Title: Everqueen
Author: Ashynarr
Rating: T
Genre: Friendship
Status: Work-In-Progress
Library Category: The Alternatives
Pairings: None
Summary: Isha has escaped from the realm of Chaos and the Warp, turning to the dubious aide of the Emperor of Mankind for protection while she recovers from her flight. The future of the Eldar and Human races are intertwined, though Chaos will not take such a threat to it unchallenged.
Link: FFN, SB, SV, AltHistory

This is a pretty interesting story idea where the Eldar goddess Isha doesn't sit around and decides to escape to Terra instead; since at worst she'll get killed by the emperor which would be a kinder fate than being captured by Slaanesh or the other Chaos gods.

I like it because it takes time to develop a relationship between the two (the Emperor of Mankind and Isha) and it's as peers, friends at closest, and it's incredibly interesting to watch it unfold, I think it's done very well.

Most of all I like the Emperor's portrayal: ruthless, but well-intentioned and pragmatic, and actually gives a fuck about human life, as opposed to his machine-like perspective in (some of) the Horus Heresy novels. He actually feels like a person.

The fic is at 12 chapters, 35k words, and I have high hope for it. 5/5

 

I gave this a read, and was actually pleasantly surprised.

I'm not really all that immersed in the Warhammer 40,000 lore; I'm aware of a lot of random bits and bobs, and the general shape of the history of the setting etc, but I don't have strong, pre-existing assumptions of how things and characters should be. It's possible that people will take issue with the Emperor's characterisation, or with Isha's (both seem very... human for Gods) but that didn't bother me all that much.

The quality of the writing is pretty decent, and it didn't have any errors or especially clumsy turns of phrase that took me out of the story.

Really, the greatest sin I can lay against it is that I don't get the sense of there really being a plot, per se. Given that we're 35k words in, I'd consider that a problem. All we currently have is a gradual development in the... well I'll call it 'working relationship' as they're not really friends, between Isha and the Emperor. There's no sense that the story is really building towards anything, except more character interactions between Isha and the Emperor.

I think this is because the story is basically envisioned as an empire-building story with Isha and the Emperor at the centre of it, but the depth of exploration of the character interactions, and the human-level of the story means that any empire building will be glacially slow in pace. They just discussed plans for a century-long revival of Terra's ecosystem, but I think the story at this point has spanned a couple of years? Maybe? Basically, if that's the intended pacing, this story is going to be long.

If I rate it based on what's there, I think a 4/5 is fair. There's not much substance behind the, admittedly enjoyable enough, character interactions, but what there is is pretty interesting.

 

I'm going to agree with Steelbadger on this.

I like 40k - there's a wide range of different worlds and settings you can play in, so long as you do some lip-service to the overall themes. And there's different versions of the characters too, with the God-Emperor ranging from an unfeeling sixth Chaos god of Order; to a worn-out dessicated husk, forced to communicate with oiled-up pillar-men.

This strikes a nice balance of the GE being a serious character, but not frothing at the mouth like a lot of the more canonical interpretations. Looking through the other notes on SV, the authors are taking bits and pieces from different editions, and are also making some changes to the timelines too. I, for one, have no problems with this.

Technically, there's no problems. I didn't notice any typos or SPG issues that I could take umbrage at. The hardest challenge was the GE not just -BLAM-ing Ishtar on arrival, but as he's not Knorne, that makes sense, as he'd at least want some information.

The pace is slow so far, which is fine, but it leaves me wondering if we're going to pick up steam and start skipping ahead in jumps, or if this is doomed to be a billion words long by the time we reach the Heresy era. And this is where the only real source of my problem is so far - we had very similar scenes repeated for the last few chapters. There's been progression, and we're seeing the shackles being loosened, but staying this in-depth makes me wonder if this *is* the meat of the story - the GE learning to trust xenos - and we're not going to be seeing much of anything outside of that.

Given the wide range of tones, settings, and characters that 40k can take, it can be hard to find fanfic (or even Black Library stuff, tbh) that I enjoy, especially at any real length. Solid 4/5 for now

 

Sadly Ashynarr declared that she's abandoning the story, since she lost interest in the WH40k fandom.

 

It must be the fell work of the Ruinous Powers. Emperor-fucking damn it. Apparently Skysage24 might still be working on it, but I'm unsure. So this is either on hiatus or it's abandoned.

 

IT'S BACK! THE NEW CHAPTER'S OUT! YAAS!!!!

 

I've checked the FFN, SV, SB, and AH threads linked in the opening post, but there's no new threadmarks in any?

Ah, checked, new threads for new author:

SB, SV, and AH

 

I have this a shot since the concept was interesting, but it felt like a whole lot of nothing. The dynamic I was expecting hasn't arisen and at the rate of progression we've seen I don't have high hopes for it either.

It's not badly written, for what it is. I just feel unsatisfied.

3/5