Title: The Sniper II: Babylonian Nights
Author: DobbyElfLord
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Suspense
DLP Category: Independent
Pairing: N/A
Status: Oneshot
Summary: Sequel to The Sniper; Five years after killing Voldemort, Harry is a SAS lieutenant assigned to the invasion of Iraq. When the Muggle war wakes something best left forgotten, Harry is pulled back into the Wizarding world. Can't they clean up their own mess?
Link: FF.net

Pretty sure this hasn't been posted yet, sorry in advance if it has.

Having loved The Sniper, I'm quite happy to see a sequel. It feels a little weird having Magicals involved with the war in Iraq, but since they're more trying to keep the existence of magic secret than actually participating, it gets over the weirdness fairly quickly. Good read to pass the time, and a nice continuation of The Sniper universe.

4/5

 

The ending to The Sniper was terrible. It was a decent fic, but there was no need for a sequel.

The idea that Iraqi magicals were in any way assisting or listening to Saddam made me laugh.

This fucking made me rage. The Unspeakables as special operatives cliche is hardly ever done well. It's mangled here. They aren't recruiting fucking Hogwarts students as spies or as anything else. Just fucking no.:facepalm

:fireNo. Hell no.
The Unspeakables don't work for the goddam Muggles. :fire

The magical sages? Really? Being a sage has nothing to do with being magical. And it's fairly self evident that it's magicals who would be monitoring pulses of magic. Also the term sage for what amounts to a historian or intelligence analyst is retarded. It's more flowerly language and titles to detract from the questionable quality of the story.

Now magicals actively work for and are known to the British Museum as well? Whatever happened to separation of the worlds?

I think this might be my biggest problem with both Sniper stories. The author just makes the Muggles able to bitchslap the Magicals whenever they feel like it. It's no contest. They kill them seemingly at will, apparently run the most secret Magical agencies and can order them around. It's fucking retarded.

Why? Why the fuck is that reasonable? You're wizards. Just say no. What's he gonna do about it? You can hide from the damn Muggles, you should be able to take them. One little word IMPERIO; hey suddenly Saddam doesn't give a damn what you do. One other; OBLIVIATE. Now he doesn't know you exist. And even if you choose to just ignore him, he's about to get his shit handed to him by the US. He's got far more important things to be doing than to start fighting his own magicals.


The story is shit. The idea is atrocious and the execution is horrendous. The Sniper was a fun idea and an above average story. It should've been left at that.

 

This was very meh. It lacks the originality of its prequel (which I also thought was rather meh, but much less so), and seems a bit thinly stretched. It seems like DEL thought to himself, "Hey, it's been three years, lets write another sniper!Harry, drop him in the Middle East, slap on a big ol' II, and cash in." And like all sequels, it's not as good as the original.

Which isn't to say it's particularly awful. DobbyElfLord has the unique ablity to take an interesting premise and make it meh without it completely sucking. I consistently read his stuff, but I'm never truly impressed with it.

3.5/5, but rounded down for voting. I think this is solid Recycling Bin material.

 

DEL seems to be on a sequel kick. In the last year he's worked on the sequel to Altered Destinies, the sequel to Harry Potter, Mercenary and now this. And in every single case the sequel was far inferior to the original. It appears that he's having difficultly coming up with new ideas, so he's going back to his old universes. And failing. In the originals, the uniqueness of the idea was enough to make up for the meh quality of the story and the plethora of cringeworthy and wtf moments. Stripped of that uniqueness and novelty, the sequels fail. Hard.

Just finished it for whatever reason.

Spoiler

Harry is the Queen's wizard and a shit ton of other titles he yanks out of nowhere to pull rank. Then DEL drops this turdbomb.

Seriously? This shit was played out years ago. That's the best he can come up with? Andro's right. DEL is a no talent hack

 

I just have a low opinion of his writing abilities in general. Even his best story, Altered Destinies, is all but unreadable now. Worse still, he's not making any progress at developing his sense of what ideas are shit and what aren't, as evidenced by the Unspeakables in this fic.

I'm completely hostile to the badass tone he's trying to affect.

The 9/11 reference is stupid too.

1/5.

 

I dunno. The writing style/execution isn't the greatest, but I was still able to enjoy the story. Not something I'd hold up as a shining example of great fiction, but it's a fun enough read if you don't get sidetracked by the unrealistic/bullshit throw-away comments littered about. 2.5/5

 

MI-5 = Internal Security
MI-6 = External security

Why would 5 be involved in Iraq operations? They're strictly internal-only.

I did enjoy the story, but it's very much a guilty pleasure thing, and even then it wasn't that great. 2/5

 

Thoughts:

The Title was too meh. I think "Sniper II: Electric Nunduloo" would have worked.

Lots of grammar errors at first... mostly spelling "Digory" instead of with two Gs.

When compared to "Sniper," this story is indeed a bit weak. I do like the setting however. The one weak character in "Sniper" makes a return in the sequel, and that's Dumbledore.

Not as good as the first, which is I think still a very good one-shot, a story I reread on occasion to this day. "Sniper II" has the feel of being unfinished, which the original story didn't.

Since I like "Sniper" and this story is okay, I'll say 3 stars and off to the guilty pleasures and okay sequels section of the Recycling Bin...

 

What do you folks want for free?

What is the 5 star Harry Potter fan fic for the first 4 months of 2011?

If Rowling started a for profit fanzine and you where the editors what non cross-over
stories for 2011 would you include.

I think this was a good story.

But what do I know?

 

Step 1: Work by author.
Step 2: Browse.
Step 3: You got your stories.

 

Why does there have to be a 5 star story for any specific time period. Quality is quality. You don't lower the bar just because a fic that meets the standards hasn't been written since some arbitrary date.

Literally nothing you posted except the second to last line has any bearing on the worth of the story whatsoever.


And as for what's free that we'll rate highly? Now you're just being retarded. There's any number of fantastic stories linked to on this site, including a whole C2 full as you should well know. They all blow this out of the water.

 

I give this story a 2.5, rounded up to 3 for sentimental reasons. It has some annoying cliches but as a short story it's not that bad to deserve a 1. There's far worse material out there.

About Altered Destinies. It was surely not perfect but besides its flaws it was the best WW2/Harry/Grindelwald story which I've read. It has a little flair of "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" whose epic setting begs for a HP story.

But I agree that he always has some annoying hit/miss problems with good ideas in his stories. My main problem with AD was the Riddle plotline which wasn't really my taste but I can respect the idea behind it. The followup to AD is a major disappointment though.

 

Agreed about "Altered Destinies." It turned out to be a good 4-star story. I think the sequel was ill-advised because "Altered Destinies" felt complete. That being said, the sequel is okay but it's just a chase story which is a comparative letdown.

Concerning "Sniper II," I like its setting. I thought it was inventive enough to go in a different direction and not be as constraining as it would have been had it been set completely in the UK.

 

I like the setting, I like the harry, I like the supporting cast, not too much, not too little. That being said, its not a great story. Its good, but not great.
3/5 from me.

 

Tried reading it. It's boring as shit. I'm not interested in the "Iraqi War". Fuck that.