So I was bored and read most of this story.

The beginning was rather interesting. There were enough interesting new takes on old ideas. My favorites being the sacrifice based blood magic and scenes of Harry having to deal with the Killing curse shattering his soul and having to heal it. Also the way it was implied that Slytherin's portrait really made Voldemort and is sort of doing the same thing to Harry.

It promised an interesting twist on the usual dark!Harry tripe where he is just killing/torturing people and there being zero repercussions from it.

And than it all fell off the cliff. The 'sacrifices' that were needed for the blood magic were essentially just Harry bleeding a little bit and than feeling woozy for a day or so, mechanically identical to him just reading some old book in other stories, as there were no real long term concequences to the 'sacrifices'. Besides the one time the author decided that there needed to be a big dramatic moment and for some reason the cost went way way up for a single, rather minor advantage. (It was also rather nonsensical as the advantage he gained was rather counter canon and so felt pointless.)

The whole soul shattering thing also went away after the first instance with Harry and Fluer just running around throwing around killing curses and Crucio's like they were candy.

In the end there was nothing Cadmean about this victory as everything Harry gave up was done so willingly.

 

Characterization

I like how in this fic instead of going out and bashing, as most authors do, he instead made it seem as though Dumbledore was evil but only through Harry's perspective making it seem as the opinion of Dumbledore being evil only that opinion. Unlike many other fics that try and bash characters as there bashing comes from the narrators perspective, not a characters, making it appear as fact not opinion.

 

By absolute pure luck I stumbled on this today (hours after it was posted), while checking the author's page.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12070367/1/A-Taste-of-Ismenian-Water

So basically this was the original epilogue and the existing one was going to be the chapter before it, but the author decided to cut this to be more in theme with the story or something.

 

I honestly think that the explanation at the end was the best part of the epilogue. Apart from that, it's certainly a better ending than the open one, simply because it doesn't solely consist of unanswered questions.

 

Yeah, Dumbledore in this fic is a pretty good example of unreliable narrator. The dark!harry was believable and the romance wasn't rushed, I really liked Katie's character by the end even though she's not the main heroine.

 

The prose is good. The author has tried his best to avoid the common cliches but has taken a route much worse.

The most jarring is the protagonist's complete character change without any plausible motive.

Further the interactions between characters doesn't feel right.

 

Its an above average fic that could have been great with a decent editor. There wasn't anything truly offensive (you could forgive, but not forget those...) yet at the same time it felt less than the sum of its parts.

The good:

Once the story found its footing it was a great read. The interactions with Salazar, the slow burn with Katie, Harry's unreliable narration of Dumbledore, the author obviously planned many aspects of the plot out. It was a unique look at dark!Harry, and it gets points for effort there.

Also, for as bad as the ending is, the author must be given credit for finishing the work even if it was with a whimper.

The bad:

It's a chore to get into the story, and I wonder if the only reason I became invested in later plot points was because of a sort of sunk cost fallacy. The promise of dark!Harry and his sacrifice based magic is poorly realized and a heavy missed opportunity.

The ugly:

To even get into the story you need to make a jump of logic that is completely tell, not show. From there the author spends close to 20 chapters tearing characterizations apart so as to make them fit into his world (including some lines that if I hadn't been forewarned about I would have considered abandoning the story on the spot). For as built up and foreshadowed as the first 60+ chapters are, the ending lands like the thud of an author that wrote himself into a corner and just wanted to be done.

In summary, above average simply due to good mechanics, a fresh spin on common cliches, and actually seeing the story through to conclusion while being dragged down by its own hubris. 2.75/5.

 

So it turns out he's rewriting the story and putting it on his Patreon. For free of course but still quite dodgy.

 

It seems the sequel, by his title, will leave off from my lesser favorite of the two endings.
My first guess was that it would involve Fleur trying to “rebuild” Harry’s memory after the events of the last chapter in the main fic.

However, if the main story is actually being rewritten then maybe the sequel will actually have some real plot to cover.

 

The rewrite is being cross-posted to ffn at a slower rate. He doesn't seem to really be adding any new plot elements - just fluffing up the old chapters. I'd imagine that the rewrite would go straight into the library once finished, but we'll see.

 

I actually started reading the rewrite a while ago. And it's definitely substantially improved. In particular he lays down a lot more character groundwork for Harry's OOC characterisation, as opposed to the original version where it was a lot more abrupt.

But funnily enough, the same thing happened to me in the rewrite as in the original, even though the rewrite is less objectionable: I just got bored and lost interest.

 

Should the rewrite just be linked above then, or be judged on its own merits?

 

Yes the remaster should be mentioned on post 1 somehow.
I just binged the whole thing this week and felt silly when only the final author note mentioned it. I don't have the heart to go through it again.

It's a pretty good fic if you can ignore the non-canon characterizations, the indy premise, the weird leaps in logic.
Characters are definitely the strong point, even though dialogue leaves much to be desired. The author tried to give us different point of view and treated most characters as complex people with their own contexts.

As a whole it's much better than a lot of old stuff in the library in my opinion.
I'd go as far as 4/5

 

I read two chapters and didn't feel like going further.

The dialogue is tedious and robotic and there is far too much of it, pulling conversation on and on for no apparent purpose.

Ron and Hermione appear to be hollow parodies of themselves and the authors desire to put X or Z into a negative light bleeds through the writing.

The writing is mostly just telling, with the narrator helpfully spending a half a dozen lines outlining the reasons why Harry is reacting in a specific manner to Hermione and why abuse is the cause of it all. Transparent exposition all the way.

Most of what was written felt irrelevant and the entire thing was bloated with unnecessary elements.

1/5

 

The story was enjoyable for a while,but I got bored eventually 3.5/5

 

I finally got around to read the remastered version. I've got as far as chapter thirty something.

Given the amount of discussion here, I expected it would be interesting, if not completely to my taste - I don't have a problem with CoS/Portrait!slytherin, I don't have a problem with unexplained Harry enjoying learning, and I don't have a problem with many small peeves the discussion seems to revolve here.

What I do have problem though, is that this fic is a one trick pony.

Everything that happens in the chapters I've read is driven forward by characters misunderstanding each other, not communicating and stewing in a teenage angst. When there's not enough room for angst in the actual character reactions, the drama is helped by a healthy dose of unnatural, out of character behaviour.

If that wasn't enough, the melodramatic teenage emo shit was almost physically painful to read. POV characters aren't interested, but "a soft little whisper of need coils in their breast". They are not sad, but "strange, soft hollow feel seizes their heart" or "they claw at the emptiness, searching for something in its hollow depths". They are not angry or resolute, but "seize the shard of ice in their chest, clutching at it like a lifeline".

It's tiring, it's melodramatic, and it's the reason I DNF this.

One point for good english, one point for the Harry/Katie date where they actually flirt in a relatable way, what with all the jokes about "not tying my hair up until at least the third date".

2/5

 

I did take a second stab at the rewrite. Alas I struggled to get through it again. However, the second time I did put some further thought into why that was.

If you pay attention to the writing, you will notice that there is very little description, and this is even more so in the rewrite. Very little tell. Some chapters will just have one or two paragraphs of narrative, with all the rest being dialogue. If I were to make an estimate, I would guess that the story is over 90% dialogue by word count.

What this means is that the story belabours everything. It's all show, no tell. And I think that's why you get bored, as a reader. Show is good for detail, for drilling down into the relationships between characters, and for action. But it's not good for propelling things forward, nor for getting inside the character's head. You need tell for inner thoughts, for concise exposition, for narrative. You also need tell for the description which gives flavour to the events, which otherwise take place in a vacuum. Without tell, you lose the forest for the trees.

What the author has essentially written is a screenplay. And a screenplay needs to be brought to a visual medium to come to life. Without that, we have lots of trees, but no forest.

 

I don't particularly like the rewrite to be honest, I think that what existed before was pretty good, and I've read it multiple times. Whatever the author has been doing just doesn't work for me, and I wish that they'd just move on to something new at this point.

I'd probably have given the original a 4/5 maybe, for its dive into magical theory, and some well executed fanon tropes... but it was lightning in a bottle.