Review: The Parallel

The Parallel
by Lahevet Pollack

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Parallel / B003CV7RH8

When Nox, an otherworldly creature with powers of transformation, finds a young human girl unconscious and attacked by Death creatures, he is shocked and surprised to find the wounded girl bleeds blue blood - don't humans usually bleed red blood? The mystery deepens when he carries her to an address she carries in her pocket, only to find that the mysterious human woman there claims no kinship or knowledge of the poor child.

This was a difficult excerpt for me to review - the concept is a solid 5 stars, but the writing style needs serious editing. Firstly, try not to extend sentences with multiple descriptors, set apart by comments. This is very hard for new writers to remember - it's something I struggle with more than anything else. "Bruising the darkness", "assaulting the sky", and "crippling the peace" are all very vivid and descriptive, so why use only one when you can use all three, right? Unfortunately, the reader won't appreciate the long flowery prose - you pretty much have to pick one descriptor and toss the others in favor of tight, concise writing. Secondly, you simply must excise all the "Pause" statements in the dialogue - a little bit of "she paused" and "he paused" is alright, but it gets old very quickly. If you want to indicate pauses between dialogue, then have the characters do something physical - look at the girl, move around the room, look away meaningfully, and so forth.

The plot itself, however, is extremely interesting and compelling - I very much enjoy tales mixing the human world with other worlds, and somehow this novel puts me in mind of "Queene of Light" with the descriptions of the otherworld residents. You might consider hiring a professional editor to help flesh out some of the editing nuances, because underneath there seems to be a wonderful story that deserves to be told. I would definitely like to read more, once the technical aspects were addressed.

NOTE: This review is based on a sample excerpt of this book provided through the ABNA contest.

~ Ana Mardoll

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