Title: The Sword And The Sorcerer
Author: 50caliberchaos
Rating: M
Genre: Fantasy/Romance
DLP Category: General
Pairing: none for now. but it seems like it'll be Harry/Luna
Chapters: 8
Words: 85,285
Updated: November 7, 2010
Published: October 11, 2010
Status: Abandoned
Summary: Magic as an art is dangerous to practice and impossible to master. Finding himself in a world still reeling from the impact of people like him, Harry must take great pains and even greater risks to ensure his own survival and protect his loved ones.
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6390709/1/The_Sword_And_The_Sorcerer

Well. It's one of the better new stories out of DLP right now. Good writing and grammar, perfect characters. There is only one minus of this fic. Harry can do sort of wandless magic at the age of nine. Author also has another story in DLP library - The Sun Soul (Pokemon fic). Enjoy.

Rating 4.5 rounded to 5.


Checked by Minion, August 19, 2013

 

Only 2 chapters I think that's a bit premature for a rec

So far I am not into it, I will keep reading and rate later.

 

Yeah, way too early to give it a proper rating. What's there so far isn't badly done, but is still well before the point of definitively saying 'this story won't fail hard'. The fact that it's written by 50caliberchaos gives me hope, but I'm going to reserve judgment until a few more chapters are in. Hopefully writing this as well won't get in the way of him updating The Sun Soul.

 

Not sure why exactly he keeps using 'portal' as a synonym for door. It works, but it's like constantly referring to your pet poodle as a canine.

He changed Hagrid's diologue so that he didn't have to write the accent in. Okay, whatever; but then, at the start of the second chapter, Hagrid turned into Captain Exposition, explaining the background for the changes in this world, and only seeming a fraction of how stupid he normally is.

This is also a problem I noticed in the first chapter. Harry was far too smart for his age. When I was nine, I wasn't able to understand very many real concepts, but this Harry was understanding and controlling imaginary concepts that he wielded for no apparent reason (and didn't question outside of angst), and didn't even wonder why other people couldn't do magic. Don't get me wrong; I like to read genius!harry stories. But what I don't like to read is the supersmart!Harry stories, where he is smart before he even has a comparison to any other people, and is still the most modest shite around. Not to mention, when he sees all the money he has, the first thing he wants is to see it in perspective. I would have dived into it.

You would think, in a world like Harry Potter, that if he was smart and talented from a young age that he would become arrogant. Maybe he would push limits with the Dursley's, maybe he wouldn't; but seeing as Harry was rarely (if ever) kept out of school, I could definitely see him having an arrogant side at school. Harry ought to be bullying the Dursleys, with power like he has.

Anyway, this story is too short to review, in my opinion. I like this author's Pokemon story, so I don't think he'll suddenly drop this, which is why I'm going to keep reading it. I hope it succeeds where the multitudes of similar fics have failed.

Also:

Ew.

Harry is so fucking rich that he could probably buy Diagon Alley or something. Peregrines are game-breakers, and Harry just so happens to have at least a hundred of these (they're worth 100 galleons apiece).

The last thing I have to say against the story is that I would suggest that the author does a little bit more editing, or shortens the chapters; there were some easy mistakes that I saw just reading through the chapters. I like long chapters as much as the next guy, but if every chapter is longer than a oneshot, it gets a little hard to review and find the errors.

The whole premise is interesting, however, and like I said before, I will be keeping an eye on this.

 

I'm going to wait until this has more chapters to read this, and as pdo said, I really hope this doesn't get in the way of Sun Soul.

 

I have mixed feelings about this. I enjoy the plot and the characters, but dislike the magic. It's certainly interesting enough to keep me reading, but not without occasional irritation.

For the time being I think it deserves a 4/5, though my personal enjoyment of it is more like a 3/5.

 

There're 3 chapters, now, which I think is the minimum reviewable amount. Story's good so far. I like the new kind of magic, and, actually, the new wizarding world. Everything and everyone seems much more reasonable than canon. No body really threw a fit when

Spoiler

Harry was sorted into Slytherin

and Slytherins are expected to make friends with other house members, which you don't often see in fanfiction.

4/5

 

It seems like the author is trying to merge the D&D magic system into the Harry Potter world. Personally, I hate the D&D magic system so that's not exactly appealing to me.

Still, it's well written and the characters are well done, it's just a matter of waiting and seeing how the plot develops and if he significantly deviates from canon.

4/5 for now.

 

I'm giving this a 4.5/5, rounded up - might change later.
The only thing that bothers me is the magic system - I don't like needlessly complicating things. I assume he's going to explain how most of what we know in canon gets done in a timely fashion in this world...

Also: 100 Peregrines (10,000 Galleons) isn't an enormous amount of wealth compared to stories. In fact, it's fairly minimal. While he did mention that one Peregrine is about as much as an individual might make in a year, a fortune that'll last you 2-3 lifetimes (counting all the Galleons and such) of modest spending isn't exactly a huge amount of wealth. That's something akin to $15m USD, which, while a lot of money, isn't an absolutely massive fortune either.

 

These characters all seem far too old. Harry and Draco are having polite exchanges of lies right after Harry sits at his table, seriously? One of the biggest problems with this is that these students should be going through seven years of maturing and social interaction; most fics, however, start off with immediate lines drawn, sides picked, and all the students in the school bowing down to the words of a pre-teen Malfoy (or something just as stupid).

It's one of my pet peeves, so I can't exactly give an unbiased response to it. But the new chapter progressed decently, and came out fast, so I should have nothing to complain about. Still not going to rate it yet, because we're only a day in.

The whole thing reads like an exposition piece; "What's this?" "This is a blank. It got here when blank blanked the blank, and it remains because blank found it blank." "Thanks." I'm not saying it's a bad way of doing things, or that it makes the story bad, but the continual use of nearly formulaic diologue is pretty boring.

But overall, my biggest problem is that every one of these eleven year olds is too smart/mature. I don't think I can rate this story until I see how that plan, overall, works out.

 

I was actually considering putting this in Almost Recommended, after reading the latest two chapters today, before I saw the thread here.

I'm liking it at the moment, and I won't mind the scientific explanations of magic as long as its unpredictability keeps being present. A stupid Harry wouldn't be able to keep his talent hidden for long, so I don't mind his characterisation, but I still acknowledge it as a slippery slope.

Potential for Library status is definitely here IMO, but I won't rate yet since the author hasn't gotten to the meat of the story.

 

Haven't read the new chapter yet. Don't usually like Harry/Luna, but I've been trying to give it a chance lately, and this seems like a decent one. My main worry is the Author's need to change small insignificant things to fit his storyline and plot.

For example. The author wants to tell us the changes in magic in this AU, so instead of waiting until Hogwarts for Harry to get taught this, he pumps up Hagrids IQ about 50 points so Hagrid can tell Harry right away. Author wants Harry to know Luna, so Luna lives near him for a little while. I haven't read the next chapter, but I'm worried he'll make Luna a year older as well can put them in the same year, for convenience. I'd rather have the plot work itself out with the world rather than the world changing to match the plot.

It's AU though, so I can ignore it if I get a good story to go with it. We'll have to wait and see.

 

Yes, that's the major mark against this story. The contrivance level is too high. Luna moving into the neighborhood, no. I love this author's The Sun Soul and it's strange given that in that story he was very disciplined when it came to plotting. Why the impatience here? It isn't nearly as bad as the Danger fics, but it already precludes this from being 5/5 material.

The writing's excellent and makes it more bearable, 3.5/5 as of now.

 

Enjoyable, but definitely not the author's best work. The way he's trying to push all of the plot points together feels very clunky and jerks me out of the story every time they come up.

Disappointing because otherwise, its a fun story.

4/5 stars from me. I have hope that this fic will smooth out soon based on the author's other work.

 

Still reading the first chapter, but I have to say that I enjoyed the Fibonacci sequence of letters that were sent.

 

This reminds me of Wit of the Raven, with the completely different magic system in place (thoguh the world seems much less altered for it). I'm not wowed so far but its definitely better than some of the stuff I've been reading lately.

 

I believe Ragnoras can sum up my feelings on this submission:

For a multi-chapter fic, especially one that is shaping up to be of 100,000 words +, it really is too soon to submit this. That said, I did like the first few chapters and I'll probably be glad to rate this once more of this fic is published.

 

Exactly this. I immediately thought of Wit of the Raven when some of the departures from canon started making themselves known.

I really like the original twist the author has, and the writing itself is superb. The contrivances others have mentioned didn't bother me much, for some reason, although they might have in a story that didn't have many other redeeming qualities. 4/5 at the moment, but I might give a higher rating if it gets better.

 

It's annoying when some newbie posts shit you've had your eye on to post, but way too soon.

Perhaps we should have a post or time limit or something, in order to post in the "For Review" forum.

And this punish people who do it. If it's not a one-shot, give a 40,000 word limit or something.

Not gonna rate until there is way more.

 

Stop moaning. There's 33k words - that's half the length of an average entry-level novel already. Note that Philosopher's Stone is 76k words in total. If you could only review after 40k, you wouldn't be able to review until an average fic was over half way.

If you can't decide if you like a fic in 30k words then you're never going to figure it out.