Title: Too Young to Die
Author: thebombhasbeenplanted
Rating: M
Genre: Adventure/Angst
DLP Category: Dark Arts
Pairing: No Pairing
Status: Complete, 194,707 words.
Summary: Harry Potter knew quite a deal about fairness and unfairness, or so he had thought after living locked up all his life in the Potter household, ignored by his parents to the benefit of his brother - the boy who lived. But unfairness took a whole different dimension when his sister Natasha Potter died. That simply wouldn't do.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9057950/1/Too-Young-to-Die

Hold on to your monocles gents. I've got (in my opinion) a real DLP worthy gem for you today. There are a couple of points below which might make you move towards the red X button, but I need you to suspend your disbelief for a moment and if you give it a chance, I think you'll enjoy it as much as I did. Also, I suck at summaries. Sorry!

Turn-offs which you should overlook:
- James and Lily are alive
- Harry's twin is the BWL, and they have a younger sister.
- These are not central to the story at all, only the mechanism by which the majority of the story is kicked off. You hear maybe once every few chapters in passing how X event from canon took place. The story focuses entirely on Harry.

Reasons for recommendation:
- Harry for reasons explained in the (imo slightly weaker) first chapter is out-and-out dark, ruthless and powerful in this one, and it's handled brilliantly. From the author's description of dark magic and it's temptations as well as the effects it has on the users. He is not placed in Slytherin house though.
- The author does a great job of subtly world-building in a variety of areas allowing the plot to flow seamlessly and succinctly, such as the darker underworld of magic involving Knockturn Alley and others.
- The development of often unexplored areas of magic is done very well, and Harry doesn't suddenly study hard over a summer and become badass, it's a process which - through his continual drive - takes place throughout the span of the story. The character progression was one of my favourite aspects here.
- Not in any way a re-write of the books.

If you're going to give this one a chance, I would recommend tasting out the first 5 or so chapters to get a feel for what the story is like. That said, the plot continually picks up in pace until the ending (it's 194k words of majority action) so I'd stick with it if you're unsure. Which you won't be. Because it's awesome.

Edit: Forgot my own rating lol. I'd go with a 4.5 rounded down to a 4/5 for this one. Reasons being that when I read it there were occasionally some grammatical errors (which he may have improved later, unsure of this), and that the first chapter wasn't as polished as later parts of the story.

 

I couldn't pass chapter 2 of this fic, which is a shame because the writing itself is decent enough.

Here's my list of problems:
- James and Lily being neglecting to the point of abuse: I'm pretty sure this has been covered in a dozen other reviews of similar fics, but authors should at least give a better explanation for it, and the whole 'unforgiving Harry' can be done without making his parents the second coming of Satan.
- The author has no idea how to write an eleven year old. Scratch that, the idea of Harry, (11 years old) taking in the scent of his sister's (8 years old) perfume is just completely ridiculous and jarring to read.
- Harry being on a level similar to Worm's Contessa when it comes to... well, everything. I'm a fan of competent characters, but it isn't as enjoyable when it's only achieved by making everyone else significantly stupider. This comes with magic too, I'm getting Harry Crow-esque vibes from the 'better at magic than 5th years' thing.

As well as this could have worked, I doubt that I could give it more than 2/5

 

You make some valid points which I do agree with to an extent, but like most books/films/etc. I feel like an objective review can only really be done after experiencing a large portion or the entirety of the object to be critiqued. That is just my opinion though, and I know many reviewers here on DLP often only prefer to sample the first few chapters. Thanks for the time, I suppose!

 

You don't happen to be the author?

 

Nope, I plan to start writing my first fic once my exams are finished. I just think it's a good fic, and was surprised it hadn't been put up for review yet. I also tend to be an advocate for the philosophy of not reviewing a fic till i've read the whole thing which is why you don't see me in many threads on Review Board.

 

I'm not sure you understand the level of quality expected here if you think this is worthy of review.

While the author clearly knows how to write, the story itself isn't very good. I couldn't get through the first chapter so I won't rate.

 

I mean, I've been around for a good few months. I've read quite a lot of stories, and I can tell the difference between something from joe, jbern or nonjon versus an average fic. And as i've said multiple times, I don't think the first bit is as amazing as later parts. But take a fic like wastelands, where the start isn't incredible but you can literally see his writing improve as it goes on to be an outstanding work - such a fic is considered DLP worthy because of it's quality as a whole to be outstanding.

What i've noticed is that for many submissions on the Review Board, people tend to ignore one of DLPs own rules which is not to rate unless they've actually read the whole thing. You'd never see an Empire movie review say "I couldn't get past the first twenty minutes, 1/5." Instead they would say "I watched the whole movie, and it sucked, for XYZ reasons. 1/5." You did say however that you wouldn't rate it because of this exact reason, so that's a credit to you. On the flip side, you effectively judged the story to be shite based on a portion of Chapter 1 and questioned my judgement. Again, if you had read 10 chapters and said "TensaiMD I think your taste is shit mate", then fair enough.

I'm perfectly happy for this thread to get binned with a 1/5 rating if people who've read the whole thing explain why they think it's shite, and indeed, that would give me an understanding of why my judgement might be flawed and could be improved before posting another recommendation. A good example of this would be like Newcomb's detailed post in another recent thread (HP the Geek iirc). All i'm seeing, however, is people ignoring my recommendation to actually give it a chance.

This comment might get me a bit of hate but I just think it would be a terrible shame if DLP actually de-valued it's own standard as the place for quality fics by not actually giving recommendations in the review board a fair chance. I say this not just because of this thread, but because of others over the last few months.

 

You didn't have to go on a full DLP rant, and you do realize most people who do break that rule get called out on it here.

 

Is this the one where

Spoiler

Harry manages to revive his sister after going full necromancer and gets sent to Azkaban, leaving Dumbledore to take care of her?

 

I remember trying this one out maybe a year ago. Think I made it to chapter 3 or so?

God, I'm going to sound like such a snob here, but the way I see it, writing quality is a continuum with a sharp divide in the middle. That divide is something I'll call "Flow/Voice," and you either have it or you don't. While the divide is sharp, the attribute I'm talking about is kind of hard to define, but like pornography, you know it when you see it. Here's a collection of quotes from Too Young To Die. These are from Chapter 15, which is more than 3/4 of the way through the story, so by this point, if the writing was going to take a giant leap forward, it should have done so.

It's the little things. There needs to be a comma after that first "Oh" - the difference between no comma and comma is that I can actually hear that dialogue in my head.

There are also small typos. Period instead of comma after "found you." "cheat" should be "cheat on." And that comma after "as I want" should be a hyphen.

"hissed," "spat," "replied strongly" - all over-zesty dialogue tags, especially clustered together like that. Missing commas. Portkey and Apparated not capitalized. "Nice day to die" reads as really, really tryhard / cliche.

Make those little changes, and the readability jumps like 200%. It's night and day for me. Now, I freely admit that this might be more of problem with me than with the story, but when I try to read a story written like this, it may as well be written in crayon: the presentation is such that I can't really take the actual ideas or story seriously, even if they're good behind all that nonsense.

Now, compare this to the first chapter of Wastelands:

Yeah, that's overwritten. But at least it's overwritten smoothly, if that makes sense. There's more of a "voice" to the narrator. I didn't necessarily like the voice, especially in Chapter 1, but it's organic enough that it draws you in.

There are issues, to be sure. It smacks just a little bit of tryhard, just like that "good day to die" line in Too Young to Die. The difference is subtle, but key: Just a few small beats from Tonks. She calls him his full name. That "liar, liar," the way it's set up with an expression. The (perhaps overstated) sexuality. It's... I mean, it's not great, but there's something there. Definitely enough to intrigue you, to make you want to see where it's going.

Not the case with this one. The first few chapters of Wastelands are barely on the right side of that writing divide I talked about, and the fic in question is just a few tics on the wrong side, but it really is night and day.

At this point in my fanfic reading career, I just don't have the patience to slog through this kind of writing, even if there's a decent story buried underneath it.

No rating.

 

My original eloquent post was eaten and I'm too frustrated to write it again.

OK, a quicker summary of my points.

I'm a sucker for a cheap power trip fic so much that I can slog through the WrongBWL, abusiveParents!, etc. with no problems if the fic is long enough.

I am currently reading through Harry's visit to Knockturn alley.

As an aside, something I really love in fiction is the portrayal of the black market and seedy underworld of illegal dealings.

I have trouble stomaching all of Harry's black market dealings and associations.

Let's start at Hogwarts.

Harry catches some 4th year doing what could be the equivalent to smoking weed behind the bleachers at school. Says don't worry and that he's cool with it and asks if he knows anybody who can get him stuff. Okay. That very same 4th year then turns around and says "hey i can get you whatever you want for money."(and I'm talking big time shit, no limits whatsoever) Which to me is the equivalent of saying "Hey, I just met you and this is crazy, but here's my number and my list of illegal dealings and the opportunity to get myself snitched on. So call me maybe."

Moving on, the slytherin info contact he has does alot of shit for him for free and trusts him in the first place. All the while my mind is screaming "HELLO THIS IS AN 11 YEAR OLD AND YOUR JUST GOING TAKE HIM AT HIS WORD THAT HE'S ON THE LEVEL?"
His slyth contact also teaches him dark magic and reveals that he kidnaped and altered the mind of the heir of a prominent pureblood family right in front of Harry. (Hello, wonderful blackmail material and plea bargain potential)

None of these people are shown to have asked around about Harry, or having checked at all that he's reliable. His known association with big time police enforcers isn't even considered.

Moving on to Knockturn Alley.

Let's just curse someone to get in, and luckily they didn't notice being assaulted by a very noticeable curse. "Huh, my eyes are bleeding; nothing unusual about that its just another tuesday".

Slips into one of the layers of Knockturn alley and looks around. There are shops openly selling contraband items and the book shop he enters is just so helpful. Perky young assistant helpfully exclaims, "Welcome to costco, your one stop shop for illegal knowledge. Our entire inventory is completely illegal and we have it out here on prominent display for the world to see. Gee I hope there aren't any cops or people looking to snitch on others to save themselves." (Oh wait, that's out entire customer base)
"By the way, let's fuck."


"We're not aloud to sell you these books, but we totally are going to sell you these books."

Holy shit, if an eleven year old can infiltrate the black market this easily and gain so much access for so little investment. You could rule the world in a weekend.

There is literally a shop called, The Untracer, become untraceable.

Naturally he walks in.

"Whaddya want?" she barked.
"Tracking spell removal on my wand."
"Twenty Galleons, place money and wand on counter." she barked, walking back in the dark backroom.


Well shit, he should have stayed longer he could have gone to the assassination shop down the street or the sex slave dungeon up the road.


All of these supposedly illegal things were done in less than 12 hours.





Hoo boy, I'm going to continue reading but I can't say I enjoy the mangling of my favorite setting. Fun to get all this off my mind though.

 

Yessir.

Is it possible to learn this power?

 

There are many, many problems with this fic. There are plenty of good sides too. Regardless of the many, many small problems, I like the general idea of Harry doing whatever it takes to bring his sister back to life and becoming more and more depraved in the process. It is perhaps the best example of dark!Harry that I can think of.

I can't say I enjoyed it though. The ending was not satisfying at all, and it had to be if it wanted to make me overlook the many, many terrible details and writing failings that popped up a lot.

I'd give this a 2/5, if my memory of this is still trustworthy. I want to make it a 3, I really do... but I don't think I should.

 

I have no clue what you're going on about.

 

I read it while it was being written and I had high hopes for the protagonist, but even then it was a solid 2.5/5. Now that I know how unsatisfying ending this story has, it's a 1/5 from me.

 

He is directing that comment to Tensai, not to you. He's just pointing out that you were acting in accordance with the rule that Tensai was mad about.

 

I think it took me more than three tries to get into this story because of all the cliche stuff in the beginning. The premise of neglectful James and Lily was terrible in Unsung Hero and time has done nothing to sweeten it. Hell, I would have vastly preferred it if the author had just killed them off like in canon.

The actual meat of the story was seeing Harry fall lower and lower to try to bring back his sister which was pretty good despite the fact that I couldn't care less about the OC. I would have preferred if it had more conflict but all in all it was interesting enough. The good part of the story, however, is brought down by the boring and overused "neglected twin" bullshit beginning as well as the disappointing ending. 2/5

 

Admitting what you are is but the first step.

I must say, when DLPers get really harsh, the quality of the given advice rises geometrically.

 

Read it today. If I had to sum it up in one word, it would be "unsatisfying".

Everything is rushed, with so many years passed over in very short amounts of time.

Characterisation is shallow, especially with regards to motivation. Harry is far too unlikeable, exceeding the necessary evil required by his plans and becoming a caricature. The Potters are awfully characterised and going with stupid manipulative Dumbledore excuse at the end is just bad writing.

The climax is badly managed and I ended up skimming almost all of it. The demon world is just dull, completely out of line with the HP magic system, and the mechanics of said world are just a mess. The author thinks they're being clever with the time stuff, but it just bogs the story down unnecessarily. The demon world is a means to an end, and given that it should not be lingered on.

Too many questions remain unanswered at the end, in particular about the wider world and what Voldemort thinks of the whole affair. The story really misses a trick in not exploring any kind of Harry-Voldemort interaction.

The worldbuilding and magic in general is poorly executed, especially all the dark magic stuff. The "addictive dark magic" stuff is cookie-cutter fantasy cliché and just leads to boring characterisation. Crazy characters have no depth or complexity, nor are they relatable. But magic in general needed to be explored much more thoroughly. The dark magic consists largely of just more and more spells that go boom. That's not really that interesting. And the regular Hogwarts magic is just entirely ignored.

The plot in general is really unbelievable, with Harry achieving things that he shouldn't be able to with the level of talent he is depicted as having (we never see him working for anything, really. He seems to stop studying somewhere around 3rd year). The forces arrayed against him are nowhere near competent enough. Everything works out too easily.

The best thing I can say about the fic is that I was curious enough about the necromancy plotline that I read the whole thing. For that reason alone I think it's worth placing in Almost Recommendable. So: 3/5.

 

Yes, it's even possible to 'unlearn' it as I have on and off. It takes a conscious effort to maintain.