And then the whole story ends in 3 chapters. But worse, it did it out of the blue. Here we were taking a slow walk along the path that is the plot only to fall off a cliff at the end. Really off putting, and the more I think about it the more I'm upset about it. Funnily enough the epilogue is the least of my problems with the last few chapters, at least it made for a decent epilogue even if I'd have liked to see more.

 

It was a bad ending for a bad story, no one can really be surprised by that.

 

I still stand by this fic. It may not have been perfect, it was boring at times - but it was an overall enjoyable experience. I think Fleur's characterization was no worse than a lot of other Harry/Fleur fics (and a lot better than most). That said, the pacing was odd at times and Harry was a bit of prick. I give this a 3.5/5 rounded up to 4 because I really believe if this fic was rewritten and polished it is library worthy.

Edit: Rhys said it better than I.

 

This is one time I wouldn't mind seeing a fic revamped by the author to be honest. They seem to have learned from their mistakes a bit, or at least are open to what they were. A lot of stuff could be cut or touched to make the story much smoother and who knows, maybe we could have a slightly more drawn out or different ending.

Unfortunately the story peaked in Chapter 70, Salazar was truly the best part of the fic.

 

This story is neither great nor terrible. It's better than a lot of the garbage that gets post and i didnt notice too many spelling errors unless i was having a terrible day

 

After reflecting for a week or so, this comment really snapped my thoughts into place. Isn't it ridiculous, on the surface, that a fucking painting of Salazar Slytherin in the Chamber of Secrets of all things could be a good element? Just saying it out of the blue sounds cliche and dumb as all fuck. But it was good. Salazar was great.

There were a lot of other really cliche-sounding things that were good about this fic. Harry's signature spell with the butterflies, Harry's OC-with-a-canon-name best friend Katie, sacrifice-powered blood rituals; I'll even embarrass myself and say I enjoyed the hell out of the overdramatic tear-jerky imagery of the thousand photos of Fleur Delacour.

This fic had a lot of problems, but the cliches weren't one of them. It took its silly cliches and made them good. Maybe that's why it was so fun to read for me. So I'll forgive it the crappy pacing, and the somewhat inconsistent Harry, and poorly juggled plots and a flat character or three. In a way I'm sad that this came so late in the fandom, since we won't see a lot of the more enjoyable elements pop up again, possibly in better constructed fics. But still, It's been a long time since I've read an authentic Indy Harry and enjoyed it so much.

 

I can see where the complaints about the plot acelerating in post-100 chapters come from, the ending was abrupt after so much build up. Nonetheless i did like the final battle scene, and am somewhat satisfied with the conclusion. I wish Fleur was developed more as a character throughout the fic, after the destruction of Salazar the fic lost quite a bit of its' voice. The harry/katie relationship was very well done overall, Neville ended up being a bit of a disappointment. Was pleasantly surprised when Ron showed up in the finale. I ended up rereading the fic a couple of times due to some gaps in reading, came out with an overall positive impression it get's a 4/5 from me despite the flaws.

 

I've read many fics, long and short, and I have to say this one is a decent length. It's not the best story, by far not the worst but it captured my time. Kudos, because not many stories do.

The buildup towards a relationship between Fleur and Harry also seems to be better than a lot of other H/F fics. It's not a 'oh god she's hot, he's hot, let's be together. So yeah nice I also liked that canon character e.g. Ron and Hermoine were redeemed for their behaviour. Not many authors do that.

Overall, like mentioned before, the plot acceleration is insane. Sometimes stagnant, to the ending being rushed in several chapters, as if the author ran out of ideas.

In any case; I'd recommend reading it at least once.

 

I liked the story, but the ending was a bit of a let-down. As for the pacing, I think he was attempting to show that real life is fast interesting bits, interspersed with long boring bits.

 

I couldn't continue when I read Harry's reaction of Arthur's death. He felt no regrets and remorse when so many people died because of what he did to Snape. Harry just suddenly became ruthless and stupid. Fleur was OK when Harry just started to kill whoever he believed was on his way. Sometimes I couldn't follow harry's thoughts and logic regarding Dumbeldor and Snape.

 

I managed to get to chapter 75 before I got bored. I'm not sure if it's because the story is incredibly long, or if the story just gets plain old boring.

I was willing to look past the cliches in the earlier parts of the story (the Chamber of Secrets, the painting of Salazar, time turner abuse etc) because there was some aspects of the story I quite liked.

It took a while, but eventually I couldn't help but feel the story starts to parody itself. The plot to get rid of Dumbledore and Umbridge is so convoluted and relies on so much luck it's to believe.

I skimmed through the rest of the story, and I just have to say, what was the point of saving Sirius in the DoM if you're just going to kill him off later?

Plot points were wrapped up fairly well though, and nothing is really left unanswered which is a plus.

Overall I'd give it a 3/5.

 

A very disappointing ending to a story that at times showed a lot of promise. The build up to the climax was rushed (or non-existent?) which left the finale feeling hollow, melodramatic and utterly incongruous. It felt like the author had become bored with the story and just wanted to get it over with. The final confrontation with Voldemort was dull and uninspired, (although to be fair I think I've only ever read one truly epic Harry/Voldemort fight and that was Taure's The One He Feared) and the whole self-sacrifice thing was rushed, cliched and totally out of character for the Harry that had been built up in the previous 40+ chapters. Not to mention the epilogue just left me confused, how did Harry create an Horcrux (or equivalent?) out of Hedwig? Why was Hedwig even at Hogwarts for the battle? It would have been preferable for me if the story had really lived up to its name and Harry had died in the act of vanquishing Voldemort.

And all that before even mentioning the tiresome, angsty repetition of Harry's need to save and protect his precious Fleur and his dream of a future family.

Then there were the central characters. By the story's end, I actually found Fleur to be the most bearable of the three (although I certainly wouldn't call her character memorable). The other two I ended up actively disliking.
It seemed that the more Katie's character was developed, the shallower she became, her infatuation with Harry becoming less and less believable. Killing her off was probably the best decision that was made with her character, as it saved us from seeing her full descent into a mindless sycophant.

And Harry. Undoubtedly one of the least likable portrayals of Harry I've come across in the fandom. Not only was it impossible to relate to this Harry, but he ended up becoming merely a stereotype of an anti-hero, a cruel and vindictive hypocrite, who lacked any sort of charisma or charm to compensate for his flaws. By the end I was actually rooting for Hermionemort (surely one of them could have got him?).

3/5 because it had promise, even if it was squandered, and the prose was generally pretty good.

 

This story had some serious issues, and only a few

The issues:

The first 15 or so chapters was basically the author prolonging the anger that Harry feels towards everyone. Harry wasn't even Harry in this. He was like the stereo-typical anti-hero sharing the name and appearance of the real Harry.

The pacing was, apologies for my crude language, fucked up.

The first 20-22 chapters were freaking filler, if those many chapters can even be called filler. The meat of the plot came and went within 20 more chapters. And the end 3 chapters...... can't even explain the disappointment.

The last three chapters came and gone, and nothing was ever explained. It was like the author liked to give little-to-zero explanation on things that actually matter, like Harry making a fucking horcrux!!!!

Anyway, it was a disappointing read, a guilty pleasure at best, 2.5/5 for me.

 

The last chapters were horrible there wasn't any plot in it and the way it was written was like there was no planning whatsoever and it was just written so that the story can be finished already. But the first part was decent enough with the plot being understandable.

 

Finished reading the story, felt like a bit time wasting. It had it's moments, but ending & overall story is disappointing. Basically the way I see it, from the summer of 4th year, the writer wrote a young Voldemort in Harry's shoe with a bit mixture of Fleur & completely forgot how Harry's character built up to 3rd year.

2.5/5 for me.

 

I read this fic over the last 24 hours after reading Taure's intriguing review on the first page, in which he manages to tear pretty much every element of the book to shreds while recommending it! Having read it now, I tend to agree with his original assessment. There are lots of WTF problems in here, but I still enjoyed it overall enough to share my thoughts on it below. It’s my first real post on these forums as I’m usually reading fan fics that were finished long ago. There are spoilers throughout this (long) post as I’m assuming everyone’s read it if you’re this far into the thread. If not, be warned!

I’m not sure what to make of the title. It seems to be a massive spoiler, calling it "A Cadmean Victory" is a pretty strong indicator that the book is going to feature Harry beating Voldemort but losing everything in the process. Which is almost what happened, until the final couple of chapters. It ends up more of a "happily ever after" than a Cadmean victory really, since Harry ends up with the only person he really seems to care about.

On characters, I found Harry very hard to relate to. He's entirely OOC, which is not necessarily a bad thing, and the author did try to explain it in the first author's note as an attempt to more realistically portray Harry as an abuse victim. But I just couldn’t fully understand his motivations for pretty much anything. Most of his decisions are petty, stubborn and totally illogical. The most baffling for me was permanently rejecting all his former friends, but accepting others that had done the same thing.

There is a critical passage early on where Ron and Hermione attempt a reconciliation, and he outright rejects them because he "remembers what it is like to be nobody". It's important from a plot point of view I suppose, because the author wants to create a new golden trio with Neville and Katie. But he is shown to be a bitter and twisted, unrelenting bastard kind of out of the blue here.

This rejection could be put down to the horcrux twisting Harry’s thoughts, but it really jarred when soon after he “forgives and forgets” others with much less reason. Neville basically tells him he couldn’t care less whether Harry put his name in the cup, and isn’t willing to go against any of the others to defend him, but somehow comes out as Harry's new best mate, and same for Katie. I guess the whole point was to establish a new trio, but it made Harry out to be fickle and totally self-centred. He was such a bastard throughout the whole book that I was pretty sure that the ritual to remove the horcrux had somehow backfired to make him more Riddle than Potter. Didn’t turn out that way in the end, turns out he was just a prick. But it would have made a bit more sense to me.

Unlike others in this thread I actually found Fleur reasonable, and thought the relationship between her and Harry to be believable - both always the unwilling centre of attention, and looking for partners that can see them rather than their fame / allure. She was the one thing making Harry vaguely human. The Katie character was also well written, but I didn’t buy their relationship. She would have made a good match for a more canon Harry. I guess this contrast is the point of her character.

The most interesting plot point for me was the parallels between Riddle and Potter, particularly the cyclic mentoring relationship with Slytherin and Dumbledore. Both mentors are seen as caring for the young Riddle and regretting their part in his downfall, and seeing the same patterns in Potter. But they both repeat the same mistakes. Slytherin pushes Harry to see power as the most important goal, and nurtures his paranoia, isolating him from his peers just as he had with Riddle. Dumbledore blindly carries on with his grand plans without seeing the actual characters involved, alienating the young wizards by keeping his secrets close and manipulating them for their own protection. Dumbledore is particularly tragic here, and the tragic “getting the locket” chapter is probably the highlight of the book for me. The Snape scene was pretty good too, although I cringed at the unbreakable vow. In the end I didn’t care at all about Hermione/Ron/Sirius etc, and their rushed endings were poorly handled and predictable. I read it only a couple of hours ago and I can’t even remember what happened to Neville, it was that rushed.

Anyway, it kept me interested for 500,000+ words which is an achievement in itself. I was frustrated and often jarred out of any immersion in the text, but there were enough interesting ideas and scenes here to carry it… overall I gave it 3/5 “average” – not a great book, but I don’t regret reading it!

 

What kept me interested in this story was Harry's slow descent into a dark wizard, from general apathy in everything to cold blooded murder with the killing curse. Its the darkest Harry ive ever read that wasn't listed as !darkharry. It was chilling seeing how despite Slytherin having the best of intentions he slowly turned Harry into a near clone of Tom Riddle, into someone i could easily call, by the end, a monster.

Overall not a truly spectacular story, but i personally loved the characterization of Harry so 3/5

 

I read this over the course of 2 days in two long sessions, after it had been completed. May have been a slight mistake as there were times I was on the verge of losing interest for reasons that've been hashed out by several other posts. I stuck with it if for nothing else, out of respect for the commitment it takes write 500,000+ Words and manage to keep it in coherent story. Thinking it over I enjoyed it but probably wouldn't read it again.

3/5 for all my opinion is worth.

 

I've only read a small portion of the story so far, but I feel like it's tolerable. Perhaps it picks up after, but it's riddled with cliches, which admittedly are very hard to avoid now, albeit many fanfictions can succeed in spite of this.
3/5 for me

 

I was really excited for this. I had no idea how I missed it in my crusade for Harry/Fleur pairings and so when this 'gem' appeared, with half a million words no less, I was thrilled.

I forgave the insane amount of filler right at the beginning (and actually sighed in relief when his studying in the summer was just skipped over), but the pairing itself was... cheesy. Mangled. Confusing. Whatever you want to call it.

Nevermind that Harry was pulling Viper conjurations out of his ass and all the other spells he taught himself all on his own (with the help of a painting); the shitstorm of action appearing out of nowhere, the 'I can take a portkey across countries whenever I want' etc. etc. Just got to me after a while.

The 'gem' regretfully became an insanely compressed ball of turd.

I can't really give it a rating, seeing as I've not read a majority of it. With the direction it was going I would give it a 2.5 - 3 / 5. But the style of writing was good, so there's that.