A princess passes through a quiet settlement on her way to marriage. She is not the only visitor in the area, though. As a call comes in the middle of the night, seven are drawn to answer — and deal with it as best they can.

Community Reviews(1)

luda305Royal Road

★★★★ 3.5

This is a really, really promising fairy tale which would totally be publishable, except that I am mentally incapable of finishing it because it's written in a verb tense that drags me down into the muck.
Style: This is my biggest complaint about the story and the reason I could not finish it. The story is written in third person present tense. I won't argue about whether tense stories should be written in, but in so much as stories are written in past tense, first or third person, third person present tense ultimately ends up being mentally exhausting to read. I only got through half of chapter 2, and a peek at chapter 7, because it was just too tiring to read. I'd really have to read one chapter at a time. While third person present tense might work for very, very short fictions (poetry or a 20 page short story), this is 120 pages. Considering how great the story and characters are, it's a shame that the style caused me to put the book down. Author: If you do revise the story into past tense, PM me and I will re-review.
That said, the use of the tense does lend a certain disconnectedness to the story, which may or may not be intentional on the author's part. This is particularly so as using third person present tense when considering a character's inner thoughts tends to give those thoughtrs an airy, aloof feeling. Not necessarily a good or bad point, but worth noting as unusual.
Finally, particularly in chapter 1, there is a bit of "A happens, then B happens, then C happens." I'm not quite sure what is causing that (it might just be an offshot of the present tense problem above, or it may be an independent issue to address), but it does make chapter 1 a bit harder to get through compared to chapter 2 when the plot gets moving.
Grammar: Fine. The use of single quotation marks, rather than double, is a bit odd, but I understand to be standard in some English speaking countries.
Story: The story is nice. It reminds me a bit of a Grimm fairy tale, albe

The Seven Dreamers

Community Rating

Description

Information

Tags

Royal Road Stats

Chapters(7 total)

Reviews

Community Reviews(1)