Title: Lost Magic: First Contact
Author: MightyFish
Rating: M
Genre: Adventure/Sci-Fi
Chapters: 6
Words: 79,745
Updated: Feb 4, 2015
Published: Mar 24, 2015
FF.net
Summary:A man is left trapped in time, while his world dies around him. Now awakened in the distant future, he leaves the planet of his birth and embarks on a journey to find that which was lost. But the new frontier holds many dangers, and the human race is about to face its first great challenge. A Harry Potter/Mass Effect crossover. Rated M for safety, my profile has more details.

A Mass Effect crossover I finally like. It deals with the invasion of Shanxi inhabited by the last wizard alive Harry Potter. Why he is the last wizard and all the circumstances of him being on Shanxi are explained, though they are not super coherent, at least they are believable. A lot of the story so far doesn't deal with Harry but with the Turian and Human military, although the last chapter delivered more on the Harry front, so I've decided to post it for review.

It's written well enough. Though a bit heavy on the exposition side (70,000 words and only now we see Harry in action) it does deliver. The space battle was fun to read, the same with Harry's exploits in the recent chapter. Harry's a bit overpowered but you can't escape from that, can you?

Points for not being a Mass Effect game story re-hash and for attempts at originality. I'll see how it goes from here.

4/5

EDIT:Forgot to add the HP/ME crossover in the title, damn, and forgot the link (thanks, Fardeki!)... Today isn't my day

 

Lost Magic: First Contact

^ Link.

Will try, never played ME but got a basic knowledge.

 

I thought it was awful.

The writing is decent, but God is it dry and boring. It reads like a class presentation at times.

The backstory stretches my SoD, and the author fails to be meaningfully original. Explorators, a living ship? Eh, been there, done that.

Points for trying, 2/5.

 

was simply too dry for me. 2/5

 

It has it's flaws, but for one, it was a story that I enjoyed to read.

There haven't been any mass effect crossovers with sufficient quality, and if we are evaluating that, I'd be more than happy to give it more than it deserves.

What this story deserves, in my mind, is a solid grade, perhaps 3.5/5.

And, when faced with a decision on where to lean - I'll go with 4/5.

Why?

Because dialogues are nice and well crafter. Even when stretching the suspension of disbelief, they make sense in a certain way - the explanation is given and reasonable.

This next chapter might make or break the fic though - and since it isn't out by the time of this post, I can only guess at what is to come and remain vaguely optimistic.

4/5

 

Do I have to know what Mass Effect is to enjoy this?

 

YES.

Also I would go with 2/5 because while the writing is solid, the grammar is nice. It's just too dry and long winded. ~80k word and almost nothing is happening, that'S Harry Potter and the Philosophers stone.So yeah. 2/5.

 

Don't listen to HoS.

I wouldn't say so. You can simply treat it as a generic Sci-Fi setting and you'll do fine. Almost everything is explained. In fact you can enjoy it more if you've never even heard of Mass Effect, since it draws from the source material but not depends on it.

 

The pace of this fic is utterly tedious. 79 000 words and basically shitall happened.

Oh and that little speech Harry directed at Desolus was cringeworthy.

Anyway, at best I can give this fic a 2/5. I hope things pick up from here on, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

The speech would have made more sense after destroying the ship.

Unlike others, I'm really enjoying it as someone who did not like ME, or the characters.

I did cringe when the author mentioned that Harry will be 'full Paragon'. Yay, using dated game mechanics to pigeonhole what's supposed to be a complicated, multi-faceted character. Joy.

I respect that just as much as seeing 'levels' mentioned in Pokemon fics.

 

I always played as asshole paragon or commonly referred to as chaotic good.

 

I just couldn't take the final chapter. Aliens show up kill a bunch of your people and threaten to bomb the planet and Harry still angsts about killing them? That's not compassion that's just being a pussy.

I have only played one of the games ages ago, so can't remember anything about it. But I guess Turians are an important part of the canon, because Harry's reluctance to seek vengeance against them can't be anything besides him acting on plot precognition. After all if he killed a bunch of them now the canon events couldn't take place and the author might have to think of an alternative.

 

Not at all.

Just a pussy.

 

Same as us, Harry listened in on the most important conversation between the commanders of turian and human forces.

The bottom line is, turians asked for humans to surrender, and they refused.

The humans asked for a prolonged negotiation, but the Turians cannot allow an unknown force a forward post that they'd have to spend resources to keep secured - thus, following orders, the turians have to demand for an unconditional surrender of the facility, at least until the diplomatic side is ironed out.

The humans do not surrender. (In my opinion this is a stubborn mistake, especially considering how the conversation went - they could have at least tried to negotiate a retreat of the most important military assets - but I understand the reasoning behind it, which also makes sense internally.)

The turians never threaten the civilians directly, nor they plan to bomb the planet, only aiming to take the military targets. They would round up the civilians afterwards, but that's a given, because otherwise people would have to starve left with little to none infrastructure on the planet.

Harry knows all this. He knows the war is a mistake, a clash of two military ideologies and stubbornness. He tries to force a stalemate to have the turians re-negotiate.


I'd argue that his threats at the end of the chapter, in fact, are the thing that's over the top. He knows - he's seen the turian outlook - and he should understand that threats are not the best approach. Yet he threatens to disable any and all that lands on the planet, to thwart any and all attempts to take it - it's a definition of a tvtropes badass boast, yet I'm not sure if the place is right.

Harry's not being a pussy here. He simply doesn't kill needlessly, yet he brings about serious threats, trying to intimidate the turian war machine, trying to force them to go for a diplomatic solution.



The whole approach, including the explanation on why turians open fire on the scout ships opening the relay, is more realistic than canon version, where turians destroy the scouts activating the relay and decide to take Shanxi just because, implying that there were no attempts at diplomacy, nor any terms discussed until Williams gave up.

A refused ultimatum with a well grounded reasoning makes more sense to have war over, rather than a hotshot turian commander.

 

I finally took the time to read it. I initially shied away from it because it basically started on Shanxi and I've read basically every variation of 'hyper-aggressive moron Turians shoot at weakling Humans for no good reason'.

I was actually pleasantly surprised. A lot of folk seemed annoyed at how long it took for anything to happen but I found it a refreshing change. Usually in fanfiction the First Contact scenario occurs over the course of less than a day. Fleets are mobilised and reinforcements are assigned in mere hours, no plans are made and everything runs headlong into some clichéd war crimes from the Turians.

This fic doesn't. It feels so much more natural to me. I think it's fairly clear that Desolas won't accept anything less than total surrender from the Humans. It's also understandable that the Humans would not find that option all that attractive.

It's also nice that Harry hasn't just turned into a battle robot who kills anything and everything in his path. Some people find that hard to stomach but a situation like this is very different from the terrorist situation of his youth. Most soldiers are normal people and in this case they're being commanded by a guy with an axe to grind, Harry remembers that. That's a nice thing, also humanising (is that the right word?) the Turians is a nice touch.

Overall I'm glad I read it. There's some stuff I'm unsure of but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it. 4/5.

 

I liked it. Some people found that it took a while to get to the action? Bet they've never read the entirety of Wheel of Time or Malazan: Book of the Fallen.

Talk about long ass books. Anyway, I liked how the First Contact War panned out and while Harry can seem a little too much of a Holier-Than-Thou (this is war and the aliens just killed a crapload of soliders), it's not too much to ask that Harry respond in kind.

But, if he was trained as an Auror, I can understand why he'd go for non-lethal spells. So far, the story is good and slowly developing into a more in-depth plot. This isn't exactly on my hot-list but I'm keeping tabs on this one. 4/5.

 

Again, the options aren't only 'kill everyone' and 'Jesus Potter'.

Honestly? I'd be fine with everything if he hands over his captives for interrogation, or to be used as PoW bargaining chips.

That makes perfect sense to me. It's smart even, given they know fuck all about their enemies.

 

Considering that it didn't cost him anything to not kill them, he made the obvious choice. Wizards don't need to use lethal force if they can turn the opposition into marbles.

From the way the fic is going he will probably hand the prisoners over to the Alliance.

 

The counter argument is always 'it didn't cost him anything yet'.

It's pointless because we're speculating. I think the right choice is capture and hand them over for interrogation. Go to the peace talks with some aces up your sleeve, etc.

I also think it's the right choice to kill/ enslave every Batarian that thinks it's their right to - and does - enslave other species' citizens.