Title: The Masked Marauder
Author: TheWordWarrior
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Mystery
Category: General / Dark Arts
Chapters: 34
Words: 258,075
Updated: March 25, 2016
Published: March 5, 2013

Summary:
After Dumbledore's death, Harry is left powerless; and alone. Or so he thinks. A squib turns around his life and he suddenly finds himself behind the mask of a guardian. Fate had other plans, however. Harry becomes the very thing he despises and begins a cruel game which blurs the line between good and evil. Post HBP, no Hocruxes, Dark!Harry, Anti-Hero!Harry, AU [80% Complete]

Link: Masked Marauder


A story about Harry being trained after Dumbledore's death and becoming more and more ruthless as the story goes on.

It slightly reminds me of "A Cadmean Victory" in a lot of ways, but it definitely stands on its own. No library-material imo, especially because of the at times awfully cringe-y dialogue, but the last 10 or so chapters are quite interesting to read.
OK, it hits AWFULLY hard on the "everyone hates Harry" cliché and a few more and it did actually annoy me at times. But it might be a good timewaster for some, hence I'm posting it here.

Moved out of the "Almost Recommended" thread.

 

I just moved the story out of the Almost Recommended thread into its own review thread. With its length it is at least worth a shot - even if it ends up badly. So don't blame Dicra for putting it up here.

I actually had a look at it, and my first impression is that it might indeed be a timewaster for long trainrides - though the prologue and the intro of 'Lance' are meh.

 

It doesn't belong in the Library, imho. There's an exaggeration of angst, the dialogues are pretty bad and over-acted and, overall, it's a boring read. The idea itself is not bad, but it's not great either. I'd give it a 2/5.

 

I realize I'm brand new here and that perhaps I shouldn't be reviewing things in the board yet - so if I overstep myself please let me know. ^^

Anyway, I gave this one a shot because the premise is one that I'm often drawn to as a guilty pleasure - i.e reboot!harry, dark/greyish!harry, and unknown-and-new-guardian/mentor. That being said, I've found the first chapter to be somewhat difficult to get through because the writing feels stilted as the author keeps using the same sentence patterns throughout (subject-predicate ad nauseam), making the word flow take on a monotonous tone.

That stiltedness carries through to the dialogue as well, where Dumbledore inexplicably speaks in a very informal, colloquial style, that the author attempts to make more formal only by separating what would normally be abbreviated:

Which when contrasted with Harry suddenly speaking in a forced, more formal style feels like a slap in the face:

The transition into when the death eaters attack also feels clumsy:

I won't bother quoting here, but there's also the way the author writes short lines and then randomly, suddenly inserts a massive block of text that also includes dialogue which is also kind of a nightmare to get through. With all that going on just in the set-up of the fic, I frankly found it too difficult to get to the point where the plot in the story actually begins to develop. 1/5 for me.