I like the direction that the story is going in. With the msot recent update, I think it's fair to say that the next few chapters will be a battle-fest. I hope the author has improved to the point where he can pull it off.

Ignoring the first section, this is definitely one of the better post-apocalyptic fics I've read. And I didn't hate the first part; it wasn't good, but neither was it too painful to read. The improvement he has shown in his writing is impressive, and I hope that for all the effort he has put into this fic he can give it a proper send-off.

4/5 from me.

 

After catching up on this fic, I have to say the continued excellence of the fic has forced me to up my rating from a 3 to a 4. I can't, in good conscience, give it a 5 so long as the first few chapters remain a part of it. Which I will feel bad about when this fic is complete, and all of it except the first 5 or 10 chapters are great.

This is probably the single most striking example of a writer improving as the story goes on I've ever seen. It is now, without a doubt, a story worthy of the library.

While normally I hate Draco almost as much as I hate redeemed!Draco, this Draco fascinates me. It's the single most interesting Draco I've ever seen, and I don't hate him. Which is odd, for me. Has anyone read a Draco that comes close to being as interesting as the one in this fic? If you have, I'd be interested in what fic I need to add to my to-read list.

 

I almost never agree with your fic opinions. Even the author believes that the beginning is rubbish.

 

I kind of understand what she's getting at, though--while I didn't necessarily like the first few chapters, I really lost interest after the time skip. I think it was kind of like... the beginning chapters (and up until the mid twenties) had a sort of familiar feel to them.

But then it was like the author had a personality shift or something, and all of the characters are acting different and we go from harmless school battles to 'Harry's executing people!'. Which is totally fine, if you get to watch the transition while it's happening. Unfortunately we aren't given that in between time; we don't get to see everyone changing. It's just BAM, now we're warriors! It totally skipped over Harry's (and the world's) transformation, which seems like a dumb thing to do when it's kind of (imo) the over-arching theme to the story.

Baffling and disappointing. I just don't get it when authors skip over the best parts. It's like they don't recognize what they're actually writing about.

 

At the end of chapter 23, the author wrote 'End of Book 1', or something to that effect. That makes the time skip the gap between two different tales in the same 'verse rather than one uninterrupted story. It would've been preferable if Kwan Li had actually posted Book 2 as a sequel on ff.net rather than just continuing on under the same storyid.

I actually thought that Kwan Li handled the transition rather well. He used the muggle soldier's introduction to the wizarding world to obliquely inform us of the changes that have taken place and to build the setting for this second story that he wanted to tell. I've seen similar time gaps between sequels in novels and movies. I don't miss the transition period at all. I'm grateful that Kwan Li had a definite plan for the story this time and jumped straight into it.

 

Definitely agreed with Rust and Cheddar here. The start was pretty meh, apart from the surprisingly likable Ginny, then it got better and better. Then crap, after the time skip. I'm still really disappointed with the utilization of Old!Harry's sacrifice, even ignoring the plethora of plot-holes surrounding it.

 

That's the opposite of Cheddar's opinion. She gave the very early chapters [1-4] a 3.5-4/5 rating. That isn't 'meh'; that's library worthy. And then her opinion of the fic seemed to decline from there.

I agree that the start was rubbish, Ginny was good [it was the first time I'd supported a Ginny/HP relationship in a fic since coming to DLP], and the fic got better and better right up until the time skip...

I'm going to have to agree to disagree on the time skip between books 1 and 2. I think it was one of the better decisions that Kwan Li made. It allowed the plot to advance to another anti-Voldemort arc without all of the boring transitional stuff. I'm going to assume that Kwan Li didn't want to write the boring bits [training and unit formation for Harry, and rewriting the horcrux hunt for Neville, Hermione, and Ron], and I know that I sure as hell didn't want to read them. It also re-introduced a bit of mystery to the proceedings as the readers tried to get their footing in this transformed world. I honestly enjoyed how Kwan Li went about doing this.

Your complaints about the plot holes are absolutely spot on. I've mentioned it before, but without many specifics. The plot has been improving, but I think it's still this fic's weakest area. The story about a future Harry traveling back in time, pretending to be James, and everything that surrounds that legacy piece of plotting is something that I try to ignore as much as possible. It's far from the only plot problem. How about Draco claiming that Harry owed him a favor after the peeping-in-the-library incident that was mysteriously never mentioned again, or the bit of ridiculousness that had the kids go to Disney World/Land/Whatever, and Neville being remotely considered to duel Voldemort in the latest chapter when I'm pretty sure he flat out collapsed the last time he even saw the Dark Lord.

 

You definitely did rate the first 4 chapters that highly [3.5-4/5]. I think it was your first post in this thread where you'd only read the first 4 chapters. I remember because that score stunned me. It also reaffirmed to me why I almost never agree with your reviews. When I'd reached the same 4th chapter point as you had, I had to struggle not to shut it down due to the epic level of fail. It was bad enough that I remarked on the 4th chapter point here in this thread only days before you rated those same chapters so highly.

Eh, it looks like you've edited the score downward since I read the post.

No arguments there. I don't think it's Library worthy either, but for different reasons. The utter lousiness of the first 8 chapters means that this should never be accepted into the Library as is. Our standards are higher than that. The beginning is typical substandard ff.net drivel with a couple of new ideas. It's exactly the kind of writing that I come to DLP to avoid.

I'd have gone with 2/5 at the most for the first 8 chapters, then 3/5 after Ginny gets the blue letter in ch 9, steadily rising to 4/5 by the end of Part 1 [chapter 23]. For Part 2 [after the timeskip] it's a 4/5, with some chapters being better than others, but never falling below 4/5. The increase in quality has seemed to plateau since shortly after the timeskip.

Sorry if I missed it, but apart from your dissatisfaction with the timeskip between chapter 23 and 24, what problems in Part 2 exist that would push your score down to 3/5 or lower [2/5?] for every chapter since then? The only problems I've seen in Part 2 were all present in the latter half of Part 1 [which I think we both agree is the better half of Part 1].

I can understand, even if I don't agree, with people being annoyed at missing out on the transitional period between Parts 1 and 2. I can even understand that change causing some people to become bored or disaffected because of the dramatic shift of the story in a direction or manner that they dislike. I honestly can't see a decline in the writing quality, story telling, or characterisations in comparison to Part 1 though. What, if anything, am I being blind to?

 

Skipping past the boring training montage is one thing, but we were never given the opportunity to experience that moment where Harry goes from innocent school-boy to hard-ass general. How can we appreciate how far Harry's come if we didn't see the journey?

I guess it's just a difference between liking action for the sake of action, or liking action because of what it does to/ says about the characters.

I mean, you say that training/ unit formation would be boring, but the character interactions are where the good stuff is, right? I don't care about Harry's team because it's like they came into the world fully formed. I'd be willing to bet that part of why this version of Draco is at all popular is because we saw him as Harry's right hand man during the DADA exercises, we saw Harry sticking up for him, and now it's come full circle so that Draco is loyal in his weird way to Harry. But if we were simply told that Draco was Harry's right hand man, without having gone through all that, it wouldn't have nearly the same resonance.

I dunno. The journey matters!

 

i enjoyed reading it so
4/5 for me

 

I've recommended this fic a few times because I think it's really one of the best stories of its kind. Unlike a lot of you, I didn't have a huge problem with the first part. It had a nice tempered tone that matched Harry's role as not-main-character within the fic's universe which got more and more frenzied as Harry's life did. For an average teenage wizard who starts out on the periphery of all the action the trio are in, it made sense to me.

4/5

 

I've been reading this story for quite a while, and I feel it deserves more credit than you all are giving it. It's done a nice job with giving us a realistic approach on Wrong!BWL. Especially since Harry isn't some book worm with god-like powers. He has flaws, which I love about this Harry.

Also, Kwan has given us several unique story lines in Book Two. I've certainly have never read a story about where Voldemort begins controlling Muggles minds with a 'Dark Tower'. I can't help but think of what total dumb asses the Founders must have been to have built such a thing. Didn't they know that a mind controlling weapon might seem appealing to someone Dark?

After James death, I was a little pissed that there was no future plot line with his character. It seemed that having James being Future!Harry was just the author's way of having shits and giggles. Which was why I was pleasantly surprised when the pebble came into play. It seems that Kwan has thought quite far into this story, which means its less likely he'll abandon it.

I give it a 4/5.

 

Have not yet read this story. But this just sounds fucking retarded. It sounds like something you would expect in a crackfic.

 

The premise of the story is not so good, but the later chapters are somewhat well written. I like the way harry is characterized, but the story itself seems to drag on too much. 3/5

 

It kinda comes out of nowhere. Another element that makes it feel like a completely different story between part 1 and 2. Why not give a bit of foreshadowing about what Voldemort's gonna do in part 1?

 

Just caught up with this story, hadn't read the reviews people have given here.

While I enjoyed both the parts, the thing about this fic is that it grows from a Harry-NBWL story to almost a post-apocalyptic story in a few chapters. This is awesome for some, not so much for others.

I really like Neville's characterization. The chapter we see see from his POV was really good. He's brave, but doesn't have the skills to back up his name, just like canon Harry is the later books.
It's funny how the author is subtly mocking some things people disliked about DH. The whole roaming the countryside thing came to an abrupt halt when shit hit the fan, as it should have.

The author is not good at romance, which seems to be a rip-off from Lost's Jack-Kate-Sawyer romance. I wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't gone out of his way to make Harry say the 'Live together,Die alone' speech. Enjoyable, but I would have liked something original for Harry to come up with when he has to take up the mantle of the leader instead of Neville.

I get the sense that the author has planned out the entire thing, the upcoming chapter will most likely go into detail about the whole future Harry business. I just feel uncomfortable with the whole dark tower thing.I feel this should be explained in more detail, other that simply saying the founders wanted a way to combine both magical and muggle worlds, which sounds bullshit.

So, all in all, while this fic has some low points, its written well enough, has good characterization, has a good,if strange story. This is the first Harry's-not BWL story I've read, and I enjoyed it.

3.5/5

 

Alright, so I don't know what I was thinking when I posted my earlier review. The story is DREADFUL. There's hardly a single sentence in the latest chapter that doesn't violate the laws of physics or common sense. Just two samples here -- any more and I'd have to copy and paste the entire damn sequence.

Malfoy's fastball travels faster than electromagnetic waves:

More idiocy:

Also, the exposition is ham-fisted, the dialogue wooden, and the backstory increasingly ludicrous. A vaguely interesting plot is the only thing this story has going for it, and the people who keep saying that it is only getting better are out of their minds. Why the fuck is this in the library?