Okay this is my gift to my friend Drake.

Drake is writing a fan fiction based off of Cardcaptor Sakura and as a Christmas present he requested a full on, thorough critique of his writing, and that's exactly what I am going to do.

The way I judge whether I like something or not is based off of a few criteria: consistency, interest and resolution. Consistency refers to several things: the style of writing, how consistent the characters are throughout a story (ie, no random out of character actions in the middle of a story) and whether or not plot points make sense. Interest is almost exclusively style: if I struggle to read it because it's too dull, dry or confusing, it doesn't matter how 'good' the story is, I won't finish it and I certainly won't like it. Resolution is all about the ending. I can love a story/game/series, but if the ending sucks or is disappointing, everything else doesn't matter. I can tolerate cliches, iffy spelling/grammar and annoying characters if those 3 things are there.

With that I will begin:

Follow up:

Chaos Cardcaptor Sakura: Chapter 0: The Life of Gin Clow
Read Here

The story takes place in 18th century England and starts with Clow Reed as a boy, coming home. Present tense in a story always throws me a bit, especially when it takes place in the past. Personal quirk of mine. First minor problem is Clow Reed's father saying 'Jolly good'. It's a really cliche English phrase(but the real English never really say) It's like 'pip pip cheery oh!' or the other dumb things English people say in cartoons. Another problem is a mistake Drake made. He mixed up the personal and familial names of Clow Reed, making Clow the family name, and calls Clow 'Reed' instead. Then the story begins to pick up, with Clow showing his father the first two Clow Cards Light and Dark and this integration is done really well. Next problem is Clow referring to his father as 'dad', being that he's upper class, he would refer to him as 'Father'. The story then does a lot of humor and foreshadowing with revealing that Clow had a brother named Gin. Drake creates a great dynamic between the two, showing that Gin was kind of a menacing kid to begin with and seems like a really interesting character. It turns out that Gin is making magical cards too, and is working hardest on a card called Life. Clow and Gin's father comes back and when he sees Gin's cards he seems to freak out and decides to talk to Clow about fate. Drakes uses the concept of Hitsuzen from ...Holic/Tsubasa to further foreshadow events, especially when talking about how the Life card looks like. He also incorporates Sakura's catchphrase Zetto Daijoubu (surely everything will be okay) and sets everything up for the first chapter.

Drake mostly does a good job of setting up the prologue and this part is easily the shortest of all the chapters. There are a few consistency issues which annoy me (Mostly the Clow/Reed thing), and some of the 'English' speech is just painful to read. However, the idea of another set of cards and Clow having a brother is really intriguing, and when I read it the first time I really wanted to find out what happened next. If nothing else, Drake is excellent at setup, giving you enough to never be too confused, but always leaving you wanting more.

Coming Soon: Chapter One