The author promised something unique, something that had not been written before. He was arrogant in his belief to deliver just that. I may be wrong, as I haven't read past the 7th chapter, but the first 5 were filled with cliches and abused tropes. This was most definitely not unique.

Very slightly developed characters that seem almost one-dimensional to me. Besides that, the writing style was a bit too bland for my taste.

The story was filled with absolutely horrible cliches, like freaking eleven year olds acting like street-smart politicians, and of course, the horribly OC behavior of Neville, who had the guts to speak back to Malfoy, and discuss what happened to his parents without stuttering a single time.

An extremely unbelievable fic, I will have to rate it a measly 1/5 two points deducted for the cliches present in the story, one point for the OOC behavior of characters and the mood-swings the titular character has, and another point for the failure of keeping up with the promised story.

The one point was given due to the fact that the author had the decency to atleast keep writing, no matter how bad it was.

TL;DR, 1/5. Do not bother with this fic if you have anything else to read. Horrendous depiction of characters and slight-to-none development of anyone in the story. A very guilty pleasure at best.

 

The first 5-10 are like warm ups, and you've jumped the gun quite heavily.
There is enough character development and the cliches are handled rather nicely.

Patience, young grasshopper. This is not a sassy revenge fic where Harry goes on an angsty bloodbath vs the Potters.

 

That too, is cliche.

And for that very reason, thinking that maybe the first 10 chapters were filler (BAH! 10 chapters... filler? I think not!) I read ahead, and suffice to say I was, apologies for my crude language, fucking disappointed.

Cliches are handled well? From what point of view are they 'handled well'? The Potter Family acting as if what Harry went through was nothing, and then Harry himself flipping 180 degrees, and going out to be some kind of politics God, equipped with his very own 'Dummy's Guide to Politics' book, which is, once again, a cliche.

I grow weary of the times I've had to say cliche in this very post. Anyways, the point is, I gave the fic a chance, and I was disappointed.

Nevertheless you recommending I read it again, has, after some speculation on my part, managed to persuade me to give the fic another chance.

EDIT: I read until chapter 17, and it was NOT any better.

Look I may come off as rather picky, which I whole-heartedly agree to, I wouldn't ever read a story in which Hermione, with exactly the same upbringing as the canon Hermione would ever stand up to authority with such fervor and be daring enough as to call a 'Prefect Meeting'. What nonsense.

Beyond that, OOC behavior is at it's peak again when Neville Longbottom of all people shouting and displaying no nervousness. I find it extremely hard to believe that he of all people developed such confidence within two to three months of being at Hogwarts. Maybe if the author had taken it slower than what he did I wouldn't have minded.

So, with reading 17 chapters of the story, I cannot raise the story rating from 1/5 to something more, as the story has multiple huge issues.

Kudos to you Deepdiver, for trying to convince me to read some more, even though it turned out to be less than fruitful.

 

Don't misunderstand me, it's ok to rate this fic badly, even if I myself wouldn't do so. But, please, not like this.

Yes, you are. You are completely wrong and one look at this thread or at least at the author's notes in first chapter could've prevented that.
However, I'll give you that the first few chapters are indeed cliché-ridden. Or seem like it, at the very least (depending on whether you do or do not accept the explanations offered later).

The author states in the first chapter that the following chapters are him "finding [his] way as a writer and, admittedly, are a little rough".
Characters will definitely be developed further, except maybe for two unfortunate exceptions (which are also developed but by far not as well as the others).

Not the story is filled with clichés. The not even-ten-percent you read of it that have been repeatedly said to be its worst part are.
Apart from that, this flaw is explained, although I don't like the explanation and the author admitted it's just an excuse for a flaw in his writing he himself is aware of.

Makes no sense when reading the whole story where the author does exactly what he promised beforehand.

OK, that won't really change.

That's just plain unfair after only reading seven chapters. It's like "Oh, JKR promised Voldemort in this book" and then giving up after thirty pages of HPCoS.

Hm, I seriously want to say the similar things about this review. You talk about character development when you've only read seven chapters, I mean, WTF.

I can understand not continuing the story after the first few chapters because it certainly seems like the author didn't keep what was promised. And of course it's often the case that a story which started bad continues to be bad.
However, I can't understand coming to this thread, reviewing this story based on so fucking little actual knowledge and not even noticing the 5,000 people who more than once said that the story WILL become far better in later chapters.

EDIT:

Hermione calling Jim Potter out like this was one of the fics worse scenes, I agree. Neville's boost in confidence after regaining his memory was, imo, fairly believable, but I can understand you not liking it.
However: Congrats for now reading 17/75 chapters. No, that's not sufficient to form a valid opinion on this particular fic. At all.

I consider this fic to hit its stride around chapter 40-50.

 

Explanation for the Potters' seemingly retarded behavior comes up later.
There's a reason why they did what they did, and while some of it is not super convincing to me some of it is alright.

11 year olds are FAR more malleable than 15 and correspondingly 20 year olds. In the presence of people with self possession and ambition, people often tend to become that, I'm not surprised that Neville is different.

I am not a fan of the 11 year old powerplayers either. I'm with you on that, it seems far-fetched as FUCK.

If anything, as Dicra mentioned, this story picks up slowly, and then REALLY gets going IMO around the 30s.

By the time the second year rolls around, things make a tad more sense, and when Harry's 12th birthday happens (60ish? I think) a lot more makes sense, like the Dursleys.

Stick around if you have the patience for that, I like well written worlds even if they take a while to come together.

 

Let's start by picking apart your arguments, yes?

You say I am, and I quote 'completely wrong and one look at the thread or atleast the author's note in the first chapter could have prevented that'.

I read it. He says and once again, I quote, '...I feel that I found my "voice" sometime around the Halloween 1991 arc (Chapters 11-14). If you read that far and still hate it you probably won't like it any better by Chapter 50 or Chapter 100'. I read until that part because of Deepdiver's urging. I found it to be marginally better in cases such as the style of writing. Otherwise, I found the story almost exactly the same as before.

Number 2, you say that the author admits that the first chapters are a bit rough, tell me something, did the author care to making his first 15 chapters better before he decided on leaving that and continuing on writing another 60 chapters??

Simple question, would a reader who stumbled upon that fic skip to chapter 14 or would he read the first few chapters to judge the story? Look, I'm not trying to bash the guy, but I'm failing in doing so, you know why, because his actions make little sense.

They guy admits his first 10 chapters not being up to the mark, and then promptly ignores them and writes more chapters without caring about smoothening the edges of the first 10.

The rest of the *ahem* arguments you presented were the same:

'The story get's better later.'

So I should read 20 horrendous chapters and then continue on. Oh and your last comment made me fall out my chair laughing.

You say and I quote,

"I consider this fic to hit its stride around chapter 40-50."

WHAT

You mean that the story gets better around chapter 40??!?!?! So I should read a fic that has more than half of the story not hitting the.... stride.

So I was correct in my assumption about this story not getting much better??

Oh and last line that I'm going to write, you asked as to why I came to this thread and reviewed this story. I came to review this story because I was bored and I wanted to read something. Quite the normal occurrence with teenagers you know. So I came, read the story, and found it lacking the appeal, and so, I commented on it.

What's wrong with that? And I may have missed it but, what 5000 people?

 

And, he is obviously referring to his writing style, his "voice". If you read that far and still hate it (the writing style), you probably...
He also says that the first arc basically follows all the clichés in order to subvert them later, but we can of course cherrypick that away.

Yes, he does still care about that. "I might come back and edit them later if time permits".

Why would you review a whole story based on the whole story? I don't know.

Which might have something to do with the already quite huge fanbase the fic has - and with the fact that this is WIP and everyone wants to read an update on the newer stuff.

Yes. What's the problem? You say you're bored, now you've got something to do and more than one source promised it'll pay off.

Err ... now that is exactly the opposite of what I was saying.

No, I asked why you reviewed it the way you have.

No, you actively discouraged anyone reading it based on very little knowledge of the overall quality. You reviewed the whole story despite only knowing a fraction. I don't understand why, especially when it has been repeatedly pointed out that the first arc (yes, the whole fucking first arc) doesn't really do the rest justice.
I am aware that the story does have a bad start and I have no problem with someone saying "kay, a premise off-putting like that isn't for me".
But you accused the author of not keeping his promise and only writing clichés and that's just ... yeah, wrong.

I recommend reading Narf's post on the matter; which you can find on page 4.

I posted a collection of quotes on page 2 or 3 of this thread on a similar matter.

 

EDIT 1: you've got me convinced. I'll read the story again, but, if I don't like it again, I'll have to say that your opinion will be yours, and my opinion will be mine.

EDIT 2: Yeah, nothing special, still don't like the story, if you want a more thorough review that captures everything I admittedly failed to elaborate upon, scroll down and see Taure's post.

 

The magic done by twelve-year-olds seems to be a bit overboard although I'll admit they did have a very good teacher.
Apart from that, the subplots do indeed come together.

Spoiler

Myrtle's death seems a bit unrealistic, but given the stuff that sometimes happens in RL I'll give the story that.

EDIT: And I don't understand why Harry feels the need to go down to the chamber when there are Aurors on the way within the next minutes. After all, it's not like he's a big fan of Ron. On the other hand, his Gryffindor tendencies have been apparent on other occasions as well and time definitely matters here.

 

Spoiler

So, Riddle was a good guy?
Went insane because of horcruxes? Or maybe he is Lockhart. I don't even.

This could go wrong in so many ways.

 

Spoiler

I'd wager it had something to do with Myrtle dying but I'm interested in the story the author will present on that matter.

 

Ten thousand words mostly wasted on recap. In this part engame of all things.

Also what's with your theories about Riddle being good? We knew about the muggleborn plan for long and it doesn't feel any less like manipulation now than it felt then.

 

Spoiler

Well, maybe a bit. Because it seems strange to have such an explanation from Myrtle - one that'd directly frame Riddle - for her death if it really wasn't like this.
That's not to say that the impression the others have of him wasn't changed after he left the school.
Maybe I'm forgetting something though; thoughts are a complete blur as I'm writing a maths exam tomorrow.
EDIT: It wouldn't have been a waste if he had refrained from using Ron's POV. Turns out there was a reason why JKR never used the the possessed one's POV.

 

What Ron's PoV has with it?

Anyway.

Spoiler

Myrtle's death may've been accident, that doesn't really change anything about him using them (and using Myrtle's death to crate his first horcrux).

 

Well, that was where he explained the whole plot the first time.

Why do you think he'd do something like that? I see no point in manipulating muggleborns to be petrified when they can easily be woken up.

 

I've always thought that there was a tipping point for Tom Marvolo Riddle, like he literally could have become anything once he left hogwarts, but the death of myrtle was a pure accident, she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But after her death that became his path, he murdered the families that abandoned him and his mother. He murdered others to steal, he became the rotten bastard we all came to know.

 

I've read up to chapter 18. It's not absolutely terrible but so far I'm not particularly impressed. We have five of my most hated tropes:

1. Muggle wank. Wizarding society has been sabotaged by the author to make the Muggle world look better by comparison.

2. Hermione wank. You often see this tied in with Muggle wank. She's been significantly beefed up from her canon level of intelligence and is now casting NEWT-level spells in first year (Protean charm on the parchment, which the author mistakenly identifies as a 5th year spell because canon Hermione learnt it a year early). She's also been given huge confidence and leadership (and general social skills) boosts.

3. Bashing. The author said no bashing in the summary but have completely failed to live up to that promise. All they've done is shift the target of bashing from Dumbledore and the Weasleys to the Potters. And of course, as is almost always the case with bashing, the absurd cardboard cut-out caricature villains exist only so that the supposedly sympathetic characters can knock them down with ease and look apparently impressive doing so (even though there's nothing impressive about outwitting an idiot). In this fic the "glory" seems to be shared between Harry and Hermione, so it also feeds into the Hermione wank.

4. Overblown and melodramatic abuse story lines: Harry, Neville, Theo. Boring, predictable, overwrought, simplistic, indulgent armchair psychology.

5. Characters giving each other lectures/ranting at each other on the author's hobby horses. It starts with Harry lecturing Hermione the first time he meets her on the train and gets worse from there on in.

The story also lacks any real sense of magic.

Incidentally, having glanced at the above discussion: you absolutely can judge a story on its opening. A good story is good in all aspects. If a story is 2/3 good and 1/3 bad, it isn't a good story.

I'm not sure what to rate the fic, to be honest. For all its many very annoying faults, it still manages to pass the "readable as a time sink" test, which is generally the test I use to call something "Almost Recommendable". So I guess I will give it a 3/5.

 

But don't you think it makes a difference if it's 3/3 bad or 1/3 bad?

 

But we got more recapping of their investigation here.

Could you explain, I don't know what you want to say here.

EDIT:

While I agree with your other points, I don't really see muggle wank in this fic. Would you care to provide some examples?

 

And without Ron's POV where he already explained nearly anything that was mentioned in the newest chapter, at least there would've been a few things that hadn't been said already.

Well, you say it's unlikely that he did anything but manipulate the muggleborns. But I see no reason for such a manipulation.