Benblake

Promising

There are good things in the first chapter. The world is obviously detailed and well thought-out, with lots of strangeness and mystery - exactly as a Fantasy world should be. Michael is a good character too, and I like that the great hero dies at the start. That's brave, and it leaves the reader wondering how the good guys can cope without him.

But there's a large problem. From the phrase "Michael had been the most amazing person alive", through to "Michael always survived. Until now", the chapter is just an info dump. The reader is given a large amount of information in one big block, which is hard to digest even if he can maintain concentration. I think it would be better to leave that until later in the story - we get the idea that a great leader is dying, we don't need to be swamped in detail. When you do return to it, could you try to break it up into dialogue, rather than narrative? Having two people speak their memories makes the information easier to absorb.

This is a significant issue, but don't take it to mean that I didn't like the chapter - I did, though mostly for the ideas in it. There's good stuff here, it just needs bringing out.

Promising

Interesting. This feels like a zombie book, but maybe isn't - the word isn't used, and the monsters are like zombies but maybe not quite. Nice touch to leave that vague. I don't really like the two characters - one's a bitch and the other a wimp - but there's time for that to change.

Here and there I found punctuation issues - a comma in an odd place, for example. Nothing major, and it might have been deliberate, so it's not a big thing.

Overall, pretty good.