I don't read prologues unless asked, so I started Ch1. Part 2. R, but that was super confusing so I went back to the Prologue.
Rating: Would not keep reading.
THE GOOD:
I think you have a good sense for prose. It's well paced and has some good description.
THE BAD:
It's all very confusing. Not just the "first chapter" but the prologue too. You have a very, very difficult time establishing information in a functional matter and the logic is all over the place.
Example: The prologue opens with Aldrick. We're inside his head. We're in the middle of the action and it's a little confusing, but it's fine enough. BUT THEN you POV swap. It turns out this was all narrated from someone else's head. It literally switches TO first person. It's so confusing that you swap, and even in 1st person, it's super confusing that the POV would know what's going on in someone else's head.
OVERALL:
You throw information at the reader haphazardly without any thought to how we're going to take it, and that doesn't even account for the straight up errors that wouldn't make sense even if the information was understood by your reader.
Rating: Would not keep reading.
THE GOOD:
Fun setting.
Good prose for mass market. A little simple/ YA-y but its super accesible and enjoyable.
THE BAD:
The specificity of writing: You waste a lot of your readers time by being vague. Having read a lot of proffesional books this last month, this reall stuck out to me.
Nekhet's life had been turned upside down after her stupid mistakes, and she did everything she could to make things right with her father. All she saw in his eyes was disappointment and regret — when he even bothered to make eye contact with her — and that was despite her best efforts to try and help with the debt however she could. It just so happened that the only way she knew how to, was crime. But he didn't know that, and she never wanted him to find out.
Paragraph one, what do you tell the reader? Actually just sentence one: MC is facing new circumstances, MC made mistakes, MC is trying to make it right. That's the outline version, but that's also what you literally wrote. We need specificity and actual facts and circumstances to relate or appreciate what's going on. Over the course over 75 words, all we learn is that she has turned to crime. . . for some reason.
And the reason this bothers me is that you're so close. You understand that a change of circumstance, drastic actions, turmulet relationships are good. That's great fodder for any story. But you absolutely can't estalbish that by saying they exist. You have to show the audience what that means. Even in a paragraph of exposition, show us the specific facts.
OVERALL:
It's fine. Some of the dialogue bothered me, but it was mostly the writing. This could be very easily a would keep reading, which is doubly frustrating.
Rating: Would not keep reading
THE GOOD
It's a bit off the wall, but it's a fairly interesting premise. Or maybe not premise. . . It's got a weird detail that made me sit up straight and say, "what"? I don't know. What I'm saying is that it's surprising to a certain degree and it grabs your attention.
THE BAD
It's very hard to read. The prose is all very, very short and stilted. Conversations go in in snippets without anyone being identified for large swathes of time. At first, I thought this was experimental or artistic. I thought you were doing some stylized prose at first. But no.
OVERALL:
Unfrotunatly, that problem with the prose makes it very very unenjoyable to read. Vary sentence length and work on the flow.
Rating: Would Keep Reading
THE INTRUIGING
It's hard to say what parts are good or bad. You have a very clear style in your head and you execute something that is very unique. I think in large part it works and gives the narrative a dream like quality. Which is to say, I don't think it works 100% of the time. When the style stumbles, i snap from going "Oh it's artistic" to "Is this AI generated?" The more avant garde you are, the more you have to nail it.
Reminded me of the Naked Lunch. So weird.
OVERALL:
It's interesting. Especially for something is supposed to be pornographic? It'd be neat if some areas were cleared up and a little more senseical, but for a short chapter that is essentially a blurb to sell the rest of your story, I'm interested with the caveat that it could go too far at some point. Wistful dream-like descriptions and converations can only get you so far most times.
