This is terrible. I expected better from you, Sesc, but I guess you get excited about anything Daphne.

The narration is awkward at best. The author doesn't seem to understand that one shouldn't mix present and past tenses and you get uglies like

. Characters already known to the reader are sometimes referred in third person as the boy/man/girl whatever for several paragraphs for no reason. I can't put my finger on any more faults, but overall the storytelling is very poor. At least I didn't notice any mixed yours and you'res.

Now plot. Of course, Harry is physically abused, and Dumbledore is evil and manipulative bastard who keeps a child's ancestry from him. Harry, referred by a Helpful Goblin Griphook (who seems shocked that he's treated civilly), finds a mother figure in an OC who looks like she wouldn't survive for a day in Knockturn Alley, and yet, there she is. Of course, Ollivander Wands are too plebeian for Harry (sorry, Hadrian, like in the Large Hadrian Collider), so he gets one (better, of course!) custom made by another OC named Vlad. It only gets worse later. The dark magic being nothing like it is HPVerse, "dark healing spells", Harry being attacked by all Hogwarts students for no apparent reason - that is until he starts attacking people, they then won't retaliate (unless they're evil Neville BWL or his cohorts). The story tries to keep to the canon, but in a completely ludicrous way. Hermione leaves after the troll incident (that actually makes sense), yet Neville & co, who are all portrayed as dumb, still get to go after the stone, still get to make Polyjuice (WTF), still discover the Chamber. I didn't read much further. Oh, and the first flying lesson takes place after Halloween. Go, Hogwarts!

The only thing I liked about it? It gave a new (to me) spin on Dumbledore's "everypony knows already what happened, so I won't bother recapping" spiel. People don't know, but the BWL & co won't feel the need to talk.

1/5. This is maybe Almost Recommended quality, but closer to barely readable than anything else. Or scratch readable, I'd rather read My Immortal than finish this.

 

Have to admit that I started skimming when I wasn't sure if you were describing the story or canon (where Harry is physically abused, and Dumbledore is a manipulative bastard who keeps a child's ancestry from him). Personally I don't think Dumbledore was portrayed as evil in either case - he's just uncaring. Pretty much the same as he was in canon, to every other student except the Golden Trio. Dumbledore may have been a great wizard, but he was a shitty headmaster.

 

I wouldn't call him a shitty headmaster. He did his school duties perfectly fine. He was just a shitty human being. All he cared about was peace, in a way, Grindelwald never left him. 'For the Greater Good' and all that, when he died in canon, did he care about the kids who were going to have to suffer the cruciatus under the carrows? Nope, all he wanted was peace, through any means necessary.

 

I couldn't get past chapter 3 and I don't skip chapters to find readable material.

Also, can we please stop pretending that things in canon happened due to "realistic human motivations" rather than being driven by "plot necessity"? Excluding a few interesting moments in OotP, Dumbledore is a plot device. He has no beliefs, no motivations; his actions are informed solely by what the plot requires him to do. Trying to draw out a consistent characterization out of that led to the dark days of Indy!Harry. Let's not retread that route.

 

Yes, he absolutely fucking did.

That is why he set things up so those kids would suffer the least amount of hurt possible - he knew he was dying and that he wouldn't be able to end Voldermort, so he ensured his death would leave Hogwarts in the hands of the one man in the Dark Lord's camp who he knew actually didn't have any interest in torturing children.

 

Physically anyway.

 

Harry's torso is littered with Vernon-induced scars. Pretty sure that's not canon.

 

Honestly, i've enjoyed the story so far. Every annoyance I've had is minor. The technical aspect of the writing could be done better, but it's still leaps ahead of others on FFN, as Sesc said, and is only really important if it makes the fic near illegible or unreadable, making you pause too much or such. Mostly, I found any errors or weird phrasing to be easily ignored and mentally corrected.

As for the story itself, beyond the cliches used in the beginning, the fic can be summed up with two words: Unreliable Narration. It's not a bad thing, but it's there and becomes a lot clearer if you read the PoV scenes of other characters. Every single person's PoV is colored by preconceptions, assumptions and bias.

Harry, for instance, hates Dumbledore and if you just read his perspective, he comes off as regular old Evil!Dumbles. From Snape's Perspective, Dumbledore is a pragmatic and manipulative old codger, who has on a leash and is one to sacrifice countless pawns to win his game. But then comes Dumbledore's PoV, and he's just a weary old man, who believes just a little too much in human decency and is being stretched out too thin by all of his duties, to the School, to the Government, to the protection of everyone else in Magical Britain and completely full of regrets.

I guess some got a bit annoyed with the PoV switches, because the all talked about Harry, but i don't quite get that myself. This isn't Game of Thrones, where we're following the plots of every character in there. The story is about Harry, and we get the PoV's from other characters to show us their views on him, not to show us that they're constantly thinking of him all the time. It seems like the world revolves Harry because the story revolves around Harry.

But yeah, loving this so far. Daphne's crazy is great, Luna is great, the Bloody Freakin' baron is just great.

5/5 from me.

 

Sesc, every review is subjective. It means that there is no sense in arguing with reviewers, because these things that are non-issues to you, can be of issue to others. I believe that review board is here, because a lot of people with divergent tastes will "average-out", so to speak, so final rating will be more accurate.

 

I desperately tried to make myself read the first two chapters of each one and I just couldn't do it. Something about the writing was just obnoxious.

I'll abstain from voting, since I wasn't able to read very much; but this is decidedly mediocre. Maybe even worse - I can usually read more than two chapters of a mediocre story.

 

I read this awhile ago, and enjoyed it, but I couldn't really slog through it this time. I like Probellum's perspective on the PoV's and unreliable narrators, but I can't slog through the bashing of characters anymore.

I won't vote, but it's a pretty decent time-waster (from what I remember the first time around).

 

This story makes me keep reading, even though I find it annoying. I think its the constant mystery factor the author builds up, while also annoying, somehow it keeps me reading to find out wtf is supposed to be going on.

Third book seems to be an improvement, Daphne becomes more interesting, but the way the author writes children is terrible. You can maybe have one or two kids who are way way above their age in the way they speak and act, people who are made to grow up quickly (e.g. Harry) it makes some sense, but only to an extent. None of the children appear to have hit puberty either. Harry & Daphne come across as asexual.

Dark magic stuff is done badly. Harry choosing to fix his eye sight at the cost of becoming someone who wants to hurt living things. Most of the teachers are terrible, aside from Snape, who is still questionable.

The author appears to have intentionally tried to completely invert everything from the books.

2/5 because somehow I'm still reading, despite how shit it is.

 

I'm almost done but I will say this now. It's severely annoying how circumspect (Edit: Aloof also works) the narration is at times.

Edit: I admit I am confused as to why exactly Hadrian hates Lupin. I think I missed something somewhere.

 

I'm fairly sure it's been hinted at, but not explicitly revealed. I think in this fic, Lupin was supposed to take care of Harry in the event that Sirius couldn't.

 

...

Let's see what we have here:

-Hadrian
-Overly abusive Dursleys
-Super special wand
-Suddenly nice goblins
-Hadrian
-Sudden dislike of Dumbledore
-Dumbledore in general
-Unlikable Ron Neville Gryffindors
-Fucking Hadrian

That's as far as I went. From my skimming over of the story and the reviews in this thread, and then looking at the words you've said, calling this "great," I have to ask:

Are you trolling DLP, Sesc?

I'm not gonna rate this because I didn't read it, really, but if I did, it would be 2/5, and only that because it's better (as a story) than My Immortal.

 

I have to say, after getting caught up, that it's not a bad fic surprisingly. The first two are a bit shit, I'll give it that. The third however has drastically changed in writing and maturity, allowing for a more interesting read. I am curious as to the several small changes that seem to have occurred due to the AU setting. I also like the writer's style, even if it's annoyingly circumspect in certain spots and seems almost nebulous in others, it allows the reader to try and fill in some of the story with their own thoughts and that's pretty cool.

It also has me wondering what will happen next which is the hallmark of a fic I will keep an eye on.

Not amazing and I would never vote the first two into the Library, but Malachite Path, I feel, is worthy.

Malachite Gift: 2/5
Malachite's Worth: 3/5
Malachite's Path: 4/5

 

Meh. It's not horrible. Daphne's character is really well done and I can definitely see the appeal. There are a lot of flaws (that have already been mentioned), though one I haven't seen mentioned is the mysterious "Brown Book" that has taught Harry, and now Luna, just about everything he knows about magic.

Overall I stopped reading because I'm not a fan of the "Evil!Harry" genre, they all end up the same and get boring after a while.