Here’s my long promised review of Andrew’s Amazon writing contest entry.
To read it yourself, here’s the prologue and here’s chapter 1 (click the button on the right side of the screen to download).
Meta-fairy tales are all the rage of late, so the big question is what does "Waiting for My Happily Ever After" bring to the table. In short, the new factor is writers as the nemeses of characters. I won’t go into too much detail since the excerpt itself introduces the larger world first through hints in discussions and then action. I’m interested in the world and its conflicts, which is good as just subverting existing fairytales is pretty redundant these days. Moreover, how magic works and the characters’ world interacts with ours seems fairly straightforward, which is nice as playing loose with those rules can easily undermine a story.
There’s a fair number of characters introduced pretty quickly. It’s a bit too early for me to tell how well I’ll like them. Thankfully the Prince Charming character, who could easily just be an annoying chauvinist seems to show some depth in addition to his multiple flaws. My mind isn’t made up yet on the protagonist, but she does have a good line about heroics that drew my attention and makes me think she has some potential.
As for writing style and pacing, the excerpt was a quick read although I sometimes lost track of the action. Quick-paced and light feels right for this story and means it’s pretty easy for you, dear reader, to judge for yourself.
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