I am SO sorry this took so long! Please don’t hate me for it. I had finals, and then I had to pack and get home and- anyways, I hope I’ve done a thorough job to make up for how long it took. Let’s get to it, shall we?

Title (4/5): The story title is eye-catching and entertaining. Drew me in right away. It’s sometimes hard to see how the chapter titles are related, but overall, very well done.

Graphics and overall appearance (2/5): The poster and the background are lovely and I, being an incredible artistic fail, am not qualified to judge them. Still, I think they fit the tone of the story very well, so no complaints there. I marked points off because of the presentation of the story itself. The triangles that appear after every name are extremely distracting, like you’re attempting to draw our attention to them. In doing so, you draw the reader away from the story itself because there are triangles everywhere. Similarly, there are lots of words that are bolded and italicized. I realize that you’re probably trying to stress these because they are names that are unique and special to your story, but using it for too many things is, again, distracting. It feels as if there will be a glossary at the end and trust me, you don’t really need to emphasize everything like that- we get it, and it just interrupts the flow of the story. Which brings us to the next…

Flow (9/10): I ignored the font and formatting here, since I mentioned that already, and instead focused on the actual flow of the story. I like that you have two stories going simultaneously, but I love that you’ve taken a risk in writing Yi Jin’s in first person while writing Chan Mi’s in third person. Other readers might disagree, but I thought it was a great choice. Furthermore, there was never a moment in the story where I felt lost or confused. In addition, your cliffhangers at the end of each chapter are great, leaving me wondering what happens to each story when you suddenly change to the other one. I took off a point here because in some places, particularly within the dialogue, the story gets repetitive and a bit choppy. For instance, when she talks to Hyun-ae after Hyun-ae teases her about getting kissed by Chunji:

 “Drop it Ahn Hyun-ae. I’m not in the mood to play with you. And, I don’t like him. He’s all yours, if you like. Shut up, will you? Don’t give me that look. You’re starting to get on my nerves. And just because your FRIEND JS was not here, doesn’t mean you can act like that.”

It felt a bit like you were taking every single sentence that could possibly be a response to Hyun-ae’s teasing and cramming it all together at once. The result makes it choppy and I stumbled a bit as I was reading it. You could split it up; for instance:

“Shut up, will you?” Hyun-ae merely twisted her lips in a smirk, which only served to fuel my anger. “Don’t give me that look!”

That’s just an example, which you don’t have to follow if you don’t like.

Characters (2/10): Unfortunately, I found the characters the weakest point of your story. None of them stood out in particular and they were fairly 2-D. I’ll focus mostly on Yi Jin and Chan Mi, since most of the other characters didn’t show up enough for me to get a good grasp of them.

Yi Jin’s whining and complaining when she ends up in Eremurus Kingdom is understandable; however, she’s like that before she ever gets there. When she meets up with her supposed best friend Hyun-ae, the two seem to be engaging in a frenemy battle- they keep sniping at one another, although Yi Jin is supposedly “happy” to see Hyun-ae. A round character has depth and many dimensions- Yi Jin is volatile and switches from one state to another more often than most idols switch hairstyles. If I were asked to summarize Yi Jin’s personality, I wouldn’t really be able to say much beyond, “She likes to complain.” Even though her story is told from her point of view, we don’t end up with a good sense of who she is or what makes her that way. Luckily, I sense that this story will be fairly long, so I’m sure you have plenty of room to develop her character!

Chan Mi is slightly more well-rounded- we at least know her story and we know that she wants to be treated as an equal, not a princess. When her castle is attacked by the Daimons, she claims that she wants to be part of the action, but the moment danger actually shows up, she’s completely terrified. I guess I can’t blame her completely, since she’s facing non-human creatures much more powerful than herself, but it is a contradiction on its own. She claims to be brave and wants to protect her people, but when it comes down to the actual mess of battle, she’s a scared little girl that needs protecting. This may be unfair of me, since I’m sure you are planning on developing Chan Mi much further. I just hope she turns out more like Hermione and not Bella.

Grammar and writing style (15/25): You jump back between past and present tense a lot throughout the story- please pick one and stick with it! It makes the story so much harder to follow as you switch back and forth. Also, watch your word choice. You make lots of minor errors; it’s “I’ll definitely get back at him” not “on him.” Also, you’re missing some commas. Be sure to proofread it before you publish, or ask someone else to help.

Now, let’s talk writing style. I’m a bit hesitant about judging this part, because I think it’s a matter of opinion- one reader can love a writing style while another hates it. But I think the most important thing about style is whether it adds to or detracts from the story. Unfortunately, I feel like your writing style takes away from the story. The main thing about your writing style that I’d like to talk about is how you describe scenes and characters. Sometimes, I feel like you describe too much, other times, you barely describe anything. I’m glad that you have descriptions of the characters and settings, but it’s not necessary to describe every minute detail. Rather than listing off observable traits, you could integrate them more smoothly into the story.

For example:

You wrote: “Aunt Karly’s eyes were full of worry yet they were warm. She was a woman of about 50 years of age with green eyes and brown hair that she loves making into a bun.”

Could be something like: “Aunt Karly’s warm green eyes were full of worry, echoed in the grey streaks in her brown hair…”

That’s just my example.

Also, I don’t believe it’s necessary for you to describe every single detail. Just the most salient ones or the ones that will later play important roles in the story would be enough for the readers to get a good picture of the scene. Furthermore, if you use a word like “about”, followed by a number, it should be an estimate of a number. This is really minor, but if you say something like “a woman about 66 years old”- that is an extremely accurate estimate, particularly for someone about to fall unconscious, don’t you think?

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there were times when you don’t show the reader enough. With Yi Jin, since the story is told from her point of view, I’m expecting a clear peek into her head. I expect to see her thoughts and emotions. For instance, when Jae-soon shows Yi Jin the crystal room, Yi Jin says “It was a dazzling sight.”

Well, that’s nice and all, but how did it make her feel? Was she breathless? Did drop open? What was so dazzling about it or what made it dazzling? Let the reader into the scene as well, and show us what made it “one of the most beautiful scenes [Yi Jin had] seen in [her] life.”

This applies to a lot of other things Yi Jin says as well. “I’ll die if I’d stay here any longer”- why? When she’s being chased by the monster, she says, “Never in my life had I got frightened like this”- how frightened is she? Is she envisioning herself being torn to pieces and devoured? Why is she so scared? And that scene where Jae-soon teases her and she gets furious with herself- why would Yi Jin think she’s being stupid? Her reactions don’t make much sense unless you show us what’s going on in her head. You’re narrating her actions as if she doesn’t really know what she’s thinking herself. I have high standards for first person POV- when done well, the character’s fear will make me shiver, their anguish will make me cry, and their happiness will make me smile. Unless you’re purposefully making Yi Jin an unreliable narrator, the reader should get to know her very well by this point, and I just don’t feel like we do.

Furthermore, the battle scenes. I love action movies, I love fantasy, I love anything that has people duking it out with swords and armor and magical powers. That’s why I was a bit disappointed here- the fight scenes read more like newspaper articles. Fighting is good because it can make us emotional and fearful. Like in action movies- when a car blows up or someone gets plowed into a building, we flinch or cover our mouths in horror, even though it’s all fake. It’s much harder in writing, but that should still be the same kind of effect you’re going for. Your descriptions read more like a person describing a child’s fingerpainting rather than Impressionist artwork- the former merely mentions colors and shapes, while the latter should invoke feelings and emotions and tell a story.

Oh, this is just a suggestion, but could you somehow differentiate Gongchan’s talking from Yi Jin’s thoughts? Even splitting them up into different paragraphs would work.

Originality and entertainment (22/25): You have no idea how happy I was to see that you had written a fantasy fic. That sets the story far apart from others already. Some of my favorite parts were the shifting labyrinth and the enchanters. I saw elements of some of my favorite fantasy novels in this fic, like the Narnia Chronicles or Lord of the Rings, but you took these things and blended it into your own unique mix. At no point did I ever feel like you’d stolen something directly from another work. It was all you and all unique.

And at the same time, that might have been the problem. I checked out your story profile and I was impressed- clearly you’ve thought this through a lot. As I read this, I really wished that you had written this as an original novel, rather than a fanfic. People read fanfiction for the idols, and in this story, almost every character is an OC and the idols aren’t the main characters. It’s not a bad thing, and I’m not saying that you should go through and change all the names of your OCs to idol names. When writing fanfiction, however, just by simply giving a character an idol’s name, your reader has an idea of what kind of personality this idol will have (whether they’re right or wrong doesn’t matter) and thus the character becomes more memorable already. When creating an OC, you’re creating a character from the ground up and you have to work much harder so that the character will stand out to the readers. When writing a slew of OCs as you’ve done here, you have to work just that much harder, or the names fade from memory as soon as the reader has moved on to the next sentence. I don’t mind that you’ve used a lot of OCs; I’m just warning you to think of who your audience is. We read a fanfic preparing to see lots of idol names- throw a lot of OCs at us and it’s just that much more confusing. And if you ever publish this as a real novel, let me know. I’ll buy it. ^^

Plot (16/20): Two stories wound together and connected in some subtle way that you keep hinting at but haven’t actually revealed yet? Can you say awesome? Since I’ve already praised you here, I’ll mention some other things about the plot that I think you may need to watch out for. The pacing is rushed at times- especially with Yi Jin. One moment, she doesn’t trust this priestess who found her in the woods; the next she’s saying that she’s always wanted a grandmother? This is rather unbelievable, unless the priestess cast some spell on her since it is a fantasy story.

Furthermore, there were other details that seemed unrealistic as well that you can’t really use “Oh, it’s fantasy!” as an excuse for. Fantasy may be one of the most flexible genres, where you can stretch reality, but there are still limits. It seems highly unlikely that a “monster” would be deterred by getting poked in the chest with a twig, no matter how sharp the twig is. It seems more likely that the twig would get snapped in half. How can she see the Nurikabe if it’s invisible? How can you hear someone smirking? And how does Aditi know about movies? These are minor things that perhaps only a geek like me would have picked up on, but I believe that it’s still something you should watch out for.

Overall, this story is very interesting and has a great deal of potential. Let me know what you think of my thoughts, and I can’t wait to see what you do with this! Total: 70/100