Title: Resurrexit
Author: Master Slytherin
Rating: M
Genre: Tragedy/Mystery
DLP Category: Dark Arts
Words: 74,756
Pairing: Harry/Luna
Status: Complete
Summary: Ten years later. All was well ... until Harry's wife dies under suspicious circumstances. Harry will not rest until he has vengeance. Neville is tasked by the Ministry with uncovering the truth before the Chosen One does something he will regret ...
Link: Here

Excellent fic from the same author who brought us What Lies Beneath. Maybe the best mystery HP fic I ever read.

5/5

 

Since no one is responding, I feel I should back up SPO's endorsement: this fic is great. The writing is excellent: elegant, precise, concise, with good imagery and a pace to it that means you zip through the story.

(I bet it had amazing beta readers)

The plot contains a few elements that reveal that the story was started a few years ago, before the fandom grew tired of certain ideas like Unspeakables being spies, but it's executed well.

You should all definitely read it.

5/5

 

There's no real way to describe this.

It's fantastic. Every part of it is brilliant. The plot, the characters, the reveals - they're all perfectly executed. I don't even mind the Unspeakables being spies, it's done in such an interestingly different way.

Luna's phenomenal, and Harry's pain and descent are incredible. This story is absolutely, and totally brilliant.

5/5.

 

Agreed with Taure. I just started this and am on Chapter 9. I am loving it so far!

5/5 from me too. Taure's pointed out what I would have said.

 

That was great. It's a great story that knows what it wants to be and is nothing besides it. There is no pointless padding that is the downfall of most fanfiction.

There are some problems, the speeches in the last few chapters and the epilogue feel a bit weak and the plot is a bit to convenient in places, but it hardly detracts from the story overall.

5/5 More authors should strive to write their stories like this, instead of planning out 200k+ works and than abandoning them.

 

This is a very well written fic. The plot was interesting and the character development was executed well. There are a few minor annoyances like the unspeakable agents which made me cringe for a moment, but they were also easily ignored.

While it is one of the better fics I've read, I would hesitate to call it among the best.

4/5

 

I adored this story, and I think it's an easy 5/5.

I don't have the time for a great review, but one of the scenes I adored was Neville resting his hands on a marble sculpture of a Nundu, and shivering, but not knowing whether or not that was from the cool temperature, or from fear of what the sculpture represented

Far too many stories, for better or worse, never gloss over the canonically terrifying creatures the universe contains, be it nundu, a manticore, a skulking lethifold, a chimaera, or an escaped, rampaging dragon, so as to focus on the threat of the fellow humans. I.E. beasts that require "a hundred wizards to subdue," or beasts that were vanquished, but the wizard fell off his hippogriph from exhaustion after the battle.

I kind of want to read a story now where some smuggled (somehow) Nundu escapes into London/some other urban center and the entire Ministry and all available wands are called to contain the threat, and then dealing with the fallout of all the dead muggles and wizards due to the toxic breath and ferocity of a rhinoceros sized leopard/tiger thing.

It's an odd takeaway from the fic, I admit, but it's what stuck with me, along with the final half dozen chapters.

 

4.5/5 beautiful, thrilling, action-packed, emotionally gut-wrenching, and overall awesome.

 

This is where I distinguish "best" vs "best written". I think Resurrexit may very well be the best written HP fanfic - its only real competition is Sesc's Unatoned. And by "best written" I don't just mean the phrasing, I also mean the structure of the fic, the way it's paced, the character voices, etc.

However, I wouldn't say Resurrexit is the best fanfic ever in terms of being my absolute favourite. Resurrexit tells a good, contained, tightly plotted story, but it's too narrow in focus to compete with my favourite stories. My favourites are all "general" stories, by which I mean stories that mirror canon's breadth of scope, encompassing mystery, action, adventure, romance, humour, coming-of-age, slow burn plot arcs with numerous subplots, worldbuilding, etc.

 

So... essentially, a magical Endbringer? I kid.

Anyway, it's been said to death already, but the writing is, by far and none, some of the best I've seen thus far. It's concise. There's weight in the words, and the imagery it invokes is excellent.

5/5

 

It comes as a surprise to me but I'd have to disagree with most of the previous posts in this thread:

This story started out great, it was an intriguing murder mystery with interesting characters that had depth.

Shortly after the halfway point the story fell apart. Utterly. Characters became caricatures, the murder mystery became cliched and predictable. The author tried to showcase Harry's descent and did a great job at first, but towards the end Harry himself became an absurd and ridiculous character. The changes to his character happened way too quickly and were too vast to seem realistic, due to that the author lost me.

The story is technically well written and started out great, but quickly felt rushed and sloppy in many regards. There were too many parts that had me just nodding along because I could no longer deal with how over the top everything was.

I feel torn. 3/5.

 

I have to agree with Trig. The story is good, for sure, but about halfway through things started to go off the rails, and it began to feel very rushed. I loved the beginning, but I'm not sold on the whole thing.

I'd still give it a 4/5, though. It's technically well-written and the ideas are definitely there. If the execution was a bit more precise I'd easily give this story a 5/5.

 

I, too, pretty much agree with Trig. The story started off well, but then nose-dived when it was revealed that Harry was "Death." See, I've never bought into the whole "loss of a loved one drives you mad" trope, so I don't find his decent at all believable. I especially don't believe he'd attack and damn near kill one of his best friends over it. It's a shame, because I had rather high hopes for the story at the beginning.

3/5 because it's technically pretty much flawless.

 

While I agree that the prose is fantastic, I can't say the same for the plot. Much like WLB, I starts out pretty interesting, but slowly jumps the shark and descends into 'WTF?' territory, which is why I just couldn't continue reading past chapter 12. Harry's madness is over the top, and his motives are confusing. I understand why he would want revenge, but the guy who spent his seven most formative years learning to come to terms with death, suddenly goes all second brother? I just don't buy it.

 

I agree with the last few posts. Harry's descent into madness is rushed and unconvincing. Many of the important moments feel forced. We barely got to see anything of Luna and Harry, and without that it was hard to connect to Harry's motivations as well. Not to mention I dislike this interpretation of Luna, and I dislike how the author brought someone who seemed to be a relatively minor character to the centre of the plot with very little foreshadowing.

I will also say that the main characters (Harry and Neville) never really felt much like their canon selves, even at the start of the story. Take Inverarity's Hogwarts Houses Divided, to see what I mean. There both Harry and Neville feel like their DH selves grown up, and while they are undoubtedly mature adults, they still retain their essence from canon. Same for any of Northumbrian's characters. Here there exists a disconnect between the story's characters and JKR's characters right from the start.

The story is very well written though. The atmosphere is perfect for this sort of story and it manages to capture your attention and keeps enough of it to ensure that you keep reading. Unfortunately, many of the important moments just don't connect the way they should, and that takes away a lot from the story.

3.5/5.

 

I won't add more to Harry's rushed descent into madness–I was hoping for an interesting grey!necromancy story anyway.

My biggest gripe was the rough integration of essential elements and an off the wall second act. How was I supposed to guess that

Spoiler

Luna had a long lost psychiatrist crushing on her, who would have 'secret 'meetings with her, break into her house when she missed a meeting, see a room she made to look like her mother's, and then decide that the most reasonable course of action was to bomb it, accidentally killing her?

I also didn't appreciate the overly simplistic origin of Luna's eccentricities.

The rest of the necromancy stuff was fairly interesting and could form the basis of an eminently readable story. As such it just fell into the old 'Horcruxes are always evil, but sometimes the worst evil comes from love. And also Neville's Batman.'

The writing and intro are, imo, what makes it a 3/5, but the second half just goes off the deep end.

 

Really felt like it needed to be fleshed out in the middle. Harry went from being unwilling to harm a random muggle, to being willing to kill Hermione with very little explanation on why. His character just takes a wild drive off a cliff.

Also, I have to admit I was very frustrated with the first chapter. It went on and on about how Luna was Harry's rock, but didn't show us any reason why until much later. I'm willing to buy the driven mad by grief angle, but you need to give me a reason to be invested. Just telling me he's in anguish doesn't do it.

4/5, not really my mind of fic, but the writing is technically flawless, and the twists worked out for the most part.

 

After reading it, I have to say, it is definitely well written and deserves it's score.

But I have this question:

Why are all the best fanfics so goddamn depressing? So much grimdark and angst flying around, it's ludicrous!

 

Yeah, this really stumbled to the finish line. By the end, Harry was just... I wasn't rooting for him, and he felt completely disconnected from his canon self.

I thought the backstory with Luna was kinda bullshit.

The writing is very solid, some amazing atmospheric touches.

Like Wastelands of Time, it's kinda like the HP universe is just a facade for the writer's original story. It works... okay, I guess?

I never felt invested or cared all that much about the characters. I finished it because by the time I lost interest, I was too close to the end.

Still better than 99% of fanfiction.

3/5

 

Spoiler tags, ever heard of them? You started and now everyone is spilling the fic’s plot in the review thread. Lovely, thank you all.