Title: The Heart of a Lion
Author: https://www.fanfiction.net/u/3061085/Marshal1
Rating: Fiction M
Genre: Adventure/Fantasy
Status: Complete (324,552 words) Book One
Library Category: General Fits
Pairings: Godric/Rowena , Salazar/Helga (probably)
Summary: Book One of the 'Founders Series': At a time when kings, knights and wizards compete for power over magical Britain, a young boy called Godric struggles to survive in the brutal world of medieval magic…
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11620282/1/The-Heart-of-a-Lion

This story is a Founders story before they became the Founders. Godric is the protagonist and covers him as a young child(not that much) and mostly focuses on him and Salazar growing up together and becoming Knights of Avalon. An Avalon where Merlin is a long dead historic figure.

It really tries to portrait a different history period and does it in a similar style as LoTR. It's also dirty, harsh and bloody. In a sense it doesn't really read like a Harry Potter story and the author is a bit creative with the age of the events(around 1090A.D) to match with the known history.

But if you enjoy history pieces this could become the defining Founders fan fiction with a great immersion. It really impressed me.

To me the level of detail and execution is 5/5 for the available Book One.

Book 1 is complete and I'm looking forward to Book 2 of this series.

 

What's the magic like in the story?

 

Well, it still is HP magic without really going into spell details but you get a more archaic feel. This world is about vassals and apprentices before systematic schooling. The emphasise is also more on martial arts/swords in the case of Godric who is a dual wielder(Sword+Wand). It's a *magical* world though with magical beings. Ollivander is the wandering wand smith who is seen by some as coning them out of their gold while spinning his tales. This world *lives* and has real characters.

In one of the last chapters an OC scholar at Avalon "seems" to discuss the Patronus charm with Rowena in some intellectual dispute without actually naming it. At that point of time the scholar searches for an in depth explanation of the spell as he only seems to have descriptions about it from his research into scrolls. So the reader gets a hint what this is about but the actual characters don't really grasp the nature of the spell as they don't have the necessary informations.

 

It has a lot of great ideas, I especially liked the way Salazar was characterized, but the way the author describes things, feelings and such in the second half of the story (it's possible that I just didn't notice in the beginning) can be quite repetitive and consequently annoying.
Overall I enjoyed this story, despite it's flaws, so I rate it a tentative 4.

 

The story finally continues in the 2nd book

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13025602/1/Hear-the-Lion-Roar