Title: Undying Will
Author: Archontruth
Rating: M
Genre: Fantasy/Family
Status: WIP
Library Category: The Alternates (?)
Pairings: None
Summary: Meeting by chance at the crossroads between life and death, Kushina Uzumaki and Lily Potter hatch a daring plan to ensure their sons don't grow up alone.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12341775/1/Undying-Will

The basic premise of this story is that upon their deaths, Lily and Kushina meet at a crossroads in the afterlife and take advantage of a loophole to switch places instead of "moving on" permanently, in order to raise each others' sons.

This is not the height of originality; perhaps this particular iteration hasn't been explored yet, but the basic premise isn't new. That said, Archontruth is a good writer who often takes horribly abused ideas and makes something worthwhile out of them. It's not yet clear, thematically, what this story is supposed to be - Black Cloaks, Red Clouds was a soap opera, and Soul Mirror was a psychological horror story, but this doesn't fit neatly into any such category. It is, however, long enough to judge on the merits of the writing. The author's distinct brutal hyper-realism is evident, but the story isn't (yet) as dark as his other two main works. The characterizations are generally well-handled - I could quibble with the way Dumbledore was handled, but the worst I could say is that while I disagree with the way he's portrayed, it's plausibly canon-compliant. Sakura's current arc is very strong, though. (No fear - the story still seems Naruto-centric on that end of things.)

For now this is a very solid 4/5, with a lot of potential to move in either direction as the story progresses.

 

I've seen this in my email alerts but have been strongly repelled by its premise. If T3t's reccing it I suppose I should give it a try.

 

W-Well... if T3t-kun say's it's ok, then I'll definitely try it too!

Jokes aside it's a hot and cold bit of work to me. 3/5, and I think it would be significantly better were it to be told from either the Naruto world or the Harry Potter world.

 

Decent story so far, but I agree with the above poster that it suffers from telling two independent stories, with the Lily&Naruto story being the stronger of the two. 3/5

 

I only read up until chapter 9. Couldn't get past that.

The character voices just don't work. The author apparently knows how they are supposed to talk and act, but it feels superficial, like his own voice is still leaking through the pages. Then there's the Sandaime scene, where Lily goes on and on about how shrewd he is and how she was nervous about going to talk with the local equivalent of Minister of Magic.

We're neither shown the Sandaime doing something particularly shrewd besides the usual Yamanaka mind-reading nor Lily seems actually nervous about being face-to-face with a legendary ninja after mind-wiping and altering documents her way through the system to adopt Konoha's very own nuke. I think the situation warrants a little more emotion.

And Bee suffered one of the greatest cases of character assassination I've ever seen. I get that he's a difficult one to write with his special brand of eccentricity, but to turn him into a prototype of smooth-talking casanova? Fucking awful.

The prose is a little bland too, though that could just be me skimming out of sheer frustration. It's better written than 99% fics out there, so 2/5.

 

3/5 stars from me. It's well written, but as Zel said a suave Killa Bee is very off putting. I wish the author would just cut Naruto and Lily out of the story and follow Kushina. Other than that the fic is decent.

 

I prefer Harry/Kushina story, although Kushina made numerous mistakes that a seasoned Ninja like her will not make..
The author seemed to scaled down her skills, to meet the plot requirements.

Regarding Lily and Naruto.
I get Lily been naive and all, but she doesn't utilize her skills as well, again for the plot requirements.

 

Yeah the plot has gotten in the way of the story a couple of times, as it were, but there are also moments where it really shines. I especially enjoyed Naruto and then Sakura's bits. Fic does an excellent job of not getting stuck in the childhood sections too.

Biggest criticism is that the author really needs to get their head around what certain characters would actually do in the situations they're in. They could keep the results the same, but they really need to write them getting there in a smarter manner-protags and antagonists both.

 

I just finished what's currently posted of this fic. My original rating of 3/5 has gone down to 2/5 since it has Manipulative Dumbledore which it a pet peeve of mine.