I'm going to be honest - the first few chapters felt like mostly canon rehash. Some things felt forced into place, though afterward they fell out pretty naturally. The author goes out of his way to avoid certain tropes and it's a bit obvious, though I'm not sure whether that's better or worse than actually using them in the first place.

It's not bad though. I'll probably continue to read it.

 

Oh, Heather, you are so full of sunshine and daisies. I am well aware of how to rate things. And well, obviously not everyone's tastes are the same.

 

It's just a case of your standards being lower than the norm.

Still not liking Deprived.

And the author just has Fleur go with it. Does a trustworthy person take someone's wand in the first place? Every other exchange between the characters is very questionable, and kind of stupid.

 

As I mentioned before (in the new 'Define a Guilty Pleasure' thread before it was broken off from this one), the 'showdown' was more of a 'letdown'.

The constantly changing PoV's are jarring and fairly annoying - the break the reader out of the story.

The author didn't adapt his prose for that action scene, and the scene itself fell flat.

We knew that 'Bayard' liked to use Diffindos to the neck/arteries, and Reductos to fine-paste people. It's implied that he used 'anything that killed', but those were his signature 'moves'.

We didn't see that, or any hint of it.

All we essentially saw was 'Hate' doing the dirty for him - instead of an implied team, it looked like Harry was just relying on Hate, because he's a lazy bastard.

 

hahaha tell us how you really feel.

 

fanfiction.net

Hermione is the first person narrator in this well written AU story. It gets cliche heavy after the end of first year - chapter 23 is titled "My friend the billionaire" - but stays quite readable.

A good read for H/Hr shippers and everyone else who has a soft spot for the bookworm. 4/5

 

But why is it 200K words after only the first year? Is Hermione flawless? Is Harry her bitch? Does Ron get bashed? Is it a canon redo or do things change because one of the characters is suddenly competent?

 

The time it took to write those questions could've been used to read the preface of the story.

 

I was intrigued by the comment and read the preface. It actually kinda draws me in. I'll definitely read this one.

 

This is the worst possible idea. I opened this story a while back, read the preface and promptly closed it. It's that bad. My advice, skip the preface and move on to the first chapter.

In short, it's Hermione's viewpoint on the first book, but not in a total rehash kind of way. It's concentrating on her character, still as flawed as the original so far. I read up through the sorting and it's pretty good. There are a couple of obvious fuckups for the canon-nazis to rage about, but considering it's supposed to be the "real" story, any mistakes or alterations are magically explained away.

The real danger is what's the rest of the year going to look like. I'm waiting for the inevitable retreat into word for word plagiarism like most redos.

2.5/3 Guilty Pleasure Read.

 

I read the whole thing, and while year 1 is very canon-rehashy, the end of the year, and the summer prior to second year starts to diverge things quite heavily.

I don't really expect the author to ever complete all seven years, not at the quality and length that he has put out so far, but it's well written, and somewhere between honestly good and guilty pleasure. Some cliches, yeah, sure. But the writing is technically excellent, and the character development and point of view is well done and interesting.

I'm going to give it a 4/5, maybe slightly rounding up from 3 point something - but I was very much surprised by it.

 

I recall reading up through about chapter 15 or so, back when I was "all HHr, all the time." There was a fairly long break between updates and I lost interest, and in fact deleted all the fanfics I had downloaded.

I remember liking the style of the story, in that it was told from Hermione's POV and after the events of canon, sort of like Notebooks and Letters by chem prof. If I recall correctly, the parts about Hermione's family life and the pre-Hogwarts stuff was pretty good, though I could be thinking of a completely different fic.

However, if you're jonesing for a really good story told from Hermione's point of view, you can't do much better than Resistance by lorien829.

I won't rate Growing Up Granger, in part because I don't remember enough about it and in part because I don't think I'll be taking it back up.

 

Unfinished Business A Tale of the League

A Harry Potter and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Crossover with some other fandoms too. It's only the beginning, and I think I like what I'm seeing.

 

I came upon a very interesting story a few days ago, some sort of HP/Tangled crossover. You'll probably want to avoid reading this if you can't stand the H/G pairing though, since it's a bit heavy on the romance. The writing is solid as far as I can tell, and the story is finished. The plot seems a bit contrived sometimes, little things that remind you that the author could have done a better job, but overall it is a nice refreshing little story. 3.5/5.

Knotted by hgfan1111
When Undesirable Number One hides in a strange cottage, the last thing he expects to find is Ginny, a mysterious, spirited young woman with magical abilities. An HP twist on Tangled. AU Harry/Ginny and other canon pairings.

Rated: K+ - Humor/Romance - Chapters: 15 - Words: 62,653 - Reviews: 385 - Updated: 9-2-11 - Published: 8-16-11 - Harry P. & Ginny W. - Complete

 

I don't, though I suppose that's why this thread exists.

I had to stop reading, however, when Harry expresses disbelief that everyone would fit into the TARDIS.

 

Surprisingly not terrible, though reading fics at night makes everything look better. Still, good writing and characterizations make for a decent fic, if a rather long prologue to what I expect the main story to be (the sequel). And yes, the entire story takes place within the span of about two or three days.

Anyways, I'll look back on this tomorrow and decide what sort of rating it deserves. At the moment, I'm leaning toward a 4/5, but eh.

 

Title: Undrentide
Author: excentrykemuse
Pairing: Harry/Astoria (Draco/Astoria, some Harry/Luna)
Rating: PG-13
Link: http://harryhetbigbang.livejournal.com/6374.html
Story Summary: AU. Chamber of Secrets never happened because Lucius Malfoy never slipped the diary into Ginny Weasley’s books. Instead, it remained in his library, half forgotten. Voldemort gained a body, as per canon, in Goblet of Fire, and believed that this Horcrux was as safe as any of the others … Instead, the diary finds its way into the hands of a young witch Draco Malfoy loves, and begins to haunt her dreams where only Harry might be able to save her.

One of excentrykemuse's few non-slash stories, set during a relatively unchanged sixth year. An interesting concept, written well. It makes me wish it was more than a oneshot, but it ended well, all the same.

 

Beonid - wrong link. Here is the correct one: http://harryhetbigbang.livejournal.com/6374.html

 

Meh. It had an interesting hook, the writing wasn't terrible, but the actual content was where this one really let me down. Way too much touchy feely neigh unbelievable bullshit with Snape for my taste. Despite all the obvious danger of October '81, this story somehow manages not to have any real conflict, just chapter after chapter of reconciliations.

I think the best indicator is that even though they had plenty of time to plan an ambush at Godric's Hollow, they thought that getting out all the Potter family junk was a more important use of time, and only really achieved anything there through floo-powder-ex-machina. That could've been a great combat scene with the Order facing off against a surprised Voldemort in cramped conditions to break up all the emotional monotony, but the author just threw it away.

Interest in the hook kept me reading all the way through, but left with such a bitter aftertaste I'd be remiss to give it better than a 2/5.

 

Yeah, I agree that it was a bit long for a character piece.

As for Unrentide, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, given the author. The writing had it's usual murkiness, though.

The ending killed it for me, unfortunately. I literally can't think of a worse way to end the story.