Descendants and Tribulations
written by Amalya
reviewed by Amber_Sica

Title: 9/10
What I liked about this title is that it not only portrays the idea of your story and your plot without giving too much away it also sounds very fantasy. Since that is the genre of this story, that's a great thing. There are few things worse than picking up a book (or in this case, clicking on a story) because the title sounds just up your alley, only to find while reading it that the title is misleading. The main reason I took a point off for this is because it is not an 'eye popping' title. You know what I mean... there are those books that you see in the store and they just seem to jump off the shelf at you because the title is so intriguing. This one is a great title for your story, but just doesn't have that POP.

Plot: 29/35

                4/5: Originality
                To be totally honest, despite that I am an avid reader of fantasy and mythology, I have never read anything quite like this story. I loved the idea of it and the way that it all played out, especially with the being so unexpected, but once again I had to take a point off. The reason this time is because in this story you utilized the oh-so-popular prompt of a bad boy playing the jerk to get the good guy. Yours, of course, was done in a much less cliche way than a lot of stories I have seen, and honestly, nothing is completely original anymore. However, I did have to take a point off for it.

                10/10: Believability
                As I mentioned, I love mythology. The twist/play on Echidna's descendant was totally surprising and I kind of felt like you had nothing else to explain the power you wanted to give him, and so stuck him to Echidna to do so. That's not totally a bad thing, because I can understand your meaning behind it and why you wanted to go that direction with his power, but I was certainly taken by surprise. However, it did not take away from the believability, I simply had to point it out as being so unexpected and unique.
                The relationships between the characters with thought to the way you have set up your world makes all of this quite believable; my only advice would be to watch out for predictable stories. I could guess where it was going right away.

                8/10: Narration
                You have a fantastic voice, I loved how your story came to life with your words. Watch out for slipping into purple prose, though. While I am all for having in-depth descriptions to flesh out the world and characters as much as possible, there were some points of the story that really did not need to have as much description as you had. They got a little lengthy, especially in comparison with the almost bare bones way you treated a lot of the dialogue (more on this in the writing section).

                7/10: Setting
                I have to admit that while you occasionally had too much description of the goings-on, the world itself left me with questions. Is everyone a descendant? Do they all have powers? How is that possible, wouldn't powers from one parent cancel out or add to another, making either powerless children or super-powered children? Why are there rules on the use of powers and who makes the rules? How is the world governed? Why weren't there 'peacekeepers' of a sort to stop the attack or at least rescue Suga?
                And more questions: the game itself