Title: Slow Path
Author: esama
Rating: T
Genre: Drama/Adventure
DLP Category: Time Travel
Pairing: None
Status: Oneshot
Summary: If changing the history was impossible, the Department of Mysteries wouldn't bother to send Unspeakables to hunt time travellers down. Au, timetravel with ooc Harry. Character deaths.
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7230603/1/Slow_Path
Link (zip archive of Esama's works): https://dl.dropbox.com/u/92776639/Esama.ZIP

Atypical time travel story. Found it to be pretty depressing without being angsty.

Also features Daphne Greengrass.

5/5


Checked by Minion, August 18, 2013
Bulwersator provided a link to an archive with Esama's works.
If you know where to find another copy of the story, please inform the library staff.

 

Okay, will be completely honest. Like any other member of this forum that's been around the block, the name 'esama' makes me weary, for a number of reasons. The lack of pairings helps a bit, cause I don't have to worry about random unexplained slash (I hope...), but even besides that, she generally doesn't bother explaining things and just handwaves anything that would get in the way of her story, especially when it comes to characterization.

Having said that, I'll take a look before rating it, like I do with every fic.

 

Apparently if Esama decides to continue this, it will be slash. But given Esama's history, she probably won't. I reccd this as a Oneshot anyhow and not as a potential part of a larger fic.

 

Written pretty engagingly at first. Framed the opening section with the 'four days' list device well.

There's a glaring example of very cheap dialogue, used to one-dimensionally characterize Harry at the beginning, which is just cheating.

He doesn't get much characterization after that.

After Harry's time leap there's very sparse yet repetitive description of 1880s London.

He finds Daphne effortlessly.

WTF?

He literally just spots Daphne down the street and stuns/petrifies her. How does Daphne successfully execute a century-plus time leap - which forces the Ministry to permanently sacrifice a top operative - and NOT know to move the fuck away the moment she arrives?

Otherwise, Esama justifies it well, but my point is WHY would you put the effort into building an ironclad excuse to avoid writing a creative, engaging mystery/investigation/hunt starring Harry trying to track down Daphne? Why not actually write that?

The counterargument, that "The hunt isn't the point of the story", is retarded, and the actual point and crux of the story is even more so.

Here it is:

Spoiler

Purebloods crossbreed so heavily that purebloods are degenerating. Daphne goes back in time to try and intervene.

Esama bases his story around a premise.

An excellent story would be based on an ingenious premise that stuns you with its simplicity and brilliance. Moreover, the lack of authorial tampering and fudging.

Esama has to impose arbitrary rules like the one quoted that. It's almost clever since there are mostly two siblings or only children at Hogwarts, except Esama has to come up with these rules and admit outliers like the Weasleys and whatever other families, and the entire wizarding population we never heard about.

At best, you'd think "That's kinda cool, except I notice that the author had to change this, and kind of selectively forget that, ect. ect."

Then there's absolutely retarded fuckery that isn't even a big detail, but esama just throws them out casually.

Another example: Daphne's grand, master plan to undo centuries of destructive pureblood selective breeding programs?

Daphne, you are not representing blondes well.

Why the fuck does that require you to leap back in time and instantly trigger the Ministry to send a deadly agent after you who will catch you in five minutes flat, unraveling your plan?

So Harry and Daphne get into this debate about the robustness of the timeline, and I'm like "Fuck this".

There's one grammatical error esama keeps doing despite constantly being told about which makes me think, in those specific sentences, that he's retarded.

The above-average writing will make you like it at first, but when the concept is inevitably revealed,
you will see that the story is bad, bad, bad.

And just because esama wants to make this one-shot perfect, the ending is a letdown.

Hopefully none of you guys treat my thoughtful review as a wholesale demolition of this story.

2/5.

 

I've grown tired of seeing so many Esama fics in here, none of them being very good. But I gave this a go because it's a oneshot of minimal length.

I don't like the author's writing style, although it's personal preference I suppose, but the story may have been better with a traditional style.

The beginning was sort of boring, the reader has no real connection to the characters, and the present tense doesn't help much.

The middle was mostly infodump while namedropping a few character in an effort to add legitimacy to the story. It didn't. I guess it's because its mostly all tell, and not show, at least it felt that way. It's just such a weird writing style that when it's all combined, its more annoying than creative.

The introduction into the past was pretty good. The description of London was noteworthy, particularly the Tower of London and Leaky Cauldron.

The Harry/Greengrass interaction and the monologue on why she is in the past is just :facepalm Selective breeding and magical power... really? Sure, on the surface it seems possible, but as soon as you start thinking about it in any amount of depth you see a billion holes.

The end was meh, intentionally lackluster and boring. I was half expecting Harry to take up Daphne's cause, but I guess that would be too exciting for this story.

It was too passive and boring, but mostly just boring. 3/5, and I think that's being generous.

 

Esama is one of those authors with no heart in their stories. The only stories they have that are remotely engaging are slash, or have some sort of sappy OOC base.

This particular story is dry, awkward, and seems like it's only halfway written - like she's skipping over things in the narrative in favor of getting it over with quickly because she has better things to do. She's less than interested in the characters, and lingers a little too long on the set-up.

2/5 from me.

 

I thought this story was pretty engaging. Showcasing Harry's bleak disconnected view on life and such. I didn't think the chase after Greengrass and the idea of pureblood decay were the main focuses of the fic.

But damn, sorry guys. I try to rec what I feel is 5/5 material.

 

I rate this an esama out of 5, also known as anywhere btween 0 and 3.5.

The concept isn't terrible, though relies on cliches. Harry is a fatalistic DoM 00Agent sent back in time to chase and kill a time traveller before they screw up everything.

I hated Daphne's premise and reasoning, and that it included stupid idea like magical strength/power level and how 95% of wizards are 'weak'. And Daphne was going to make it so everyone was OVER 9000 with her stupid plan. Terrible.

Slash and hints of slash ("experiments" after Ginny) further detract. The story was not particularly engaging at all, and for me the underpinning bits of revisionism needed for the story to make sense were silly.

I think its time there is a ban established for putting esama's work into For Review..

 

The thing is?

Being a bleak, disconnected bastard doesn't make a story. It doesn't make a character interesting, either. Both those things require depth and detail in the story itself.

This story does not have those things. I don't feel amused or saddened by Harry. I don't pity or empathize. I just go, like, 'well, he's a detached prick, I guess.' And then I continue to feel bored because I, like everyone else here, has seen this type of Harry a dozen times, at least.

Now, that's not really esama's fault; she's writing for a fandom with hundreds of thousands of fics. I can't really blame her for not wowing me with this characterization.

But I still wasn't wowed, whether she's to blame or not. This story was wowless. It wasn't great, it wasn't bad, it was just okay, and, sadly, that's worse, from a story point-of-view.

 

God... It has so many potentials. The idea of TimePolice!Harry is very interesting, refreshing, and (in some ways) epic. But for a story with great premise, this story feels dry... and lame.

To be honest, I :facepalm when I read what actually the main conflict is, and again when I read the ending. Seriously, I expected this story will be about a TimePolice!Harry that hunts down some time criminals who seek to fuck up history and conquer the world. I expected this to become a very engaging story about Harry tracking down the criminals and fights them in (maybe) an epic scale battle that shatters time and space itself.

Ah well. I read Wastelands and Heartlands of Time too much these days.

For conclusion, I think this story is somewhat entertaining, but I don't think it belongs to Library. 2/5.

 

It's not utter crap but not library worthy either. Rounding up to 3 stars.

 

The writing style seems a bit rambling at places.

This.With a few changes to the story it would have been a unique one-shot.Daphne's solution to the problem seems like something a kid would think, not someone who has apparently been studying time/timeline and successfully made a jump 100yr jump.

For the unique idea,but writing herself into the corner 3/5.

 

An interesting premise, but utterly ruined.

So he's going back in time, can't do anything to anyone, and is sorta suicidal.

He can't do anything to the timeline. Firstly because of the way esama set the story up, second because of Vows. There is no way this could be continued, other than "And the next day, Harry also did very little. He hired a few whores (of either persuasion), and then drank a bit. This continued forever."

Also, Daphne's plan was balls. She'd set herself up as a pureblood? And then forcefeed everyone fertility potions. And nobody would ever notice that somehow they had seven kids. Hell, the purebloods of this time don't sound stupid, they'd probably set up their own vows - "I will only have a single heir alive at any time, and I will make my children make this same vow without any changes to it". Bam. Her fertility potions? Ruined. The second child would kill both parents as soon as it was conceived. Or if they swore on their gametes (or whatever they knew them as), the foetus dies.


If Daphne had arrived before Harry, and he had trouble tracking her, and then got pulled back, it could be interesting. She could set up a horcrux/thing like the diary, to take charge of someone at the moment she leaves in whenever, and Harry has to keep going back to different time periods, runnin around without crossing his own path.

3/5. Readable, but not recommendable. And would not read again.

 

Because an Esama story just wouldn't be complete without Harry getting emasculated in some way.

EDIT: Also fucking magical oaths seriously they need to die