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|    Ɑ Ƅℴx ℴƒ  ℂℎℴℂℴℓⱭŧ℮   |

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| xoxo~ simplicity at its sweetest ~xoxo|

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Dawn of the Worlds

by ReaLiknownot

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review by celestial-xx-kisses

note: there will be spoilers to the story. apologies, but they were inevitable.

title: >( 10 )<

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The title is quite cool! It makes a slight allusion to what happens in the story, with the girl being pushed into a new world and all.

However, it seems just the littlest bit cliche, as “12 Saviors” stories in the EXO fandom are so common.

Not a bad name though! It’s memorable, and very eye-catching.

description/foreword: >( 8 )<

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The premise itself of the description is completely fine, as it carries across the plot point and introduces the characters in a minimal fashion. At least, now you know which fandom you’re in for sure, whether it’s hetero or , and what’s going on

However, the wording of the description throws me off a bit.

While I understand that you want to make the sentences as short as possible for dramatic effect, having no verb for all three of the sentences in the description makes it sound disjointed and choppy rather than dramatic. One time would be ideal, but even twice is better than in every sentence.

What you have in your story:

A dying tree of life.

Twelve men sworn to protect and serve it.

A girl caught in the middle of it all.

Okay, that’s great! But… what’s actually going on?

The verbs that you have aren’t actually being used! Instead, they’re being used as adjectives. Dying, sworn, and caught are being put to fill more in on the characters themselves, instead of what they’re doing.

It could be more of a stylistic thing, but something that could give a similar feel without seeming too choppy:

The tree of life is dying.

Twelve men, sworn to protect and serve it, have to find the Chosen Soul.

A girl gets swept into it all.

Make sense?

You don’t have to change it if you don’t want to: it’s just something to keep in mind.

Your foreward was an author’s note; no points given or taken from there.

plot/originality: >( 7.5 )<

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plot:

Not bad. Decently paced, with a happy ending that made the readers happy. There weren’t any terribly shocking plot twists - save for the whole “sacrificial lamb” scare, but that was eventually dealt with in its own time.

Alright.

Time to break down the one scene that I loved (and the one I disliked) the most in the entire story.

It was when all the elements, animals, and plants gathered at one area, just surrounding the room where Iola was resting.

What I didn’t like: The dialogue around that area was very repetitive. Basically, all of Exo just rephrased one sentiment. “By the Sacred tree, all of creation is gathered here for Iola!”

Also, wouldn’t people panic if dragons and other terrifying monsters began swarming? Especially if said terrifying things have not been seen in centuries.

However, the accepting speech with “I was Atlas.” totally made up for it

What I Liked: The battle scenes. Mama!au’s make me beyond happy, and yours were no exception. They were well written, and helped. They weren’t just random battle scenes for the sake of gore. Also, the damage you inflicted on to the characters was permanent- Jongin’s face was burnt, and stayed that way.

Note: It’s debatable as to whether or not Admon was a deus ex machina or not. He seemed a tad too handy, but it still had hints of plausibility.

originality:

Alright, I’ll be honest. Originally, I wanted to give you no points for this section.

Why?

If you go on any page on AFF, you’ll probably be able to find at least two stories about the “tree of life, the “twelve saviours”, and some girl. The ridiculous backstory that SM set for Exo did nothing but generate millions of fanfictions, both good and bad.

Long story short: this trope is overused. Very overused.

But somehow, you built a world that I was able to get into, and for that, I gave you half points back.

Plus, kudos to you for building more than one race. That can be a painful process, and requires quite some foresight.

>( +1 )< for such good world-building!

characterization: >( 6 )<

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Iola was given a very Mary-Sue name, but ends up having human flaws and being enough selfish and rude.

Near the end, however, she becomes a bit too all-powerful for my taste, with her relationship with the Teimans, her sudden knowledge and acceptance of her death, and absolute power in calling all of the animals to her.

Sadly (or happily), my least favorite character happens not to be the OC, who was actually written decently well.

No, my problem is with eleven members of Exo who didn’t really get much backstory on them. Yixing is fleshed out, at least to a better degree than the rest. The rest have been given a couple mentions at most in each chapter, with them having rather similar personalities, and indistinguishable dialogue.

Even more characters were soon added into the mix, and with the many, many sets of characters, I found myself beginning to get confused.

spelling/grammar: >( 8 )<

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Your spelling is pretty much spot-on; you’ve clearly checked and double-checked each chapter for errors. There’s little to none homophone confusions, and you never switch over to British spelling within the text.

The grammar is pretty much also correct, but the occasional comma is missing. A piece of advice: when you don’t know whether or not to put a comma down, read it out loud and see if you pause. If you do, jot down a comma. If not, you’re good.

The only major thing that sticks out to me is that in your writing, you sometimes switch tenses. You need to keep the story in one consistent tense.

Some past tense verbs:

jumped

had hit

flew

became

Some present tense verbs:

jump

hit

fly

become

It’s all in how you build the sentence. For the basic subject-verb sentence, you would stick with one tense.

Example:

Iola jumped up.

Now, if you attach a participle to it, the participle would have a present indicative (present +ing) verb with it.

Example:

Iola jumped up, hitting her head.

Another thing, the word “was” is a verb too.

It’s highly irregular, and has many different conjugations. Here’s a quick list of the most common.

Conjugations of Was

is - infinitive/present
was - past

(will) be - future

being - present indicative

has been - present perfect

These will all be covered in school, but the easiest way to think about it is that you’ll only use one major tense in your story; you’ll never say “is” and “was” in the same sentence.

*Note: Dialogue is written in present tense. You would write, “She’s lying.” even if you were writing in past tense.

writing style: >( 10 )<

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Your writing style is perfect for this kind of action, romance, light-hearted story. It isn’t overly dramatic or weighed down with metaphors that leave melancholy feelings; rather, it’s simple language that carries the action across.

Writing style isn’t just based off of what you write, but it’s also on how you feel while writing/reading it. With a story like this, I see nothing wrong with having less description, while more dialogue.

overall enjoyment: >( 8 )<

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Fantasy/action stories are quite honestly my babies. This story encompasses two of my favorite genres, making it a very enjoyable story for me to read. The world-building was the absolute highlight of this entire story, with many races and multiple histories being created.

(The Harry Potter shout-outs made me very happy. :D)

The only thing that detract from your overall score are the tense errors, and the massive wave of characters that I couldn’t get over.

Other than that, I’m glad I got to read this!

Thank you for requesting a review at  Ɑ Ƅℴx ℴƒ  ℂℎℴℂℴℓⱭŧ℮, I hope I helped!

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final score: <(58.5/70)>

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reviewer’s note:

Wow, this was a great story to read! Don’t mind the seemingly low score, I’m just a seriously harsh grader. Seriously- I graded one of my own stories using this rubric once, and I landed an impressive 40/70.

I'm sorry for the century-long wait! Real life things popped up, and made me lose a lot of time.

Thanks for sending this in!