cat_named_easter

Talented Writer

I found the premise of Of Illnesses... really intriguing and the opening chapters hooked me enough to keep me reading the whole novel to find out what would happen to Naomi. The first-person present tense narration works well for this genre (similar to The Hunger Games) and the basic concept was really interesting. A couple of things prevented me from giving an even higher rating: 1. For me there was some over-writing. A lot of adjectives and adverbs could really be trimmed down as they detracted from the pace at times. 2. The sense of pace overall. Having read the whole book I think I could have easily skipped about ten chapters and still figured out what was going on as if I hadn't missed much. In other words, I didn't feel like much was happening in the grand scheme of things for some whole chapters. It would have been good for more change and a sense of escalation from one event/scenario to the next. If the whole plot was boiled down to its basics, it could have been spread out over much fewer chapters, I think. K.L. John is clearly a talented writer. The vocabulary and sentence structures are varied throughout and there's obviously been a great deal of time and care invested in the world of this novel. What a great achievement.

Enjoyable

Hi Hugh. I enjoyed reading this. Firstly, the subject matter intrigued me. I'm not a huge fantasy-reader but I do like that genre, especially in film, and I thought you wrote about the idea of magic itself in a beautiful way. I also really like epistolary stories. The idea of a character writing a letter is always interesting and you've used it to create a sense of intrigue and mystery (although by the end I hadn't really had all of my questions answered). Finally, I like that you created a personal tone, as if it really was someone writing in a sort of conversational style. I thought it did fluctuate at points though and some word choice felt really formal which jarred a little with the chatty tone in other parts. Overall I'm glad I followed the link to come read this. If you're interested in time travel/speculative fiction, it would be great if you could check out my novel 'Turning the Hourglass', even if you just want to read the first couple of chapters to get a feel for it: https://www.inkitt.com/stories/scifi/232732 Thanks!