I'm already stupidly excited for this. It reminds of the Dresden Files, in a way. More of the recent vibe of, "Oh shit, oh shit, what do I do, I'm totally outmatched."

 

Secret world, check.
Family lines, check.
Suburban magic, aka storybook magic made real, check.
"Others", check.
Mystery, check.
---
Rebellious teenager vs the world, check.
Ghostly confidant, ghostly family, check.

Pact has so many elements I love to read about, it almost seems as if Wildbow put them all together on purpose. On the flipside, I got to wonder how he plans to resolve the story. Magical mystery always seems cheaper after you know the tricks. I also hate rpg style stories and checklists and Wildbow already made a five year checklist with grandmothers instruction letters. I really don't want to read a generic power up-conquer the world! story and Pact is tripping a lot of flags.

 

I'm going to hazard a guess and say that things are not going to go as planned. This is Wildbow, after all. Worm could be renamed It Got Worse: The Serial as it is and I've no doubt that this story will follow on in that pattern.

 

First, to anyone curious about this story, this is kind of a supernatural/suspense story. There wasn't a summary or anything in the OP, so I didn't expect that and was kind of thrown off when I started reading.

Anyway, I've read what's there. I don't think I like it that much. The author throws a lot at you at once, and I don't feel like I have a handle on what's going on. Granted it's early yet, but the main character seems to understand more than I do. Actually it feels like he made some weird leaps in starting to understanding this stuff that I couldn't follow -- he seems to swallow all the weird stuff that happens too easily, and it feels odd. Plus the whole last chapter throws all this politics stuff at you, which really turns me off. Politics always feels so petty.

It does remind me of the Dresden Files in a way -- from a more depressing perspective.

 

I'm enjoying Pact as we get along with it. With that said, Aviary is right, the beginning is still a bit rough. I think I can actually pinpoint the precise moment where my disbelief is stretched. It's when Blake thinks:

That bugged me. A lot. If he had noticed that they were physically similar, and that his own reflection seems to have totally disappeared, then reacted to both of those things it would be a bit more believable. I feel like we just need less of Blake accepting things and more of him thinking critically. Even some mentions of weird stuff happening when they were kids would ease us in a little. We already get the idea that the manor was a spooky place, why not run with that a little bit more?

Either way I'm gonna keep reading. Enjoying everything much more as of Chapter 5. Although I will admit that as soon as I realized Laird could work the the timey-wimey wibbilty-wobblty I figured he was going to strange Blake outside after dark.

 

Here's the summary: Blake Thorburn was driven away from home and family by a vicious fight over inheritance, returning only for a deathbed visit with the grandmother who set it in motion. Blake soon finds himself next in line to inherit the property, a trove of dark supernatural knowledge, and the many enemies his grandmother left behind her in the small town of Jacob’s Bell.

Meh, I liked it, including the politics part. I guess youre also not a fan of MattSilver's Incorruptible: The Dementor's Stigma? Political element worked out pretty well in that story...


Anyway, yeah I agree with everyone else in that the beginning has been a bittt off.

However, looking back at 1.1

was followed by Rose punching and cracking the mirror, which I think would be pretty convincing to me that something weird is going on and I may need to get out of dodge.

Also, I need to go back and look, but I'm fairly certain he was feeling suspicious of Rose, thinking that she could be a Other.

 

That might help things along, yeah.

Never heard of it.

He was suspicious of that at one point, but I think he got distracted before he could dwell on it too much.

 

Really? I'm surprised.
DLP's very own Matt Silver. Here's a link. I think it's 4 stars in the library. Cheers.

 

I actually don't read a lot of Harry Potter fanfics. Straight Harry Potter anyway. Most of the ones I've read in recent years have been crossovers with other things I've liked. But I'll give this a try -- I haven't seen a Harry Potter zombie story before, that I recall anyway.

As for Pact, I'll probably stick with it for a while. But it hasn't grabbed me like Worm did (initially).

 

Really? Pact actually, to me, feels like it has a stronger hook than Worm did. I felt like Worm didn't really start drawing me in until the bank robbery, but the really huge hook, to me, was Leviathan.

 

Ever have that "oh shit" moment? Just got it reading 1.6. I really quite like how this is coming together now.

 

How am I supposed to sleep after that?
Gah, Pizza delivery guy was pretty convincing (Although I was never pulling for Blake to go out there. Wouldn't have been much for him to do to stop things).
I get really freaked out when there are these Eldritch abominations that you have to be really careful interacting with. When Putting myself in the characters shoes I can easily see myself missing some stupid little detail leading to dire consequences. I'm pretty sure there will be quite a bit of that in this story. Freaks me out man.

Maybe Rose is somehow this super crafty Other? It's pretty unlikely but I just don't know what to believe.

 

I wonder if (old) Rose managed to somehow cripple the Other and bind it to Blake as (young/mirror) Rose. She can only exist in reflective surfaces, but is unable to step free of its confines, though she can affect the surface itself at the cost of energy.

 

I'm betting that Rose is a small part of the Other left behind after its escape. Molly screwed up and brought something reflective inside the tower. It used the bit of the mirror to create Rose then used her as leverage to escape somehow.

In the process though, Rose was left behind.

At first I thought that Rose might be the Other just fucking with Blake, but her behavior doesn't line up. She saved him from those fae (provided Blake actually needed saving and the whole thing wasn't smoke and mirrors) but was also (essentially) encouraging him to run to his death with the Pizza Delivery Guy. If she really was the Other then she would have known the rules and her encouragements to run outside become much more sinister. So yeah. I think she's a little part of the Tower Other, not the real deal herself.

 

But Blake was the first one to find the key.
"The key had apparently been melted into the wax, only to be freed by the impact."

 

Well, if Laird is to be believed, Paidrick is supposed to be (one of) Blake's "guardians", whatever that means. It's very possible he wasn't in any danger at all there, and the trio were just fucking with him for shits and giggles.

Personally, I'm leaning toward Rose being this Other, but changed in some fashion to be benign, or at least its true nature hidden under an illusion of humanity.

 

Good point, I missed that. Still, I think the thing with the mirrors has too strong of connection to Rose to be coincidence.

 

There's definitely more to Rose than meets the eye. For one, she reacted very negatively to the Diabolotry book despite never having read it (Blake had to walk outside of the mirror's field of vision to pick it up). She reacted even worse to the key.

This implies that she is aware of the Tower Other or what was in the book before Blake picked it up.

As well as that, wouldn't shears count as a reflective surface? Why would Molly take them in to the Tower room? How could she get in if she didn't have the key? Something is definitely wrong with this. There's got to be another party involved here.

 

I'm reasonably certain Molly never made it into the Tower.

My gut instinct on this is that Rose is the Tower Other and, somehow, Blake's familiar. I could easily be wrong, but it fits what little we know about both, and neatly ties together the disparate pieces of foreshadowing I'm picking up on.

My best guess for the sequence of events is that the Grandma set things up as she described, but the lawyer interfered and freed the thing for whatever reason (he was there when Rose came into being after all), and this triggered a last-ditch, thousand-to-one-odds contingency plan that made it into a familiar that took the form of Rose.