Talk about a perfect example of a story just "spinning its wheels." There seems to be little, if any, real character growth and this isn't what I would describe as an independent!Harry fic. This story stars a weak!, meek! and deferential!Harry. He's supposed to be the bloody hero, not a wimp.

 

You know, I'm only gonna start reading this cos there were more 3 paragraph posts in this one than in most of the other fics on this forum. I'll give my review after I'm done.

 

This was one of the first fanfictions I read when I got into Harry Potter Fanfiction. I made it to where he got to HQ, saw Snape and started crying or something. I think that nothing is worth the trauma this fic does to your brain.

 

I've read this a while back so I can't really remember the specifics. Although from what I remember, I liked Luna in this one. Her character, in my opinion, was spot on and had more depth than most Lunas I've read. It's a decent read but it's simply too long and dragging for me, not to mention the angst was a bit overdone.

 

I'm actually I fan of this series. The style of writing is very good and the characterisation of all but Harry is well done, and Harry was close. But that's just me.

 

i read this story a while back like in 2001 under a different author name on Fanfiction.net

 

Err... yeah, that's good to know. Thanks for the info, I've been wondering about that for some time.....

 

The sheer class of this story is astounding.

Chapter 37: The Typhoon Tycoon


The Redux is astoundingly well-written and thought out. Much more than the original.

A must read.

5/5

 

Hmm... the starting is changed greatly, and those were the only consistently weak parts in the original for me, so no, Harry isn't a bitch.

And anyways, I'd read this if only for the Intermezzo.

 

I gave up reading this somewhere around the part where Harry runs away from his birthday party and Hermione gets him to take her. The ship drama level was getting way too high.
That and the parts where Harry gets ranted at and folds like a bitch are in the Redux version. The worst one is still the one where he guilt trips himself over the Department of Mysteries incident.

I did like that Dumbledore wasn't trying to interfere with Harry attending the reading of Sirus' will. I did go "What?" at the caveat that Harry would never harm Draco unless in self defense, though. And at Harry calling Draco and Narcissa murderers, can anyone tell me what that was about?

I give it a 3/5. -1 for so much goddamn ship drama, and -1 for "everything is my fault"!Harry.

 

Am I the only one who thought that picture was really really freaky.

Anyway can't say I like this fic too much. I skip the greater parts of the chapters. Most of it seems to be over dramatization and angst.

Just to play devil's advocate Sree, writing could be his way of dealing with reality. I mean if he does have terminal cancer then this could be what brings him some peace.

 

YoR is ponderously slow. It does crawl up out of the angst and get better, peaking during the OC romance as I recall and then dropping again. Which was a pity, I had such high hopes for a really well written H/Hr after the OC romance, but sadly it wasn't to be.

I've never gone back to reread it because the pacing is atrocious.

 

Reread this a few weeks ago. As Cheddar said, some of the early stuff in Part 1 is really annoying (characters just having bizarre reactions to everything). That said it does get better, Part 2 is 95% fantastic, Part 3 is a little boring but necessary, and Part 4 is very.. interesting, especially if you like world-building.

 

By today's fanfiction standards, YoR is indeed difficult to read--it's not well paced and most fanfiction readers' patience for angst has waned with exposure to far too much bad writing (see the million+ word turd that is Bobmin's Sunset/Sunrise). YoR has some brilliant scenes, some of the ones that stick with me most in fanfiction, but the story loses momentum often, particularly as the author takes long, occasionally tedious excursions into world-building infodumps. To be fair, back when he wrote the story, when speculation on what directions the HP series might take was fresh and new, readers ate this stuff up. There's far less tolerance for this nowadays, however.

I still find YoR to be an incredibly ambitious effort, a sort of grand world building on par with the likes of Cygnus Crux, who began writing fanfiction around the same time (her Existence After Life series began in early 2002). It's notable that FP's story is nearly a decade old now and was arguably the first true Indy!Harry piece (I'm not counting Ruskbyte's OOTP, which is more of a Super!Harry), one that influenced the direction of HP fanfiction as much as anything Jeconais, S'TarKan, or Bobmin ever did. So much of it feels tired today because so many of his ideas have been copied over the years.

@thebrute7: Regarding FP's H/Hr stories, I prefer Harry Potter and the Last Horcrux. It's still rather slowly paced and contains a generous helping of angst, but pays a bit more attention to dramatic arcs and storytelling. Apparently, the author posted a rewrite of the series not long ago, which I have not gone back to read.

 

Last Horcrux is a great one, among the best that the pairing has to offer. Which isn't a lot to be honest.

But yeah, I've read last Horcrux a couple times, it's at least easier to get through the angsty stuff in it than it is in Years.

 

This is why I kept reading fanfiction after OoTP came out. It is entirely worth reading, though the ongoing edits make it feel faker and more stodgy than in days gone by. As said in another post, "your trip to hp fanfiction is not complete without a bit of YoR."

In the end it seems the YoR outlasted Mike FP himself. A cancer thing as far as I know, but he was a quality/experienced writer (and really good guy, no joke) in a world of teen hacks and it showed. Perhaps not surprising that the fandom has a similar feeling these days.

Placing this in its time is important. The only other comparable fics of the day were BarbLPs Psychic Serpent which was being passed around as OotP on Limewire prerelease, (that's pre-torrent for you youngsters) and Joe991, some also rans(I never like wastelands take for what you will) and that's about it. The best slow burn(ie feasible, reasonable, semi-meaningful) HHr ever, a Harry that could actually defeat Voldemort pre-horcrux dues ex machina(which even JKR failed to bring to life, hence our little obsession), a real follow up to the series that didn't let you down with each succession. Probably why he never finished it apart from mortality and whatnot.

It's great, anyone who never read it should. Anyone w/o didn't like it probably didn't read it or fails to understand why HP fanfic exists, and/or is the toys.

It's just my opinion though, try it for yourself. Right now.

You can trust me, I'm a doctor.