Pokémon Book Reviews

Individual Review of Another Verse by Farla_Blackdragon

Another Verse is a book about Bonnibel, a girl who recently moved from the Kanto Region and into Alola. Once there, she meets lots of new people and Pokémon and starts her new journey as a Pokémon trainer.

One of the things I liked about this book is Bonnibel's name. It's really cute, and it goes really nicely with her partner, Popplio. I've always had a soft spot for unique names. Bonnibel is a name I've never heard of before. I really enjoyed that her name just sounds so happy.

Another thing I enjoyed was Bonnibel and Popplio's relationship. Being Bonnibel's Pokémon, it's evident that he looks up to her and admires her. Whenever Bonnibel is in trouble, he doesn't bat an eye to go out and help. He wants to make sure that his Trainer is safe, and when she's been hurt, that hurts Bonnibel's feelings.

While that's what I enjoyed about this book, this book could use some improvement, especially in regards to structure. I had to reread parts of the book multiple times due to how wordy they were. There's a lot that could be taken out. For instance, there are a few times in the book that state, "because she's Bonnibel" after it says what the girl did. I feel like this could be taken out due to the fact that as a reader, we know who is being talked about. It doesn't need to be in there.

Another example of this story being too wordy is that in chapter one, when Bonnibel chooses her Popplio, they tell her that Popplio needs to choose her too. It's followed by the statement: "It's a joke, but Bonnibel is a polite and respectful child, as her mother always says." I think that's why the book is so wordy. There's a ton of statements that tell the reader what to feel and why over and over.

To improve on this, it could say something like: "While it was a joke, Bonnibel obediently climbed onto the stage and waited for Popplio's answer." In the book, it takes an entire paragraph for that to happen, but here, it only took a sentence. This solves that problem of it being too wordy.

While long chapters aren't exactly a bad thing, these chapters are long and dry due to the wordiness and awkward sentence structure. It makes it hard to concentrate as to what's going on in the story. If you want to do long chapters to show everything that has happened in a day, please consider using scene breaks. This gives the reader a nice reference if they needed to stop and do something else for a bit. Scene breaks can be used when the story changes scene (hence the name) or when a different POV is used.

That was another thing that made this story a bit confusing. Third person point of view is really nice in regards to the fact that you can choose whatever person you want to zoom in on and explain what they were thinking, but you need to limit that. This starts to become very problematic when Popplio joins the team. His dialogue is shown in bold while everyone else's isn't to show what the Pokémon are saying. It disconnects from what's going on. As a reader, I'm not exactly sure if the Trainers can understand what Popplio and the other Pokémon are saying or if they're saying their name. They never really answer their Pokémon's questions and comments as they are said. This would be fine if it was concentrated on the Pokémon's point of view, but leading up to this, it was more concentrated on the person's point of view. It just makes it very confusing as to what is going on.

Battles are a major part of this book. It's evident that Bonnibel likes to battle, and Popplio works really hard in his battling. This shows how close the two are as Pokémon and Trainer; however, there's just one problem that occurs. The battle scenes are cut out. Writers can cut battle scenes out if it doesn't really matter to the story line. I feel like this story needs battle scenes due to the fact that Popplio and Bonnibel's relationship is dependent on that factor. Cutting it out by saying they battled with a water attack and won just seems as if you didn't care. By how long the chapters are, it's evident you care as a writer; it's just doesn't show during these parts.

Cutting out the battle scenes would be good if you were just going off of the plotline and making it more character development heavy; however, there seems to be no plot. By how long the chapters are, there needs to be some sense as to what the story's about. Even in the basic Trainer books and anime series, there's an end goal made clear in the beginning of the story: becoming a Pokémon Master. There needs to be some sort of motivation. That's something I feel this story lacks because while Bonnibel is filling up the Pokédex and doing the island challenge, it seems as though she's just doing it to do it. There's no purpose. Stories like these can go on for a lifetime. There needs to be a plot as that's the most important element of the story. If there is one, it needs to be clear as to why Bonnibel wants to achieve that. If it's because that's what her mother told her to do, that's not a good enough reason. Take Lillie from the games for example. She left her mom, despite her wanting to do otherwise. People have free will and can have feelings for themselves.

Despite all that, I did enjoy one scene. It was where they were eating a Stoutland and Lillie becomes uncomfortable with the idea of eating Pokémon. When you think about it, Pokémon are supposed to be their friends, and yet they'll force them into battle and eat them. While most scenes seemed a bit cut and dry, I liked that this concept was added into the story to show the dark side of the Pokémon world. It gives a new perspective, and with Lillie's big heart, it makes sense as to why she would be uncomfortable to eat it.

Overall, while there are things that need improving, there are some nice scenes in there as well.