Overall impression:

An interesting an engaging story, full of original ideas and characters. Not the best written of pieces – it could do with a beta above all else – but certainly fun to read, though you have to be both in the right mood for it, and have a lot of time. On my first read-through of the story, probably over a year ago now, I liked it at the beginning but ended up skipping and skimming increasing amounts of the story as it went by (I skipped the entire back-in-time sequence) ultimately leading to me stopping my reading it. Now I have gone back and read the story all the way through, from the beginning of ASCAL to chapter 21 of CIATOW, without skipping anything, and I enjoyed it immensely. I will now go through the good points and bad points of the story. Harry will be referred to as Harry, for clarity’s sake.

Good Points:

- Akren. This cannot be understated. The portion of the story that takes place at Akren is my favourite part. I love the new school that Flairgold has created, as well as the teachers and students there, the fights, the social hierarchy, the new magic learned. It’s by far the best part of the story, and I would not have been unhappy if it had been the sole focus of the story. Who needs demon invasions when you have Akren?

- The author’s approach to pairings. I think it was a good decision to keep pairings mostly out of the story, but still have them in there on the sidelines…though perhaps I would have liked to see more of Harry visits to his Muggle friends with benefits.

- The O.C.s. Flairgold has done a good job of introducing and characterising them – a rare feat. The author of “Knowledge is Power”, a truly terrible piece of characterisation, could learn a thing or two from Flairgold regarding O.C.s.

- The magic. Though this is also listed as one of the bad points of the story, it’s a massively good one too. The magic Flairgold has introduced is very interesting – enough to keep the reader interested in reading about it for chapters at a time – useful and messes together well. It’s just a pity that in introducing a lot of the new magic, a lot of the old magic got left by the wayside (see below on that).

- The animagi and interesting creatures. I love all the creatures Flairgold has created, and the detail that has gone into them (e.g. the varieties of breeds of Basilisk). Through in this story, animagi are less like animagi and more like the summons from the Final Fantasy series of games.

- Harry’s characterisation. Flairgold, whether deliberately or by accident, has struck gold with Harry. He is in the perfect state of “realistically powerful” that so many authors strive for. He is powerful and able to hold his own, but knows when he’s beat and dwarfed in power by people like Namach. In addition, he has the potential to keep getting more powerful, given more time. This is certainly needed, considering the power inflation that occurs as the story goes by.

- The complex and interesting societal structures that Flairgold has created. The vampires, the elves, the fae…all of them have their own complex societies.

Bad points:

- The loss of the essence of magic. Charms. What has happened to Charms, that extremely useful part of magic? Sure, Harry can wield huge power with his magic, but can he do the washing up with it, or tie his shoelaces with it? This aspect of magic seems to have been completely forgotten, which is disappointing since the useful nature of magic in everyday life was part of what made Harry Potter magic so great. This story focuses solely on magic for fighting, which I always found rather silly, as it removes the point of magic altogether…if magic can only be used for fighting, then magic only solves the problems that it creates in the first place. The Harry Potter magic system went beyond this and made something that was pretty cool. I suppose Harry’s time in the Room of Requirement means that he knows household charms and the like, but we never really see evidence of this in the day to day story. There are many aspects of magic like this that have been lost, such as non-verbal casting (mentioned often but hardly ever used) which overall contribute towards my other major disagreement with this fic…

- It doesn’t feel like Harry Potter. This has been said many times, how people think that it isn’t so much a Harry Potter fan fiction so much as it is an original work attached to a Harry Potter beginning. I care less about this (I like AU stories) and more about the feel of the piece. Stuff like the loss of the more frivolous and day to day nature of magic take away from the story, in my opinion, rather than add to it.

- The writing. The story could use a beta reader. This would improve the writing considerably, as there is a not small number of errors dotting the piece which, if corrected, would greatly improve the writing of the story, and give it a much more polished feel. The annoying thing is that this is not a hard thing to do – very little technical knowledge of the English language is needed to spot and correct typos and simple spelling errors.

- Occasional extreme tedium. While the story is generally great, there are some rare parts of the plot which are extremely tedious and have to be slogged through to get back to the interesting bits. An example of these bits are when information and explanations are repeated several times but in different wordings. Don’t worry: we got it the first time!

- Use of clichés. This is relatively unimportant to me, since the author uses them well, but I feel that I had to mention them in a comprehensive review. However, it is a very minor point – the way it is, I prefer the story with the clichés in (shrinkable trunk that is much bigger on the inside, Room of Requirment training etc.) than what the story would look like without them.

- The overpowering of the “summons” (animagi). The animagus forms of the characters are so powerful that now everything about a character’s power revolves around them. Fighting skill, bloodmagic…all these things are pretty irrelevant when it comes to Ice Dragons and Thunderbirds. In addition to this, the power of the animagus forms are used in practically everything the characters do…if Harry has cast a powerful spell, it has been increased in power by “the fury of the Thunderbird” or some such. I call this problem the Final Fantasy 8 problem.

Regarding where the story is headed:

The way I see it, there are two possible ways this is going. Either Harry is going to gain a Death Dragon animagus form, which would make the Elves probably want to kill him and would explain why Namach was afraid, or Harry is going to gain some other powerful and mostly likely hard to control animagus form, and what Namach is afraid of is Harry himself. Whatever it is, it seems like it’s happened to one person before, judging by the dialogue at the end of chapter 21, and that they didn’t survive it.

There is a balancing act with Harry getting more powerful – with the ever increasing rate of power inflation in the story, he needs to be more powerful than he is at the moment, to remain relevant to the story and not be just sidelined, but on the other hand it needs to remain realistic. I think Harry becoming a Death Dragon animagus would be good for this. It would make him much more powerful, but it’s not an unexpected power boost out of nowhere: it’s been carefully foreshadowed, all the way back to when he drank the dragon blood, and will no doubt come with its own problems (Elves wanting to kill him…).

I’m curious about how much planning Flairgold has done regarding where this story is headed – it has the potential to last years beyond where it is at the moment. The Demon invasion is just the most immediate plot arc, and there are several others that are still to come: the merging of magical and Muggle worlds, Harry’s continuing education at Akren and as Namach’s apprentice (years of storyline there), and the Elves. It seems to me that there is much potential for stories involving the massively unknown Elvish element of the story, since they have whole other planets that can be explored.

Sum up:

Though I have dwelled a bit more on the bad points than on the good points, this is the nature of reviews, as it’s far easier to see things that we don’t like than things we do. Therefore, to prevent my good points/bad points comparison from being misleading, I say this: this is a good story. A very good story in fact. Despite its bad points – and it has them – it remains interesting and draws the reader it. It won’t be for everyone, but I do highly recommend it. Disregard my previous comments on this story: now I've read it again, in full, I've changed my mind. 4/5

 

@ Taure:
Do you have a favorite combat scene? The scene in the Portal room in Mexico may well be my all-time-favorite pitched battle.

 

I finished ASCAL a little over a year and a half ago, and while it must be said that my tastes have improved too much since then, I did enjoy the fic. So I was tentatively siding with people who found the fic great and all.

Aliens, is it? Extraterrestrials? I guess that was all the story was missing. There is a line between fantasy and SF that shouldn't be crossed. I don't know about others, but I think this other-planets idea is a massive fail.

 

Top of CH21.

You have no idea how much that worries me; it leaves the possibility of a massive, irreversible fuck-up far too likely in a fic this size.

 

She's managed to stay in control so far. And she says that she's already planned out the major plots of Book3.

 

Yeah but it's worth noting that her older fics went down this exact same path. She'd complete the first part of a series and the sequels would get to a point and stop. One of them got 21 chapters into the third part of the series. And the other was 17 chapters into the second story before her interest and ability to write that storyline waned.

There's a massive difference between knowing roughly where you want to go and actually trudging through the tediousness of writing it.

It'd be nice to think she learned something in the two+ years away from fanfic, but I've seen nothing to indicate that this won't eventually hit the same wall. Comments like "(Author is seriously going insane with too-complex fic. Especially since I don't take notes or actually plan this shit out, it just happens)" practically guarantee it.

 

* determined to remain hopeful *
I love this story, and I want it to continue into the indefinite future.

 

While I like aspects of this story and read updates when they come out, I'm skeptical it will pan out. Particularly with stuff like the different types of magic she introduced, it seems like much of it is made up on the spot without a great deal of consideration about how introducing it affects the rest of the world. For example, I don't see how thread magic, as described, doesn't just overpower everything else. The ties between necromancy and blood magic also seem contrived to me (possibly a forced association to justify a comment she made early in the exposition when both were first introduced).

Few could hope to complete a work of this scope without a 300 page bible and the world's best beta team. From the sound of things, she has neither; this lowers her chance of success considerably. That said, I wouldn't mind being proved wrong--on balance, I find it a decent read.

 

She said that thread magic tends to fade pretty quickly - over a period of a couple of months, I think. It seems more an assassin's tool or for short-term warding than a general purpose magic skill.

 

hear! hear! I love this fic and would be pleased as punch if it continued for a few years...that said...I have to admit that the sheer number of variables are beginning to stretch and strain the author's writing...I am hoping that it doesn't end up being abandoned (I've seen it happen to some pretty good stories)

 

It's different with this story for me for some reason. The author just seem's to write too much inane dribble for me. I find myself jumping through useless parts at times. I think the author just doesn't have 'the flow' of the story down with such massive chapter's.

Take the crossover story A Thin Veneer by AlbertG. He at times writes massive 20,000 word chapter's but they still just flow together despite the length and I do not feel like skipping through. That's not the case with a second chance.

Link to said fanfic- http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1944628/1/A_Thin_Veneer


shrugs I'm odd?

 

I agree. I think she's pushing it with the amount of new things that has been introduced into here. Not taking notes when you've got about 20+ new magical species, a new school and a fuckload of OC's and Magical subjects is a big mistake. She has managed to remain somewhat level-headed so far so she may pull it off.

As for Rahkesh changing, I think she'll bring in something new. Something that pisses of the Death Dragons, due to the blood he ingested. As Rahkesh is such a unique case, Dragon blood, Thunderbird, Basilisk and a whole bunch of other shit, I doubt we'll see him become something we've seen so far. That's not taking into account what may happen once the war starts. I'm betting on some interaction between Demons, and/or Fae and Elves. The Fae and Elves are mighty interested in him (Vampires as well), and the Demon invasion is inevitable.

This fic has started to perk my interest again, particularly after the Voldemort battle scene, though there are parts of it that annoy me. Meh.

 

Why is this in the bin?

 

Your an idiot. Read the above.

 

* moan *
Oh, God, please don't jumpstart THAT discussion again...

 

No actually he is not an idiot, it is a legitimate question considering the story is rated a 4/5.

The reason, however, is that the thread did drop to a 3/5 and Sree moved it to the bin, it has never been moved back

 

/me starts up the roflcopter.

 

It's in the bin because it has aids, and we don't want it infecting the other fics with the ghey.

/Conversation.

Seriously though, i caught up a bit, and it got better. However, it is painfully obvious to me that she isn't planning anything, just coming up with "cool" ideas and throwing them in with no intention to use them later.

This pisses me off to no end. Especially since I've painstakingly connected every "cool" idea I've had in my story. Thinking of how to make those connections is a fucking bitch, but an integral part of making a story. If you invent a powerful brand of magic, and it's never fucking used, you may as well be making a fictional encyclopedia.

3.5/5 It's a good fic, but I'm just too irked by her lack of planning and care to give it a 4.

 

Enh, I've found that she uses the elements she introduces quite well.

Everything introduced is used that I can remember.

 

Until something more useful and more powerful is introduced. She's introduced such a sheer amount of stuff that if she used it all it'd be a bit ridiculous.