I would love to receive feedback on my novel.

Hello everyone!
I'm really excited to share my first serious novel with you all: "The Last Sanctuary". It's a dark fantasy story with progression elements, following Kael and Lira, two youths struggling to survive in a frontier city besieged by a plague known as The Corruption.



https://www.scribblehub.com/series/2129156/the-last-sanctuary/

Synopsis: In a world where only the strong survive, Kael is an orphan working as a guard in a frontier city against The Corruption, a plague that twists everything it touches. While saving every last coin to fulfill their dream of becoming adventurers, he and his best friend Lira discover that their parents' legacy has marked them for something greater: a struggle that could save —or damn— their world.


This is the first story I'm writing, and I'd like to know what you think of it so far.
I appreciate your honest feedback.

this is pretty good. the characters have personalities and the pacing is good. though some scenes feel somewhat rushed and hollow. more implicit descriptions would help. more body language too.

2nded on the hollow. Not really sure what is supposed to stand out, everything is kinda generic.

Also, some em-dashes.... I don't like those, plus grammar issues, mostly run ons.

Expecting: A hook in the first chapter.

Reality: No hook, just slice of life.

Suggestion: Redo first chapter and write it around a hook. If the hook is a plague then the plague should be in the first chapter.

It's very ai-assisted writing.

How do I know? I could first tell by how it reads. The em dashes, the use of semi colons where not really needed.
The telling 'he wasn't doing this, it was this' - lot of adjacent sentences.
The random capitalization of words for seemingly no reason.

The choice of names such as 'Kael, Valdris, Lira'. I've played around with chatgpt before, generating random names for game characters because I couldn't be bothered to think. Kael and Valdris is a very common name chosen by chatgpt for random fantasy name generation. And if you don't believe me, try it yourself. lol

The idea itself is alright, the synopsis needs a lot of work, you need a better hook. At the very least, I do like the cover picture.

AliceMoonvale said:

It's very ai-assisted writing.

How do I know? I could first tell by how it reads. The em dashes, the use of semi colons where not really needed.
The telling 'he wasn't doing this, it was this' - lot of adjacent sentences.
The random capitalization of words for seemingly no reason.

The choice of names such as 'Kael, Valdris, Lira'. I've played around with chatgpt before, generating random names for game characters because I couldn't be bothered to think. Kael and Valdris is a very common name chosen by chatgpt for random fantasy name generation. And if you don't believe me, try it yourself. lol

The idea itself is alright, the synopsis needs a lot of work, you need a better hook. At the very least, I do like the cover picture.

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Hello, you're right that the chapter is AI-assisted. I actually use AI as an assistant to improve the chapters. I write them myself and only ask it to correct mistakes or help me structure the chapter better, though I use Deepseek, not ChatGPT. I do this because, since I'm new to writing, I want the chapter to look better. The cover image I made myself in Canva.

greyblob said:

this is pretty good. the characters have personalities and the pacing is good. though some scenes feel somewhat rushed and hollow. more implicit descriptions would help. more body language too.

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Hello, you're right that the first chapters are somewhat rushed and sparse. I realized that as I wrote more chapters. In the more recent chapters, they are longer and I can include more content to better develop the plot.

The writing is solid and the structure is engaging — I really liked how training, dreams, and the practical realities of money and danger are woven together. The world and characters are clearly interesting.

The only thing I felt was missing is stronger visual characterization. Because there’s very little description of expressions or physical presence, some scenes didn’t fully “play out” in my head. Adding a few visual or body-language details could make the scenes much more vivid.

Overall, this is a very promising start, and I’d be curious to read more.

Gus1607 said:

I do this because, since I'm new to writing

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If you want to improve fast you will unfortunately have to drop AI assistance. Writing is kind of like working out. The more you use your brain, the better you'll get at doing it. Trust me, I used to be able to bang out a chapter in a day and then my time kind of got eaten up by work. Now I can't do that anymore.

AliceMoonvale said:

It's very ai-assisted writing.

How do I know? I could first tell by how it reads. The em dashes, the use of semi colons where not really needed.
The telling 'he wasn't doing this, it was this' - lot of adjacent sentences.
The random capitalization of words for seemingly no reason.

The choice of names such as 'Kael, Valdris, Lira'. I've played around with chatgpt before, generating random names for game characters because I couldn't be bothered to think. Kael and Valdris is a very common name chosen by chatgpt for random fantasy name generation. And if you don't believe me, try it yourself. lol

The idea itself is alright, the synopsis needs a lot of work, you need a better hook. At the very least, I do like the cover picture.

Click to expand...

Second on the Lira. I've fucked around with silly AI stuff, and that name comes up frequently under the right circumstances lmao