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Faded Stars

Runes of Despair by myheartswishes

Genre: Action, Fantasy, Romance

Characters: Kris, Kai, OC, Mark, EXO

Status: Ongoing

Eunkyung (OC) was a witness to her parent's unlikely demise back when she was just a child, and subsequently found herself in a modern concentration camp where she meets people who will ultimately change her life forever.

Notes From Reviewer

I apologise for the late review; I've just been really busy and I wanted to really spend the time to read through your fic thoroughly. I’m sorry if it isn’t as detailed as you would have hoped, but I believe there are minimal adjustments that you need to make for your story for it is already very good. I hope you find this review helpful.

-gnohnuj

Title (5/10)

It’s certainly a striking title and it did pique my interest at first. I was actually looking forward to having the “runes” being incorporated into your story as I thought there would be some kind of riddle and I love riddles. However, after having read through your 19 chapters, I have failed to see the relevance of your title. Perhaps you have yet to reveal it, though I feel that if it’s not relevant to the first 19 chapters of your story (which I assume would account for more than half your fic), it really is not a suitable title for your story. It appears that you have picked the title purely based on how nice it sounds without giving much thought to how it would affect your readers’ first impression of your story.

Description & Foreword (8/10)

Your description paints a very detailed picture of the world they live in, however, I have noticed that there is an overwhelming number of foreign terms such as “Great Uprising” and “Ordinaries”. While you might have aimed to explain these in greater detail in your story, I would actually advise you to refrain from using too many of such terms in your description as this could confuse your readers, who have no prior knowledge of what your plot is about. I don’t see it as a big problem, however, and you can choose to keep them if you wish to.

Your foreword is intriguing, and to be frank, I did not really understand what it meant at first, but having read chapter 16, it made more sense.

Plot (15/20)

You have obviously done your research. The detail is astonishing and the world you have created is very real. You have described a fair bit of what’s happening at present time, and I appreciate that, but I am very much unaware of what has happened in the past. Your description promised an interesting background, which your story is based on, and I would like to see more of how it links to the past. Return to the “Great Uprising” and make it a more solid plot by presenting causes and effects so that your readers can understand what brought about the current situation your characters are in and sympathise with them. By providing a solid history of events, you can also clear any doubts your readers might have on why this happened in the first place.

Your plot is relatively original, however, I have read similar plots about a concentration camp, and I thought the games were very similar to the Hunger Games (especially the projection of the deaths in the sky). There’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from another story and I’m not going to fault you for that.

You had a few heart-wrenching scenes and you definitely know how to break your chapters to effectively bring about the tension. The scene when Eunkyung slapped Jongin was raw and painful and you built up on the tension by fol