Really can't wait for the author to get on a regular update schedule once again, that cliffhanger was gnarly and the dramatic summer posts are only increasing my anticipation. On the whole this story does have a fair few cliches but I really don't mind due to the fact the author uses detailed logical explanations for them, and it gives the story a familiar feel while going off in creative and original directions with intricate detail. Personally I think that third year will be the most exciting yet with everything going on, furthermore Harry's life has been exceptionally smooth so I'm waiting for something to blow up, maybe the Theo situation only being a precursor of trials to come.

 

Recently read through the whole story from the prologue to the latest chapter. In addition to the other chapters we know we will get before Hogwarts, it would be useful to see an Azkaban breakout chapter. Not sure if the PoV would be Regulus, Sirius, or one of the other characters broken out at the same time. Would be interesting to see how Sirius reacts to Regulus who he last knew as a Death Eater.

That Regulus connection could be how Harry is introduced to Sirius in this story. Would make sense given that as others pointed out Harry won't be interested in fighting him given he already believes he is innocent. Sirius could tip Harry off to Peter's betrayal and Harry's lawyers could take the lead an dealing with Peter.

 

New chapter's up just now.
Well, there were a few thoroughly interesting subversions in this one, especially "Moony" and the stag/doe story. Apart from that, nothing much happened, apart from the fact that we finally got introduced to the "Beast of Shamballa" - which, I hope, will play a larger part in this story from now on.

 

This is a very annoying story to rate. The first year/arc is pretty much awful. The only redeeming quality is decent grammar. It's floating somewhere between a 1.5-2/5. The second year is a great improvement, probably being a solid 4/5 if it were standalone. However, then these year 3 chapters have been very dragging and updates have slowed to a crawl.

The issue is that the author seemed to not understand exactly what they were attempting until something like halfway through the first year. My impression of what they wanted to do at that point is a wrong BWL story while avoiding bashing, subverting cliches, and avoiding totally idiotic characters. However, they had already written many characters as being idiots and had to basically crowbar their personalities and motivations around.

There was a section where Draco Malfoy suddenly realized "Oh, I was a total jackass and moron! No wonder everyone hates me. I should change." which is just... absurd. Was extremely jarring since up to that point he'd been a one note villain. This is somewhat handwaved away by the whole natural legilimins thing in year two, but there's zero foreshadowing for that so I felt like it was more of a retcon than a planned plot point.

The cliches in the story are a problem in that they make it very, very predictable. If someone has read a wrong BWL story before, I honestly am not sure if they would miss anything by skipping year 1 entirely. There's maybe 1-2 "twists" to avoid stupid logic, but those all occur at the very end and have no actual effect on the plot.

The year 3 summer chapters have been a return to mediocrity. The chapters with Jim are fine, though a bit fillerish, but the chapters with Blaise and Hermione are complete headscratchers - there's been little to no effort given to have the reader invested in either character, so there's little reason for the reader to actually care about the danger they're in or any secrets they're keeping.

 

I think that the main reason for it to be "a return to mediocrity" actually is that we are forced to feel how slow The Sinister Man's pace really is. 10,000 words a month shouldn't be "updates slowed down to a crawl" - but it seems like it, because he keeps writing a subplot-bloated fic where something important to the main plot happens about every 30k words which means that the main plot is only touched every three months. It's made worse by the fact that we are at a point where he has some exposition to do and that this exposition will take about 70k words. Which means, a very, very long time nearly without the main character.
Year 2 with a similar update rate would have been absolutely frustrating and nowhere near as fascinating.

I doubt that this story will come anywhere near conclusion if he doesn't radically change the way he's writing it.

 

I'd honestly suggest that you only start reading again if he returns to a once-a-week schedule. Otherwise, the pace just makes it frustrating.
And, yeah, the prologue is something I've repeatedly criticized, because it's unnecessary and dumb in many, many ways.

 

Fantastic worldbuilding collapsing under its own weight. I'm about 75% sure he'll get back up once (maybe another 15 chapters), be forced to take another break to get the story together, and then fail altogether.

It's a shame, I liked how detailed Year 2 was (can't remember many stories of this scale) but it seems like too big a task.
December 4th was a little overdue, the new chapter due by Dec end, but c'mon - Christmas, New Year, and his mom had a stroke. I don't think circumstances are going to work out, and this will firmly end up in what-could-have-been territory.

 

I'm conflicted.

On one hand, this story only fits into categories: guilty pleasure and shit-tier. It nails all the worst indy/WBWL tropes on the fucking head in chapter one. It gets worse as it goes, from character bashing to flat writing style, to awful random changes between 3rd limited and 3rd omniscient to red flags proudly hoisted to full mast to 11 year old Harry talking about political networking and filing fucking injunctions (how's he paying the lawyer, by the way?).

On the other, I laughed when Hermione went "I can't help but be amazed when I see a braying ass disguised as a student". It cracked me up. This fic seems like something I would write if I wanted to deliberately write a shitfic for trolling purposes. I've read 8 chapters.If I don't stop now, I kinda have to read on, to see just how deep the shit well goes.

A tentative 0,5/5, rounded up. Will amend rating later. It's strangely amusing, in a "I can't fucking believe this exists" sort of way.

 

I think this fic had a lot of potential; the worldbuilding was fantastic and I really enjoyed some of the new character developments in second year. However, I think it would benefit from a good editor/rearrangement as I believe that a good 1/3 of the fic could easily be trimmed away.
That being said, I do look forward to reading more, however I think I will put it aside and check in on it if/after some significant work has been done. 3/5 for me.

 

If you manage thirty chapters, you'll afterwards find a rough diamond. No, I'm not kidding you.

 

I mean, on one hand I read about Neville reading dossiers on pureblood kids that his grandmother prepared for him, and on the other, there's bits like this:

This, this is goddamn brilliant. Ignoring the fact that you have 11-year olds talking like seasoned fucking machiavellians, this line is so perfectly Malfoy that I can't even.

Aaaaaand then we come to a screeching halt because the author thinks his IKEA joke was funny, which it wasn't. Then an info-dump chapter about Death Eater trials. Then a fairly interesting take on Neville's Remembrall. Then Harry is stunning Snape with how fucking brilliantly Slytherinish he is, how can you be the child of James Potturrrrrrrrr!?!

It's like a rollercoaster between the Himalayan peaks and the Mariana Trench.

 

ScottPress: This book ramps up AFTER the initial shitshow. Year two is when it gets good, there's plots within plots and layers within layers.

There are a lot of great ideas, there's even a self-referential chapter(I don't know what the correct word is), very detailed backstory-ing.
But. Year 3 has barely started. TSM is only just setting the ground for it, and by this point he's reached a major divergence, the number of canon incidents he can weave his story around decreases with every book, and while he could retain the TWT, I am not sure how long he can sustain the weight of this air-castle.
At some point, there'll be too many loose ends, or too many life incidents that are guaranteed to reduce the quality or scope of the fic.
Oh well. RIP.

 

It certainly gets better in second year, the story is far better then, but it still has some parts that bugged me or even have to force myself to read. Then again, the rest was enjoyable (for the most part) because of the plot and subplots, which were fairly good in my opinion.

However, the prelude to third year got unbearable for me, I couldn't even finish some of the chapters or even begin one of them. Some things just rubbed me the wrong way.

 

I mean, the author pulls out this Prince of Slytherin thing and the concept is cool, but the execution is blergh. Everything is exposition, exposition, exposition in this scene. Pop culture references are just pure cringe (Harry, Y U NO NO SCOOBY-DOO!), it's obviously just the author plugging shit they like for no reason. I'm reasonably certain that Blaise's mom has a place in NYC just so Blaise has an excuse to be familiar with Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. It's -1000/5 material. There are some cool scattered bits, like the way Harry dealt with the dragon(although he was cringe-worthy about it and it's ridiculous how he just knows stuff like the exact order of Stone traps -how the fuck did he find that out?). I just read the chapter where they go through the Stone gauntlet and of course the author has time time to have Blaise bemoan Harry's lack of Scooby-Doo knowledge and how he's getting Harry cable while their friends are minutes away from losing fingers. For fuck sake.

Theo's Poison Detection Monocle is a perfect example of the author's general ineptitude when it comes to fine details: it could have been set up/referenced earlier for easy Chekov's Gun points, but it comes out of nowhere in the very scene where it's required because either the author just came up with it then, or forgot to hint at its existence and I'm leaning towards the first. Look, I get it -sometimes I get an idea in the moment and it worms its way into the fic with no previous setup, but the trick is to not leave it so obvious that it was something you came up with right then and there.

In summary, I'm going to keep reading for guilty pleasure value, because this is fic is still shit-tier. Rating stays 1/5. I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

EDIT: Yeah, that's it.

Excerpts taken from Chapter 30 (do you even care?).

"I'm Genre-Savvy, Quirrell, you dense motherfucker."

Why are you not cutting off fingers right now, you idiot? Maybe Super!Harry has a point?

BECAUSE EVERYTHING VOLDEMORT SAID IS IN A BOOK. SOMEWHERE. Probably. And because Voldemort, the greatest wizard of the generation, hasn't a creative bone in his body.

"This is me proving to you, Quirrell, that I hold intellectual high ground in this... khem, 'confrontation'."

...because his shit Occlumency allowed this child genius to convincingly fake such bravado in the face of a servant of Voldemort, at which idea he had previously almost become catatonic when Quirrell was nowhere near him.

"Can you feel this burn, Quirrell? Another verbal victory for Potter, score! And also, Voldemort is laaaaaaaaaame.

"You should just give up, Quirrell. I'm obviously so much more witty than you and, really, isn't that all that matters? Did you not notice that I've been pwning bitches all year, from peers to senior students, all the way up to my, ugh, dad."

This short fragment compounds this fic's biggest fault: the author isn't capable of keeping up with their incredibly smart characters and in result everything just comes off as obnoxious. If you you look up the word "obnoxious" in a dictionary, there's a link to this fic.

I'm done with this garbage.

 

^ Still only the first year. Besides its not better than most other trash on FFN at least he uses acceptable grammar most of the time.

 

I caved and read on still. "It's only first year, they say," I thought. "It gets better, they say." No. No it doesn't.

I've arrived at

Spoiler

the funeral of Harry's lawyer's wife after the b-day party.

And I maintain that the author has some genuinely good ideas: the killler toy train - super awesome. But those good bits are dragged down by all the shit swimming around. I could rant about how 12 year old Harry talks about stuff like networking at the party, or knows expressions like non sequitur, but the author did say in the beginning that they can't write kids and won't pretend to try. Fair enough, I made the decision to read anyway.

But there's still a ton of stuff that makes this a shitfic. The author has a tendency to go on long expository tell-no-show tangents in the middle of other scenes. The dialogue can be incredibly stilted and expository as well. People don't talk like that. Yes, I know the old truth that if writers wrote dialogue as it actually happens in irl, it would be shit,, but they still try to evoke the sense of realism, no? Well, the dialogue here veers from boring to cringe-worthy.

Actually, a lot of stuff here is cringe-worthy, but the most tiring of all is the protagonist. I don't give a shit when the author literally tells me (not even making a tiniest effort to show instead) that boy, Jim is jealous of Harry's "hairstyling skills". Or how Neville is amazed that Harry is so calm (author actually used the words poise and grace when describing Harry) in the face of Rita Skeeter's bullshit. Or how Harry effortlessly outmaneuvers people all around him, introduces Marcus Flint to Scrimgeour because of course and, as Harry describes it, has "political and legal advisors".

I don't think there's been a single scene in this fic where I didn't want to groan and moan "Jesus fuck" as I headslam the desk. It's not so much a pile-up of shit tropes that's the most annoying here as the obnoxiousness and lack of any nuance or subtlety accumulated within the protagonist. Harry here reaches Throne of Glass levels of suckage. For reference, Throne of Glass is an incredibly shitty YA fantasy novel.

I haven't read such a frustrating piece of fanfiction since MOR. I'd rate if negative/5 if the option was there.

Edit: I forgot to mention the Author's notes where we get a parade of castings for the characters which is just lame. And those same notes being used to explain shit that the author didn't convey well.enough in the story itself. I don't give a shit how good your reasons are, if I don't get it from the story itself, you failed.

 

This is such a cliche BBWL fic that it becomes boring quickly. Honestly, Harry spends most of his life in a cupboard, then spends a year at school and starts filing injunctions. It's somehow unbelievable and predictable. Then year 2 happens. The writing is much better and I enjoyed the story. However, year 3 is falling flat again and the update pace is taxing on the reader. Would not recommend.

 

And that's not a valid reason why? I gather that the consensus is that yes, story has flaws and it has good parts. Some think that the good outweighs the bad, I think the bad outweighs the good.