mostly error-free, has two main problems: it's wordy, and it sounds cliché. We start with a girl who wants to believe she's normal, but clearly isn't. Now while there's nothing wrong with a story about that, the summary is not going to grab a whole lot of people. Besides, from my reading so far, she starts out being fairly happy the way she is, and is only after certain plot twists wishes she were different. You might want to rewrite to show some of that, as that's a considerably less common route (from what I've seen). And while we're talking about cliché, the "higher powers... pawn" phrasing -- that's stale stuff. Definitely get rid of it.

As to your wordy problem...

I skimmed this paragraph. I managed to get the sense of it with barely a glance. That tells me that you have too many useless words in here. "... that anything about her that may have been slightly different..."

You can rewrite that as:

"that any difference in her"

Much cleaner.

As for the last sentence, it could be not only less wordy, but more gripping. Leave the passive voice and think about going a whole different route with it. "Anything to replace the sea of danger they had tossed her in without a second thought."

Eh. Don't like that much. But you get the idea.

Just look for unnecessary words and consciously cut them out. It's really easy to go wordy in summaries, don't ask me how, but... *sigh*

Check your last paragraph for tense accuracy -- I think I noticed a couple slips there, and an extra comma after "then". But actually I enjoyed it a lot. It conveys her real desires and feelings of despair, and I liked the "death trap" part, which seems to tie in to the prologue and the cover. That one's a keeper.

General Grammar
7.5/10

Here I come, the Grammar Nazgul at your service!

You have a good idea of varying sentence structure, and you avoid a lot of common mistakes. Your grammar is in fact fairly decent. However, you need to brush up on your usage of commas and pay close attention to where you put them. I found some in unnecessary places, and ran across several sentences where they should have been used but weren't. I noticed several problems with dialogue tags as well, though I get the sense those were due more to carelessness than actual lack of knowledge, as you utilized them quite correctly in other places.

There was a tense slip in the first chapter, during S'rivana and Vialane's conversation: "That never happens". If it's S'rivana's direct thoughts, then it should be italicized; otherwise, happens should be happened.

One more thing in particular I noticed was the incorrect use of "lied". Lie, v. to deceive, and lie, v. to recline, have different past tense forms. The first one uses lied; the second is lay.

Language Usage
7/10

You have a great vocabulary, and gorgeous descriptions. I love it. But the wordiness we saw in the blurb is coming out again. I'm not talking "purple-prose", but rather extra phrases or words that add absolutely unnecessary information. And I'm not sure what's a cure for this, but I can only suggest to read it aloud to yourself, and if it sounds awkward, it probably is awkward.

You can change "the individual whose features possessed a somewhat diffident air" to "the man with a diffident air". It's cleaner, it's easier, and it gets exactly the same message across. Or to use an example from your book, "the girl in question's hands" can be better written as "the girl's hands".

That's not to say there isn't a time for those extra phrases. Sometimes there is. For instance, if you had a lawyer character, what better time to use them than in his dialogue and inner thoughts? But you don't want to make it a regular thing, because it isn't easy on the readers.

Characters
8.5/10

Ahhh, I'm happy. Your characters are a delight to read! The reason I'm taking points off:

I feel like they're not fulfilling their potential in the way they could be.

But they have so much potential!! *cheater, I know, I read your Mary-Sue tag*

Basically, what I want is to see more of their character in these first few chapters. Especially S'rivana. She and everyone else is so cool, but what you focused on most in the first chapter especially was S'rivana's ability, power, magic, whatever. Now don't stop doing that; it's important. But so is her personality, and I wants more of that!

Plot & Pacing
9/10

It's not a very unique plot as far as I can tell. But your own take on it, and the mysterious secret police that we still know very little about yet, as well as the individualizing aspect of your world, makes it a tense and exciting read and I honestly can't wait to see how things progress. Your pacing, while toned down by the wordiness I mentioned, was still great. And I'm just going to say: you are so good at building tension. Yum yum. *inner writer happy*

I'll mention one thing here I think you should do: change the bit at the start of the first chapter to a prologue. It looks like a prologue, it feels like a prologue, and it doesn't belong in the dreamy, descriptive mood that follows. There's a little worm gnawing inside me, saying, "Wouldn't that be so glorious as a prologue?"

Okay, I'm making myself laugh at my silliness now. But seriously! It would be fantastic. You do this, I am happy forever.

Overall
8/10

- cover rating
7.5/10

Thanks for writing such an engaging story, and please update soon... ;)))) Ahem, have a great day.