Partially Kissed Hero went way past the point of batshit insane...

Party crashes was a decent read for me. 3/5

 

On the upswing, potential Katie Bell/Harry Potter relationship.

That alone keeps me reading, hoping.

 

The problem with this story is the pacing, I'm six chapters and about 50K in and Harry's in the second week of his 3rd year, JKR took 75K to write PS, he needs to pick it up a bit. With that said, it is relatively well written and the possibility of a Harry/Katie pairing is awesome (by far my favorite pairing, it is so underused) at the same time, however, our introduction to Katie was her giving Harry a hug in front of everyone in the common room yet our next interaction with her states that she is incredibly shy, hmm.
3/5

 

Harry Potter and the Detour to Heaven

I would give it 4/5. Writing is coherent, has a guild build up , but there are few pieces that doesn't fit, but in the end it comes together.

 

It was nice, but what I don't understand is where he supposedly went after he went through the floo. His own timeline was gone, so where did he go? The afterlife? "Paradise", with his parents and the rest?

 

Yup. :awesome

 

I read Becoming Something More this afternoon. Moderately enjoyable, though definitely a guilty pleasure fic.

My review:

 

I just stopped reading because of the reasons in Taure's review.

 

I got a very polite reply from the author who says he's going back over the story and trying to restructure it. Sounds promising - though a part of me would prefer he focus that energy on new updates, even if they were of lower quality lol.

 

I cried. Only a little bit, though.

Dammit.

 

I did too.

It felt a lot like Chem Prof's alternate ending to SoulSearching/End Game Greater Love did to me when I had first started reading fanfiction.

Except better. Or worse, I guess, depending on your point of view.

 

Oh please, it wasn't that upsetting. It was, admittedly, quite sad, but I don't think it pulls off heart-wrenching well enough to cause tears.

 

We'll, given your name...

OTOH, I'd expect you to be named Schmetterling with that avatar.

 

It was mildly sad, but I didn't cry.

Although I did quite like the final scene - it really worked well with the rest.


Party Crashers isn't something I like that much. I read it when he first published it on FFA, and it just felt wrong. One of my pet peeves is putting extra detail into a world before time/universe travel, which we see here. It was mildly entertaining to see Harry being a symbol of bad luck, but it was just mehish. And then the anti-cliche stuff, such as the soulmates thing, ruins it. They only really work in comedies, or parodies, because otherwise the author just seems to be trying too hard.


Becoming Something More I really enjoyed. I liked PKH for the first part when I first read it, and then it just turned into a clusterfuck of huge proportions.

Spoiler

However, the student politics and stuff felt really god-awful. An eleven year old essentially locks out Harry Potter, the BWL and Dumbledore's apprentice, out of conversations with major traders because of (what I assume was) a misunderstanding - Harry thinking Astoria was messing around. I can get that parents would listen to their children to try and get a handle of someone's character, but the extent this goes to here is just stupid.

 

Like (whoever it was), I read this a while back at FFA. I know it's been a pretty good while, because I can't remember the last time I checked that site. I honestly haven't the foggiest idea when I last clicked the link to that page.

Anyway, I checked it out for no other reason than it was by Full Pensieve. I have always loved his HP & the Years of Rebellion and HP & the Last Horcrux, and I was severely disappointed in this piece the first time around. I do wonder why it's only now being posted to FFN though, because FP has been life-threateningly sick for a long time now, and stated that HBP really killed fanfiction for him with the H/G and R/Hr. IIRC it's his nephew who's been posting the notes for YoR and the ending(s) for TLH to FFN, so I'm curious why this is suddenly up.

I can't adequately express how much I hate these kinds of challenges, and this one in particular just pisses me off. To have Harry die and be sent back to "right the wrongs" and "find his soul-mate" are cringe-worthy and I refuse to participate in them.

I suppose part of it has to do with my feelings that there is not nor has there ever been an anthropomorphic Death, and on top of that, the whole soul-mates thing is simply stupid and lazy, not to mention overdone and serves no purpose other than to completely wipe out any romantic tension.

So I'm sad to say this is just one more in a string of fail-tastic attempts at soul-bonded Death-sent-me-back-'cause-I-died-before-my-time fics.

1/5, and that's only because of my fond memories of FP's other stuff.

I would read the fuck out of that - anyone know where to find a decent one?

It started out alright and the premise is quite good, but it quickly went down the drain with

Spoiler

(1) Harry's "an innocent abroad" antics with respect to who he should "ask" and also w/r/t his feelings about sex.

(2) Hermione's whole part. Seriously, it was all stupid.

(3) Ginny. See #2, but x 1,000.

(4) Collin Creevey and all that entails. He's thrown into the mix here for absolutely no reason except as a slash-y shout-out. Checking the author's profile, I was unsurprised to find it filled with slash, both in HP (Harry/Draco, Harry/Snape) and in x-overs.

So it's a big no from me.

Yeah, what are they - a bunch of women?

 

I thought of putting this into the review board, but then, the original was an almost recommendable, so I'll leave that decision to the older dwellers.

Apparently there's a rewrite of the HP and the Autumn Swan - the original was one of the first fics I have read, and had me hooked pretty well.

This time, the reboot seems to be more polished and in better quality.
Sometimes though it seems that the author goes overboard with descriptions, but that might be just me.

Now, having read a lot more than I did then, I'd give the original at least 3.5. (Mostly because the fifthyear was too easy, and Hedwig's plot line was a bit too crazy for me. Not sure how much of the rating is nostalgia, though.)

This one feels like a 4.5/5 for me. Still, only three chapters so far.

 

Looks full of purple prose, to me.

 

That's why I said overboard.

 

Something I found while searching through piles of shit on ff.net:

ff.net

Before you start to go "oh no, crappy Harmony fic!" on me, wait a minute!

1) There are no indications that there will be a H/HR ship in this story, they are actually brother and sister, and not of the kinky incestous sort either.

2) While the premise of the AU is weak, it's not clear if the author has something planned to explain it later.

3) This Harry is just cool- he's a prankster, loves his family and is clever too, much like he would have been if raised by James and Lily.

4) You just have to like a Harry/Susan/Ron trio investigating Ravenclaw!Hermiones strange behaviour with the reluctant aid of her housemate Draco Malfoy. Throw in Sirius as badass DADA teacher and the mysteries surrounding Harry and you have an interesting and competently written story.

3.5/5

 

I reached just that point. It was ok, sometimes great up to now, but this turning point is a major wtf moment.

There are quite a few issues: The dei ex machina are sometimes hard to stomach; the author generally has as huge problems with numbers as JKR (i.e. the number of Borgs, the amount of people rounding them up, etc); he drastically overestimates the influence of Harry's friends and classmates (they are 36/37 years old); etc.

Nevertheless I really liked the first 19 chapters. I am up to chapter 24 and for now I'll continue reading it. If the story delves too far into the Matrix universe, I'll stop.

If you are into a story about the wizarding world dealing with an invasion of Borgs, you might read the first 19 chapters and end there. The story does work without anything that follows, it's just missing an epilogue.