User blog:Great Artuin/Witness A Review

Preamble-The folowing text and indeed the fullness of this review is the result of almost 3 months of work at the time of writing these words now before I begin part 1 the reason for this review being in parts has previously been explained but I feel like I must credit someone who does not apear in this part or indeed untill the final part it is ShizzyBoom268 whose diamond breakdown I will be using to analyse one of the ultimate reasons why this book failed the exorbitant amount of diamonds required in manny chapters thank you so much for letting me use your breakdown Shizzy you're awesome.

Now some disclaimers

1. I do not hate the writers of this book

2. I do not mean for this review to be an attack on people who like witness I hope that that has come across honestly i kindda like it cause Its funny to read it's like a so bad its good movie

3. I do have a tendency towards sarcasm and very blunt humour that's my humour what i find funny i can't really help it if thats not your cuppa you might want to stay clear.

4. I hope that you can understand that it is not my intension to offend in any way in either my words in this review or in its making itself this is meant to be somewhat lighthearted to give everyne a little laughter in these dark times...

And LO it begins this is a breakdown of chapters 1-14 IE the first part of witness this was alot of work to put together but still may be bad this is my first time doing something like this so yeah go easy on me though i may not deserve it lol whatev.

and just tell me what you think enjoy BTW below is the opening line of the origionial review and I wanted to keep it in as it still works as an opening but if you guys don't like it i can remove it.

We will begin by a breakdown of each chapter and yes, I am a masochist who likes losing his own braincells.

Chapter 1- A wee spoiled Melter is at a party in Boston. Her friend tells her about an absolute Ride to which she responds “I’d like to focus on my career not romantic involvements” fair enough. She then goes down to get another drink presumably because she is thirsty (we’ll get to that later) Bartender creeps on her, Ride comes to save her after she asks to speak to the manager of course. Ride offers a dance reveals their name is (insert whatever name you chose here, for the purpose of this review I’ll refer to them as the Cassian and the Mc as Karen) and Cassian asks Karen to dance they dance for some time then Karen upon being offered to spend the night with cassian conveniently forgets her no relationships at all rule and Rides them. Then leaving Cassian in bed and whinging about her own problems for a couple of seconds up and leaves. Cool and normal. Karen then witnesses a murder strictly speaking the build up to one as the chapter ends not on the murder for some reason…

Ok let us review. The diamond issue (which is why this book won’t have a sequel) I will analyse later as I will Karen’s awfulness. But for the minute we will look at the chapter on its own. First off a fundamental thing that you learn when writing is that a story can not be too fast paced or too slow paced this has a ok pace for the type of story they need to tell aka this is a game not a work of prose people are playing this for fun thus the pace has to be faster than regular fiction so I’ll give the pace the stamp of approval. Unfortunately, the merits of the book end there it’s downhill from here on. Firstly, the change in tone from the happiness of the party to the darkness of the gang murder in the space of a chapter is not well handled. I can’t really explain why but the tension wasn’t built up, so the shift was jarring without being effective pour quoi? You ask you don’t expect to see a gang murder in real life of course it will be jarring. Well that’s just the problem they don’t  lean into it by having the murder at the end of the chapter the chapter ends with Karen saying “OMG they’re going to kill him” they’re attempting to build tension for the next chapter but they’ve already introduced the threatening gang I may be expressing myself badly here so in Tillie style “bear with” while I show you what I mean, using the example of VOS the first chapter of VOS ends with Kate’s disappearance not the possibility that she has disappeared you go into her dressing room and no sight no sign of her because that is how you build tension for the next chapter with an inciting incident not with two characters you don’t know advancing towards a person you don’t care about. Now there is a way to fix this while changing very little I think it would have been better if Killian and Maeve had killed Sean and then hear you talking on your phone and advance towards you it ends with you in danger and you’ve shown that these people are a threat that will kill not just intimidate. I’m not going to be afraid if they might kill the guy, I don’t know but I sure as hell am goanna be if I see them do it and then hear them coming for me, it creates that much more of a threat towards your character a way to keep the ending that they had but still create tension would be to talk about the O’Connell’s gang  and by that I mean talk about them say oh yeah have you heard about that mob they’ve been going around scaring a lot of people they say it’s run by a husband a wife duo guy with brown hair woman with red then when Karen sees Killian and Maeve she can logically feel a whole lot of fear as does the audience because they know that she is in danger from big scary mob.

Chapter 2- So Karen actual witnesses the murder except not really because she is cowering behind a building calls the police and gets put under witness protection program she then finds out that cassian who she just had a one night stand with is her bodyguard and you have to make a diamond choice to act like a decent human being she then gets shipped off to Nantucket where she discovers that far from sleeping in the shed where they were “supposed to” cassian will be in her house sleeping on her sofa fair enough but she struggles to see how she will keep her hands off them maybe try being a decent human being Karen you might find it fills the void in your heart left by you abandoning all of your friends to be a *****. I’ll try to avoid swearing but this MC really pushes several boundaries of decent human behaviour, but she will have her time to be destroyed so let’s move on.

Note I appreciate the use of the word Knackered but as with pacing the good stuff ends there. Again, the ending of the chapter falls in a strange place as seems to be a trend and there are far too many diamond choices. Not just that but the fact that we have to pay diamonds at all for our “new look” is stupid, I understand paying diamonds for the “sexy look” we have to pay diamonds but why can’t we have a non-diamond witness protection look like its wouldn’t even be that hard for them to reuse another couple of their hairstyles and outfits which they do all the bloody time due to their laziness anyway More on this later. Secondly the fact that this is where we start acting like a entitled whiny melter is not exactly enjoyable at least for me who rather enjoys being alive and would consider myself indebted to the person who is protecting it and would be polite to them instead of treating them like the muck on my shoe like Karen oft does throughout the book. Third the chapter like this analysis is too short and I am not going to extend it cause frankly I don’t want to waste my time

Chapter 3- so we’re all set as in we are going into stupid territory anyway all of the first choice options are bad as Karen’s either rude or a creep what joy so Karen goes to the house she’s being put in for wittsec  and big surprise she’s ungrateful complaining that it’s too small and that she has to wash dishes calling washing them by hand Barbaric look I love my family dishwasher but gurl you are lucky to have dishes to wash sit your arse down and shut your mouth we then get needless padding for about 5 minutes and then karen finds a vespa in a shed and is like omg I was expecting a car and she and cassian and her go to their new job at a lobster shack which Karen promptly complains about

So already we see several problems that go through this entire book which include padding. Padding in this context means anything that is added to a book in order to make it longer, odd dialogue choices and of course a complaining Karen for an MC

Chapter 4- so Karen wines about having to shuck shellfish as opposed to you know dying at the hands of a mob and gets started on her job we get a diamond choice to be taught how to shuck by Cassian so she gets a mini cooler from her boss as a reward for doing oh so well at her job we get another diamond choice between a bad bike and a nice bike anyway we get the most pointless scene in choices history involving a lobster its just so pointless anyway they make dinner Karen cries because she’s cutting onions and like a lot of exasperating or at least foolish people she doesn’t know how to cook I mean gurl cooking is such an important life skill in my opinion everyone should be able to cook not only is it fun it’s practical and some of my fondest memories are cooking with my…. Not the time for an anecdote ok. We get more weird stuff around cutting onions which causes me concern how can you find cutting onions in anyway exual anyway karen tries to persuade the poor eejit into having hanky panky with her we get pointless padding and then it turns weird again involving way too much focus on beads of condensed water how in anyway is this exy this is so weird and confusing and we complete this chapter

This chapter was so boring, but this chapter is in the middle section of the book which I can understand being boring. This is because due to already not having much going for it in the way of plot and story it suffers from sagging middle, this is where a piece of entertainment becomes bad or in this case worse due to the writers not having an idea of how to fill the space this is usually overcome with interesting stuff in a game you might have multiple quests to complete, in a book or movie the characters legs get broken (sometimes literaly) which means that obstacles are put in their way however witness doesn’t have this making the middle chapters boring true they attempt to crate conflict but they are lazy attempts which are not that good

Chapter 5- anyway despite stating that hanky panky will be bad for their situation they engage in it we get pointless padding and useless diamond choices until Karen gets on her bike and goes to work complaining about how she’s not allowed to ride her hot bodyguard. Anyway, when she arrives at work she accidently lets slip that she works in finance and despite her boss who I can’t be bothered to remember the name of not showing any sign of anything really other than some initial surprise Karen has to leave because according to Cassian it will blow their cover what was the real reason well lazy conflict creation anyway after that mess which probably raises more questions for our boss than staying we get some backstory on the bodyguard and who realy cares cause I don’t next chapter please

Again, similar criticisms to chapter 4 but more to the point why does this book have so many leaps in logic this will become a theme this is I think the first major example of a leap in logic why are we leaving our job isn’t our boss just going to get more suspicious once we leave

Chapter 6- Just why well we arrive back at karen’s safe house and there are fears that the mob has broken in well that was anticlimactic Karen was just an idiot and the non-diamond option is to sulk and say nothing about leaving the door open for the people who want to kill you anyway we get dumb padding and diamond choices until we go to our next job oh and Isabella and Santiago appear I never thought I’d miss ROE lol and then we go out on a surf board and try to do the nasty on aforementioned surfboard just why?

Why why is this chapter so nasty and cringy

Chapter 7- so we meet our friend who is confused by our presence anyway there’s a dimond choice to pretend you’re on holiday with the poor eejit despite it changing nothing anyway there are yet more weird diamond choices either to watch the poor eejit fix stairs or admire the tool belt I just can’t take this seriously anyway Karen want to find a new job gurl can’t you just stay still for 5 minutes for gods sake

This was highly infuriating to read during quarantine gurl you have a lovely house and you can’t stay in it for 5 minutes when there are people living in dingy tiny apartments with the floor space of a shed. This whole chapter links into the MCs ungratefulness which shall be analysed later and the diamond issue for why you can’t pretend to be on holiday with your bodyguard

Chapter 8- anyway she goes to her new job in the lighthouse where we get both padding diamond choices I believe this is a thread and we get some banter between our ha ha ha I’m laughing to hide the pain anyway we find out a bit about Karen’s backstory and about why she is fearful about commitment yet again why should I care she’s insufferable anyway we go back into the lighthouse and see a wee brat who trows a tantrum but uh low key she’s probably better behaved than Karen up until this point anyway the brats father comes up to us and somehow can properly discipline her I mean he tells her to apologise and she apologises to the MC I low key think he’s a great dad lol

When I prefer your villians to the Main character we have a problem sweetie that’s all I’m gonna say

Chapter 9- well I better get sent in diamonds by pixelberry to cover this stuff as it is awful so awful *drags self up off of floor* so Karen and Kilian talk for a while until Kilian offers to buy the compass surprisingly the option to be a decent human being and not take bribes is not a diamond choice anyway Karen goes to tell Cassian about how the O’Connell are there surprisingly Cassian responds with shock very exaggerated shock like they use the shaking text feature which I just can not take seriously anyway after this we pay a call on Tomas who talks about how much he loves his kids and family aww how sweet and cassian jokes about how he shouldn’t use burner phones for call with family there is no way that this will come up again, anyway who cares about that when karen can do the nasty for the 1000th time anyway we get more tea about Cassian’s backstory which by the way until much later has little to no impact on the plot so like they were undercover and had to do some bad things to gain their trust and this is never mentioned again we never find out what any of it was anyway who cares about that when karen can have a fright cause of mistaking a branch for Killian anyway and see’s a shadow of move behind her who cares when they can get dirty yet again! Anyway, when you wake up in the morning you can’t find Cassian

You want me to analyse this ish no no no I went and got an exorcism after reading this it was nasty and I need to seriously reconsider my life choices of doing this book as a review

Chapter 10- And Karen is looking for Cassian they arrive back and you have the choice to tell them that you were worried about them but it’s a diamond choice you don’t cough up off Karen acts like a brat anyway we continue with this nonsense and find out we got a job on a flower farm anyway we go there and have fun for a while then we have to go home where we think we get pursued and fall off our bike and injure ourselves then honestly who cares we then start what I can only describe as a exual shower and I can’t

I give up I give up I really don’t want to continue since the start of witness I’d had 6 exorcisms to try and erase from my mind what I had seen after this chapter and the next I had to bathe in holy water just to prepare for the exorcism I don’t even want to touch on the previous stuff cause its so stupid you’re just going to leave the bike and let it clutter up the countryside wow way to go Karen good job defending the environment

Chapter 11- we pick up with the exual shower scene which just caused me great concern for whoever was writing this anyway after that nightmare which I am not going to cover because I have self-respect to not cover that horror so promptly skipping over that we have got virtually nothing left um ok and then we get a call from Tomas and you both freak cause you fear his retribution over you engaging in a relationship

WTF is this chapter What the actual hell is going on what were the writers on this chapter is like mostly Nasty ass ish this is actually horrible its nightmare fuel no no no stop it I don’t like it I don’t wanna see it.

Chapter 12- so it turns out that Tomas hasn’t found out about Karen and he just wants to warn them the mob knows about there location as he had to reveal their location there’s an absolutely disgusting diamond choice to either forgive Tomas for revealing their location bearing in mind his wife and children his whole world might get murdered or be an expletive expletive cow anyway Karen gets out and unfortunately gets shot where she stands…. No that’s not what happens sadly she gets away with Cassian and they go to the boat there’s a fight that tries to make you sympathise with Karen by implying that she has PTSD but I just can’t feel anything but hatred for this character at this point anyway Karen and Cassian go below deck where there is yet more weird Banging in another person’s vehicle yikes and that’s where this chapter ends

Yikes is all I can use to describe this chapter yikes why are they making out in a strangers vehicle who does this in real life I am aware this is a form of escapism but come on no one would or should do this in real life this is so nasty why would you ever do *THAT* in a strangers car this is not safe and sanitary its gross Stop it get some help and more to the point is it really the time for that look I could be running from death with a very attractive individual but my first instinct when we had a moment of peace together is not to take of all our clothes particularly when you are in a strangers vehicle.

Chapter 13- this weird ish continues into the next chapter an I’m starting to wonder was this all written in one go with no editing something to think about anyway after Karen and co leave the ship they get shot at my none other than Maeve and not going to lie she’s kind of hot (what I like a bad girl) anyway we get a dramatic love confession after Tomas tackles Maeve anyway Karen goes to the courthouse and sees Kilian and Maeve who was tackled by Tomas not even 5 minutes ago how what why how I just did whoever was writing this go Continuity is that a sauce?

We now have moved passed the middle of the book which was trash and things pick up again so um couple of things…

1.      How the hell did Maeve get to the courthouse so quickly

2.      How does she expect to get off after she’s just attempted murder after she is on trial for murder in which attempted murder victim is prime witness

3.      How does she change her clothes so quickly

4.      How does she get there apparently unscathed from her encounter with tom earlier

My answer to all of this is I have no clue (I elaborate on these complaints further on) but at the minute I must move on.

Chapter 14- so we’re now in the courthouse and I am still wondering HTH Maeve can apparently be in two places at once as we pointed out in the previous chapter this is BS and it is still hurting my brain so Karen is at the courthouse and we start with Karen being cringy like I made her say better luck next time fools because I am Karen the terror of retail employees the scourge of managers I am the past present and future when you lie dead I will be alive… Quarantine is driving me nuts Ok I had to write that next for no reason at all Karen is defended by her DA guy who says that they’re intimidating her which is fair cause they did threaten her very very subtly but she spoke first (More on this in the Analysis) Karen gets cross examined and there is a god damm Diamond choice to not act terrified while under questioning  OH MY GOD why? there then follows a cringe inducing scene which has the audacity to play VOS Music Over it in which we are supposed to feel sympathy for the character for feeling oh so traumatised I’m sorry but I can’t feel sympathy -again more later- so she’s outta the office of the DA and talks to Thomas then she sees the wee brat of the O’Connell’s she looks at her with dislike what child whose parents you’ve have helped put behind bars wouldn’t  and you leave the courthouse oh and Cassian’s alive and we have jaunty upbeat music we cut to three weeks later where Karen is acting Nice and got Cassian a boat for the day aww how sweet how lovely how wunderbar, there’s another diamond choice but it’s for an outfit so Ok. Our heroine teaches Cassian how to sail and for once doesn’t make any rude comments wow so we have triumphant music and then the poor eejit confesses their love for Karen and Karen... doesn’t need to make a diamond choice to say that she feels the same way I am legitimately surprised well anyway there’s a diamond scene to hook up.

Then we transition to the prison where the O’Connell’s are being held where we get our first clue as to what is in store for us next.

There are multiple issues with this chapter that I’m just cringing at ok lets deal with the legacy issues from chapter 13 first how in hell did Maeve get from the docks to the courthouse that quickly it says that she got tackled. how did she get to court and apparently change into a new outfit. How did she not get arrested… this is driving me insane it’s so stupid did no one proof read this, did no one think to check what had been written to ensure it made sense I know we’re under quarantine but this was planned out before surely they could have checked to make sure that it made sense but then again what’s the point looking for logic in this book is like trying to get blood from a stone by destroying it and that stone is holding up the roof it does not work and it’s going to cause damage to your brain. Another issue with this chapter is that Karen can say send better assassins next time so was it originally going to be just another of the “villain” faces if so, why did Maeve shoot at the poor eejit in the first place. Thirdly how the heck did Maeve expect to get off for murder when she shot someone literally just before she got to the courtroom  it boggles the mind the O’Connell’s seem like careful people why would they put their freedom in danger, again it seems like no one proofed this and it is stressing me out. This is not an easy mistake to make nor is it a mistake that you have to dig to find this is plain poor writing, carelessness and laziness I hate to spend so much time on one point but it has to be pointed out as a sign of the complete lack of work put in this book I hate to say this believe me but I don’t think any work went into this book at all. Another issue  is the fact that when Karen insults the O’Connell’s and they respond the DA dude jumps in saying “they are trying to intimidate the witness” except she talked first they responded she literally instigated a situation and we’re supposed to feel sorry for her!! Finally, at the end of the chapter we have an extra scene, it is somewhat interesting but when I feel more sympathy for our antagonists and their brat than I do for the MC we have a problem

And so we finish Volume 1 of Witness and the first part of this review i hope you enjoyed reaing this and had fun maybe got a good laugh or two out of this what ever it may be my intension is to amuse not offend