It's about time I reviewed this, really. Admittedly, this is only for the prologue. Some of the information might come up again as I go through your work, but basically, I realize I have over twenty chapters of material to look at. Doing my usual detailed reviews might actually be more of a pain than it's worth, so I'm just going to be detailed at first and then, if I feel like reading through all twenty-odd chapters, you should probably know the generals enough to get the idea so I can focus on whatever's new.
Moreover, I know you've gotten rave reviews, and I'm just going to say that every instance of me saying "the reader" is me telling you about general rules of thumb. Frankly, I do find it a little alarming that I'm finding some problems that people haven't pointed out by now. I can't entirely tell if it works for people or if some people just are sugarcoating, but in any case, this would be why I don't normally pay much attention to the reviews that come before mine.
That being said...
Legend has it that he trained indefatigably in the Distortion World. After emerging from the Distortion World, he was biologically the same age as when he entered: twenty-seven. However, he had lived for a total of sixty-two years. As a result of this tireless training, his Pokémon had become powerful – more powerful than anyone could have ever imagined.
Your prologue has its merits of not having too much to improve on grammatically (although it has some problems in that department that I'm going to get to in a moment), but one problem I can spot off the bat is your tendency to tell instead of show. You do this again later in the fic (particularly when you introduce Charlotte... which resulted in me facepalming over how you presented her personality, but I'll get to that in more detail when I get to that chapter), but the basic gist of what I mean is that for information that you can't possibly show the reader (like background, such as saying that a character grew up in a certain village most of his life), it's okay to tell the reader that part. However, in many cases, you actually want the details to come out by way of the characters themselves. For example, as much as I don't want to touch that Charlotte example, you say she's a good person but not naïve. That's great and all, but to a reader, it really means nothing. Being a good person could mean a lot of things. It could mean she's generally not done anything wrong because she's apathetic, or it could mean she's Mother Theresa. It all depends on her actions, and if we can
see her act good, then we can really come to understand and sympathize with her. Portraying her in a textbook passage by telling us who she is instead of showing us keeps her at an arm's length from us because you don't let us draw our own conclusions about who she is.
Getting back to the point, however, in
this particular prologue, part of what turns me off is the fact that you spend a lot of it telling us what he did instead of showing us. For example:
Enraged at Cyrus's recklessness, Giratina emerged – not to attempt to imprison Cyrus in the Distortion World again, but to crush him, so that the balance between time and space could remain. Both Cyrus and Giratina fought valiantly, each knowing that if they lost, this battle would be the last they would ever fight. Slowly, Cyrus's team was whittled down to Weavile, a small, dark weasel that stood fearless against this towering legendary.
The slash of claws, the chomping of teeth, the stomping of feet – the battle raged on, Cyrus determined to realise his vision of a new world. Suddenly, the great beast disappeared into a dark void – had it given up?
You have an epic battle, but we're not allowed to see what's going on. This is a flipping
legendary, whose mere presence in the Pokémon world has practically torn it apart, and we don't see its power. We don't see Cyrus fending it off with attacks. We don't see the rippling waves of energy that come from its Shadow Force or the blasts that shook the Distortion World to wipe out the majority of Cyrus's team. All we get is you telling us that Giratina appeared and proceeded to kick Cyrus's pasty rear. I'm sorry, Citrinin, but for a prologue, that's actually a bad thing to do because the prologue is the very first chapter. You've got to make things dynamic if you want to really capture a reader's imagination. To do that, you have to show, not tell. Even if you're not doing it for the majority of your readers, do it because it's just a better way of starting off a story than a static chronicling of events in a way that doesn't paint a particular mental image.
On a similar note…
This… is actually what I mean about telling instead of showing when it comes to introducing characters. While, sure, canonically, Cyrus is a bastard, so far in this fic, all we've seen him do is romp around the Distortion World and train his Pokémon, and after this point, he just goes and does the stereotypical evil overlord kind of thing all over again. Evil? Yes. Monster? Not until you actually include the "oh, by the way, he's torturing innocent Pokémon to get his means of ripping apart the universe in order to remake it in his image" bit, which you don't seem to actually get to in this prologue.
To look at it another way, just leaving it at "He was a monster" either falls short of really giving him much characterization if you were intending on relying on your own narration to give us an illustration of these characters or, if you were just going to be assuming that we'd know what Cyrus is like from canon, states the obvious because, yeah, we can sort of figure that he's a monster.
Also, about this:
Using his potent charisma, sharp wit, and excellent oratory skills, he inspired the same generation that he had before – after all, no time had passed in the thirty-five years that he had trained. With his incredible power, he eventually managed to regain the energy he needed, and he rose to the top of Spear Pillar, a second time.
While I know Cyrus is the kind of determined son of a mother who would actually stop at nothing to obtain the three pixies, rip the jewels from their heads, and use the resulting chain to rip apart all of reality because he leads a sad, sad existence, I know he's also canonically pretty amazingly intelligent. Would he
really try the exact same plan all over again, considering where it got him the
last time?
This is, of course, aside from the fact that I'm wondering how exactly Giratina would have factored into his plans, considering he was after Palkia and Dialga in order to reshape time and space. Giratina has powers to rip apart reality, sure, but its domain doesn't cover reshaping it in anyone's image.
There shall be no escape – you will be in my grip, and I shall create my new world."
Okay, one of the grammatical oddities I've spotted in your story thus far (the others being, if I recall correctly, in later chapters). The dash is not a semicolon or a period. It does not serve to connect multiple independent clauses. It offsets a parenthetical (phrase that can also be put in parentheses) – but only if the parenthetical is not its own sentence.
To give you a better idea of what I mean, replace the dash with a period. Notice how what you get out of this part is a set of two sentences? Try this whenever you insert a dash to make sure you're not attempting to create a run-on sentence.
You do this a few times in this chapter alone, so I feel like it's something worth mentioning.
the battle raged on, Cyrus determined to realise his vision of a new world.
You'll actually want the word "with" just before Cyrus. (I would suggest removing the comma as well.) The reason why is because it reads rather awkwardly otherwise, particularly because everything after the comma is more or less a tangent that isn't closely related to the main clause.
While I can understand italicizing the onomatopoeia for emphasis (and, well, because it's an onomatopoeia), this… might actually be best left alone. This one is more up to you, but basically, leaving it without italics causes it to lose its emotion. In some cases, this would be bad, but for a line like this that already carries a lot of potential literary boom, losing the narrator's tone causes the reader to experience the kind of shock Cyrus must be feeling at this particular moment. It's an unexpected tidbit delivered in monotone, a lot like what one would expect if they just got off the phone with the coroner and turned to you to tell you it's your kid after all. (Odd analogy, but maybe you get the idea.)
Eyes opening wide with realisation, he saw that the portal had tripled in size, and was shaking uncontrollably: it had been open for too long!
First off, drop the second comma. It serves no function here because up until the colon, it's not a compound sentence. You can check by replacing the comma and conjunction with a period to see if you get two full sentences as a result. If you don't, no comma.
Second, avoid using exclamation points whenever possible. It causes the narrator to rely on punctuation to convey a mood when the mood should be shown to the reader by what's being said. In other words, it's like overkill to portray excitement.
Third, I would suggest removing the colon. Colons tend to place emphasis on what comes after them, yes, but really, in those cases, they tend to serve as a replacement for the phrase "that is." As in, a colon is a lot like a semicolon: it shows that the second clause is closely related to the first clause by restating or otherwise further elaborating on it.
Desperately, the beast leapt to close it, but it was too late: the dimensions of the "normal" world and the Distortion World had already touched,
Another thing to note is that colons that are used the way I've explained them above (i.e., linking one clause to another) are usually in the middle of compound sentences. Note that replacing the colon with a period in the above quote causes you to have two full sentences as a result. Also note that the first sentence would be a compound because you have a comma and a conjunction already in it.
Politically, however, Torcra was now under the most tyrannical and repressive regime in the world, known as The Oligarchy.
Um… sure.
Seriously, though, another example of why telling instead of showing is a bad thing. You've set up a tyrannical and oppressive government, but we don't actually see them being tyrannical or oppressive. In fact, it takes two chapters from this note to notice that anything's at all wrong, and even then, it's an off-handed comment from Charlotte. (I'm even considering the trainers'-license-for-sixteen-year-olds-and-up-only law because, hey, it makes sense to want to protect ten-year-olds from dragons that can easily bite their heads off. The only reason I can think of for why canon doesn't do it that way other than the usual meta reasons is because no one really cares.) So, we're not really shown, for example, members of the Oligarchy spouting propaganda to a miserable population like in the first few chapters of
1984. We're not people being taken off the streets and corrupt police like we are in
V for Vendetta. We just have to take your word for it that this
is an oppressive government.
Which, ironically, is exactly what Big Brother would want you to do with that nasty Eurasia, but that's just an amused aside.
So, that brings me to the end of the prologue, and after all those negative notes, let me start off with a few positives.
First off, I do have to say it's readable. Your main problem lies in the confusion of what makes a full sentence and what doesn't, however, and that's something you can easily solve with the period test I've told you about (but never really named) above. I would also suggest getting a beta reader to help you keep an eye on things, particularly because it seems like people are pointing out grammatical errors down the line. Otherwise, your writing is clean so far, and it could potentially be very poetic… if you actually pushed yourself into being poetic by offering us some imagery or at least something to give us a clearer mental image of what's going on, rather than removing us from the action.
The concept itself is, of course, an interesting one right off the bat. You begin to establish your fancreated world with some logic, and of course, it's difficult to say no to a good political drama if it's executed well. Like I implied above, this could potentially be like
We,
1984,
V for Vendetta, or other classic anti-oppression reads. It's still too early for me to say which way this will swing, but I will say it's a change from the normal genres.
Now, to summarize what you need improvement on can be done very simply:
show. Don't tell. Most of your problems actually came from this part. Don't be content with just saying X, Y, and Z. Actually show us little snippets. Show us Cyrus acting like a monster. Show us the battle. Show us the Oligarchy exerting their tyrannical rule. Make us give a damn about what it is you're trying to convey in the story just by giving us the details that help us paint a mental image and draw our own conclusions. Right now, you're doing the work for us, and that makes your writing come off as, frankly, rather static.
You also seem to have portrayed Cyrus rather oddly, which would have been forgivable in a Pokémon fic if it didn't potentially sway the events of pretty much your entire universe. Perhaps a good look at what Cyrus is doing might help point you in a direction of clarifying what he's doing to make the creation of your world fall into place with a bit less friction.
Overall, it's a fairly clean prologue, but I can tell that you just need to really sit down and push yourself to put what's in your head down on paper. You have the potential to be good. I can already tell this because it
is good for a thirteen-year-old and really is better than what I could do when I was your age. However, I can also say your work can definitely be better if you remind yourself to bridge the gap between your imagination and the reader by adding more detail.
Reviews for future chapters will, of course, come later.
