Red-Hot Rebound Review

Red-Hot Rebound Review

First of all, for the sheer amount of text you put out, your grammar and punctuation is very good. You know how to use semicolons! There's a few things I want to touch on, starting with just a lone error I caught while I was reading:

Line 41: mates, dragon-slayer”, came

But more importantly, there are some stylistic choices you make that are questionable. I'm referring to your regular use of asterisks to emphasize particular words or phrases, as well as the use of ellipses to portray pauses in speech. In regards to both, it is understandable from the perspective of a writer that you would want to convey speech as closely as you can to how you imagine it. However, there are a couple of issues with this mode of thought. First, use of these devices robs the reader of agency in imagining what's happening, and second, it looks sloppy and jarring when you're reading the text.

That is to say, one of the best traits of the written medium is that any reader can imagine scenes however they want to. Keeping dialogue as clean as possible ensures that their imagination can run wild even with how a character says something, though it is still perfectly okay to add descriptions of a character's tone before or after a line of dialogue. The gold standard as far as fiction goes is that readers would be able to picture what an author is picturing simply by reading the dialogue with no other descriptions or emphasized words present. Judging by your dialogue, you are already capable of this, but you're using asterisks and ellipses as crutches and it's hurting your prose. That being said, many authors still cheat it and use one or both of these devices, but only very rarely. This keeps them from detracting from the flow of prose, grating on a reader's nerves, and so on. If you used them far less often than you do in this story, I would not have much of a complaint on the matter.

However, do note that while things like asterisks or italics are sort of okay for speech from time to time, using them in narration is a big no-no even if it is only rarely.

Your characters are good. It's interesting that we never get names for either of them, but that is easier to do when you only have two characters for the most part. The dragon-slayer is a bit generically chivalrous, somewhat of an archetypical hero type, and the dragon is not particularly anything new or unique for dragon characters, but their interactions are fun and entertaining regardless. You carefully describe how they interact, the social conventions at play, et cetera, and it's probably one of the best parts of this story. It's not half-assed by any means. You get bonus points for the honesty and believability of the dragon, always keeping her size and monstrous traits in mind, never compromising even when it would be easy, especially for the smut scenes involving her.

The plot is very character-driven, and since you have a firm grasp on your characters, this is a good thing. The only bad thing I have to say about it is that the real plot is only revealed at the very end of this fic, leaving a cliff-hanger and cliff-hangers are bad. Introductions always suffer from this kind of thing.

The smut is superb, really. A huge chunk of the story is set aside for the three smut scenes, each one complimenting the others, each one offering a different slice of hotness for the reader. Their personalities come through in each scene and they're all well-paced. I am particularly jealous of the attention to detail of the heat of the dragon's insides. Why didn't I think of that? It's quite clever.

Overall, this is a very well-written story with good characters and a marvelous set of smut scenes. You have talent and creativity, and I'd love to see more from you. I give this story a solid 3/5. If a sequel is written, and it's in the same vein of quality as this story, I'd bet money that I would rate the series as a 4/5.