Title: A Darker Shade of Light (Part 1)
Author: st122
Rating: T (PG)
Genre: Adventure/Drama
Status: Complete
Library Category: The Alternatives
Pairings: Harry/Ginny
Summary: [Crossover] Harry Potter/Wheel of Time. After a rough start to the year, what will happen when Harry disappears? Prophecies, gateways, powers unknown and the ages of time combine to change Harry's life and the way he sees the world.
Link: Fanfiction.net Link

The first third of the story is a Ron intruding on a budding Harry/Ginny romance which is interesting of itself. And then the story takes a sudden turn and jump through time as the crossover EV3NT happens. After that, the Wheel of Time side of the story asserts itself and things take off.

This is, IMO, the very best Harry Pother/Wheel crossover out there. Fans of Robert Jordan's work should definitely read this. It fits well with the Dark Lord Potter theme as Harry becomes much darker and harder than canon.

I give this a 4.5/5 rounded up as there are a few particularly weak chapters that derail the story a bit.

 

I reject your assertion that this is the best HP/WoT xover out there!

That said, I've read this author's A Different Wheel story and it had extremely painful characterization. From what I recall, it was less of an epic fantasy story and more of a bodice ripper-lite fantasy. Which was disappointing.

I'll be interested in what other members say about this fic, but I have low expectations for it.

 

I'd be interested in hearing your recommendations for HP/WoT crossovers (in addition to your own). A Darker Shade of Light and its sequel were the best such I've come across, which is why I put it up for review here. But my reason for coming to DLP was to get good stories to read that have been in essence peer reviewed.

Darker Shades really starts out like a romance, but IMO not a badly done one. It really starts getting to the interesting stuff around chapter 6 or 7 if you have little patience for the shipping aspect of things. But, considering the emotional impact the author is going for later on in the story I think the long buildup is justified.

 

I think you should read his signature for one of the best HP/WoT X-Overs before passing too much judgement.

As to the fic, will withhold from rating. The beginning budding romance just didn't do it for me, and not solely because it involved Ginny.

 

Not judging. I'll reserve that for fics :banana: I was seriously asking. My reason for making an account here is because of the recommendations on this site and the ratings which I find to be pretty accurate.

I did read his WIP, and it's pretty good, but too early in the fic to say if it's actually better.

 

Kensington, you are required to post in this thread.

 

There are a number of niggling issues in the first few chapters. Not only do we get the rollercoaster of emotions, where the characters go from angry to happy and back in the space of a paragraph, but the author actually lampshades it and claims it's a personality quirk of Ginny's. To my knowledge I've never spoken to anyone with bipolar disorder (at least, not one who wasn't on meds for it), but I can't imagine that anyone who has actually considers the mood swings endearing. It certainly isn't natural; even my wife's pregnancy mood swings were not so drastic or quick.

There's this bit in the prologue:

It took me awhile before I figured out that Harry is *not* the father who shared the boy's hair and he's not whispering to his son. It might be just a case of missing quotation marks, but it's really confusing.

Then there's also this statement out of left field in Chapter 1:

One of the problems readers had with H/G is that JKR didn't show them interacting at all in PoA or GoF. Of course it's likely that they did, but if Harry has been "long suppressing" his desire for her (pretty sure 12 year olds don't do that), you'd think that would show up in canon. I guess we can just assume the story didn't follow canon, but unless the author explicitly says otherwise, I tend to think it does.

And my last quote of the post:

Now, writing something humorous is always hit-or-miss, I can vouch for that. What the author finds funny is not always what the audience finds funny, so I generally give the author the benefit of the doubt. But please, does anyone find that funny? It's not even morbidly funny, and I can't imagine Sirius laughing about Harry's brushes with death at all. Harry might laugh in sort of an insane, mirthless way, though.

Also, how does a scowl waft? I can't imagine Mrs. Weasley scowling, anyway; perhaps the author meant "huff."

Anyway, I'll keep reading because I want to see the crossover stuff, and completed HP/WoT crossovers are few and far between.

 

Melior: Sounds like the same problems with A Different Wheel. Nynaeve and Lan are in each other's company for less than a day and are immediately declaring their love for one another. Elayne plots on how to control Rand for the tower in one breath and then condemns Egwene for doing the same in the next.

All in all, it made for weak and confusing characterization.

 

I agree that there are a few minor annoyances that detract from the flow. Fortunately, I didn't find them to be too numerous.

 

I'm a lot further now, and that about sums it up (though, to be fair, Egwene actually kinda does the epic hypocrisy thing in WoT canon, which in my opinion is only slightly mitigated by her Crowning Moment of Awesome in ToM). I'm okay if he wants to make Harry a bit emo, but there's a lot of putting up of silencing charms and screaming. Maybe I've read WoT wrong all this time, but I thought the Flame and the Void purged emotion instead of bottling it up, so why would he have to do that?

The H/G relationship continues in much the same way. It's unfortunate that the romance plays such a huge part in this story, because from what I've read in this story and what Kens posted, he's not very good at it.

That said, there is some potentially interesting stuff going on plot-wise, particularly with the Deathly Hallows. I'm interested to see if he ties up all of the loose plot threads I want to see tied up.

 

The story is just boring and OC like most WoT crossovers. I think the only one I even remotely enjoyed was Joining of Destinies as far as I remember.
IMHO this crossover genre doesn't really work because the magic is so different you easily run into a Gary Stu problem and its fate recycling setting kills any tension/atmosphere for me. You can see at Darker Shade of Light how the story's plot line disintegrate more and more.

 

I don't see that at all. In fact, I think the plot really picks up and starts really coming together as it goes forward.

Spoiler

In fact, right at the climax before the end of part 1, the story is at its height of interest.

There is certainly not a balance between Harry Potter wizards and WoT channelers. Channelers are superior in this story, by a wide margin. But that does not cause a problem for the story in terms of protagonist vs. antagonist. For readers who are partial to HP style magic they may find this distasteful, but in terms of mechanics it is not really an issue.

I get the feeling this story is being judged on its first few chapters before things start to really get going. I'd suggest that if you want to read a chapter or two to get a sense of what the whole will be like, start with chapter 8 (ch 9 if you count the prologue).

 

I know one of Neil Gaiman's pieces advice for authors is that people who tell you exactly what's wrong and how to fix it are almost always wrong, but I still have to say this would be a better story if it, as you suggest, just started with Harry's disappearance. To me, even canon Harry is tenacious enough to stick it out through his stint in Randland; no need to rely on the contrived romance. For that matter, said contrived romance would have been a lot more believable if we didn't have to read the beginning of it.

The romance is sorta ret-conned later on with the explanation that

Spoiler

Harry is ta'veren.

But that's little consolation for having to suffer through the first few chapters.

As for the plot, I guess I should have expected that the author wouldn't resolve everything since this is just Book I, but

Spoiler

the lack of explanation for Harry's dragon tattoos was pretty weak. I guess the Aiel would have treated him differently if he didn't have them, but other than that there was no reason for it...especially since it would have wreaked a lot more havoc among the Randland prophecies than it did.

The ending is pretty weak, too, since

Spoiler

only Voldemort was killed, and as expected that was nothing. In fact, the only purpose he served was to surprise Dumbledore when Harry killed Voldemort. I suppose it fits with early WoT canon in that almost nothing is resolved despite the epic battle at the end. The author of this story should have emulated Brandon Sanderson's ability to end a book instead of Robert Jordan's.

EDIT: I don't usually rate stories, but I'm feeling quite generous and I rated this a 3/5 just because it's a finished HP/WoT crossover and the plot gets interesting eventually if you can ignore the relationships. Also,

Spoiler

Harry should have fallen for Illyandra.

 

Good points. Personally, I am not much interested in romance fics, so perhaps I'm just as ambivalent towards the romance in this as I am towards anything else. I guess for me I felt it was just better than Rowlings version of the Harry Ginny interaction in OotP, but that is hardly a high standard to meet. And you're definitely right that the style is emulating Jordan rather than Sanderson.

I can see a 3/5 rating, but not a 2. It's got some issues, sure, but certainly not that bad. For me the issues didn't detract from the overall story, so I didn't really grade it down for them.

Anyway, if this one ends up in the recycle bin I'll have to take a harder look before I think of recommending anything else.