What is your opinion?
extremely interesting plot
"The plot if this story if filled with problems and solutions so it's literally impossible to get bored. I'm hooked and I can't wait to see what happens next! There is a few grammar mistakes but this story seems amazing"
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."
Prologue and first chapter
"I only read the prologue and first chapter. Therefore I don't know where the storie's going or how cleaver the plot is or if the author has been sneaking in Chekhov's guns. I'm not a fan of writing in the present tense. Perhaps there are some cases where this is good but I'm not sure this one of them. Calling the two groups "Ebonies" and "Ivories" doesn't really sit right with me. As the main character is both, I guess we're going for some anti-racist message. These group names are bit obvious, or are being mislead here? They clearly look different, but we're not told what they look like (I had an early version a "Tales of Midbar" story critted once and people really didn't like me having different races but not describing them) and seem to very rarely interbreed. The rarity of interbreeding would suggest that either these groups have only come into contact recently or have some biological barrier to interbreeding, which would make them different species rather than races. People don't normally refer to people of mixed race as "both", perhaps this is something different from interbreeding between species and races (two dominant genes one giving people antlers and the other fur, so Naomi would have fur and antlers or something). The normal names of the characters would suggest that we're a future version of our world, which makes the Ebonies and Ivories even more puzzling. I found it strange how Naomi didn't seem to know what the area around her house looked like. It was also odd how she described her parents(?) as "him" and "her". She also seemed to recover very quickly from a horrific trauma. She tells us about different types of trees and wood. Perhaps there are explanations for these things. I think it's obvious that the disease the children are supposed to have isn't what it appears and doctors are lying to them. If this is going to involve medical technicalities, how well researched is it? I couldn't tell from what I read. There are also some issues with spelling and grammar. Might be a good idea but perhaps needs more work."
