Reviews of The Assassin & The Alpha by ChessityFlames - Webnovel

This review is part of a review swap and valid as of chapter 58. Assassins, werewolves and slice of life. What could possibly go wrong? Well, unfortunately, quite a lot. We have a female assassin sent on a mission to kill her future (werewolf) love interest. So far so good. There are even other female assassins sent to kill other clan members of the tribe. But worry not. Despite long years of brutal training these girls don't know the basics of combat, well unless it's a face-off, which kind of makes the assassin part a little iffy. Being female assassins, they are however very good a falling in love with their targets, which kind of puts a damper on their ability to complete a mission. There are a few fights and lots of condenscending abuse of girls, but apart from that nothing really happens during the first twenty chapters. After that? Action overdrive. And it all grinds to a halt for no understandable reason. Hit squads are sent to kill people, but we never get to understand what happens, because the targets spend chapters going on dates instead of being killed. Sure, there are some damages, but those won't stop neither dates nor sexual innuendo. The story takes place somewhere. An academy is definitely part of it during the initial twenty chapters, but we never get to know where. Given the names of the characters an English speaking country seems likely, but the characters throw Japanese insults at each other from time to time. I'm still uncertain why. The story is written in first person point of view, and third person limited point of view, and third person omniscient point of view. The very same character will use any of the above, which makes for an extremely frustrating read. Past and present tense is used randomly, usually both in the same sentence. So for the stars. Writing: Four stars. This is an aggregate of a five star vocabulary and a three star delivery. Half a page long paragraphs, very often including multiple sides of a dialogue is just painful to read. Updates: A rock solid five stars. No comments. Story: Four stars. There's a direction, but it's not coherent. The love story part progresses along a clearly visible line though. Character: Three stars. The only way to understand which character you're currently following is to read the header introducing the PoV. While there are dozens of characters it's very often difficult to understand the difference between them. World: Three stars. There is a world, somewhere. I'm just unable to see it. Lastly. Tense and PoV handling needs fixing, the characters need distinct personalities, and I really, really want to know where this story occurs.