How long is this story going to be were at chapter 22 and still on summer break.

Don’t get me wrong, after all these years waiting, the more the better but I wonder where we are in terms of the story, the beginning, the middle, near the end?
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Also, I just finished rereading books 1-4 before starting in on this and it’s was a pleasure. I honestly think these are superior to the HP books (maybe not AQ1).

Alexandra still frustrates me as a reader almost as much as she frustrates Anna. But I like her just as much.

I have to give Inveratiy props for the sex scene (such that it was), I wasn’t that worried because he’s a good writer, but that was a point where the story could have really stepped on a rake and I’m glad it didn’t.

 

@PWIZDUO Inverarity said in a blog post that it'll be 288k and have 59 chapters. I've just been assuming there'll be a timeskip somewhere like 'Alexandra found the day school boring and soon fell into a routine' etc.

 

To be honest, I don't even care about Alex or Thorn. What I enjoy about this series, and I enjoy it a lot, is the worldbuilding: creatures, magical races, wizarding cultures, rituals, worlds, otherworldly powers like Death or the Stars Above... The author's imagination shines bright in this rich, ellaborate and self-consistent universe he has created.

That's why I like chapters that contain everyday magic, wizarding lore, etc. the best. Things like the floo boiler in this one.

To my taste, and I understand this is a very subjective appreciation, the characters don't hold a candle to the world they live in. A bit like JKR in that respect.

Alex is utterly believable: a bratty, selfish, prideful, impulsive teen, victim of a moderate to serious case of parenting neglect and the little space for character growth most of us have at that age. But "believable" doesn't necessarily mean "interesting to read about."

How many times has she experienced what could be considered as wake-up calls, which she could have built upon to start developing something resembling empathy, only to fall back again into her same old selfish behaviour patterns? The pointlessness of it gets a bit tiresome, and there are a few of those scenes in each book. It might work for a single novel depicting a character aware of her faults, but hopelessly unable to amend them. Or as a running gag in a humor series, like Crompton's "Just William." But here it doesn't click, at least for me. If I can't bring myself to care about the main protagonist of a series, that takes a bit out of the pleasure in reading it. It is rather telling that the most emotion I have felt about Alex is some kind of petty, satisfied vindictiveness when aunt Diana shattered her broom.

It would be interesting to read more nuanced character pieces in this setup. A good example is the prologue in this book, about Claudia's childhood.

Auror Tsotsie looks like a great basis for a shaman-cop-themed Quickverse spinoff, or even better, an original series.

Anyway, warts and all, and knowing what to expect next from Ineverarity's LJ entries, I am in it for the long haul. All the little worldbuilding gems more than make up for everything else.

 

Yeah Alex being petty at the dwarves was a "hey I thought she got over her pettiness in Indian territory

 

Yes, well, contrition is like a common cold for Alexandra. Something she catches a couple times a year, doesn't take long to get over and doesn't leave any lasting sequels. Again, not unrealistic at all, but also not terribly exciting after the first couple of instances.

It's not that her fellow characters or her author are not aware of it. If Anna's scolding after the time-turner debacle didn't get to her, nothing will, at least until she hits her late twenties or so. Burton said it best: "No offense, Miss Quick, but you'd be a hard gal to fall for."

For the next episode, current omens point to pissing contests with semi-animated pieces of wood and a long term, high-protein diet for Mrs. Thorn the Fifth. We'll see.

 

I am not judging Alex from a moral point of view, a complete jerk can still be a great character. But she is not a rebel fighter against injustice, she is a neglected child with an overly inflated ego, a pathological mistrust of adults, even those who are proven competent and show an amiable disposition towards her, and only the most superficial capability for empathy, as long as it doesn't get in the way of her Cause of the Week. And, sure, the occasional gesture of overwhelming altruism (use of Death's token to save Darla's sister, use of Abraham's boon to exonerate Anna's father) although they might be interpreted, perhaps too uncharitably, as some kind of grandstanding.

It is true I don't find constant irrational behavior particularly attractive, and that's certainly a matter of taste.

But my objective-ish reason about why I don't find her engaging and my feeble attempt at concrit is that, already five books in the series, she still behaves as her original selfish brat self. There are very valid reasons for this: she is still very young, she is damaged, she has lived through harrowing experiences, she has been burdened with the Troublesome Role... But still, lack of character growth ends up getting narratively repetitive and predictable, not exciting.

 

This divide has always existed in my readers, it seems. Some love the world, and can't stand Alex. Some love Alex, and find the chapters with extended worldbuilding to be boring.

I've never quite understood the people who flat out dislike Alex or consider her dull, lacking in empathy, or devoid of character development, but I am too close to her, as her creator, so it's always eye-opening to see how other people read the character.

But then, I am someone who always found Harry boring as hell and not even quite believable, as a boy obviously written by a woman, so it's probably some well-deserved irony that I'm writing a girl character that a lot of readers cannot relate to or like.

 

Well, I guess one could make a list with every instance of Alex's inner monologue where she ponders how "this is going to hurt/piss/disappoint Claudia/Brian/Anna/Bran&Poe/Max/Julia/Valeria/... but, you know, it's worth it, fuck them anyway", from the bracelet search to the latest quest and beyond. But who's counting, anyway?

Eh, dunno, in the end it all boils down to whether you keep finding multiple variations of this shtick entertaining or not, even if it is in an outraged way. Sesc makes an obvious point when he speaks of a daredevil personality as plot catalyst, but there is middle ground between Gully Foyle and Percy Weasley. As I wrote earlier, the span of the story matters, too. I don't think an adrenaline rush like "The Stars My Destination" would work so well as a mega-word heptalogy, not unless you crank up the parody knob.

Regarding gender, Alex being sort of a tomboy buys you a lot of leeway in not having to delve too much into the depths of the stereotypical female psyche, I guess. Being a male myself I wouldn't know whether this works out or not for female readers, or more gender-sensitive ones.

I am not a big fan of Harry's character, either, but I can't say I noticed any dissonance that I could attribute to JKR being female. It would be an interesting avenue of discussion, care to ellaborate? Has this been brought up already in the forum?

Anyway, your readership seems to be large enough that, at this point, you must have heard all kind of comments on this and other facets of your work, many of them contradictory. Must be plumb confusing, but it seems you reached a very healthy attitude about it. Probably the only one you can reach without going stir crazy, I can't fathom how you still summon the energy to react to us nitpickers. Cheers!

 

I can't honestly say if Alex doing the same thing over and over and never learning is accurate; it isn't to me, but the author may well have a blind spot.

I think certain aspects of her personality do not change (she's always defiant, oppositional, and mistrustful, which means a certain frustrating consistency in the way she misbehaves and does stupid shit), but I think she has changed and grown and learned some lessons. I also deliberately write her as a teenager, and remember myself and my friends as teenagers (we were very smart, and sometimes capable of being quite mature, and yet we were also not kids you'd ever have wanted to have wands and magic powers, and we were pretty good kids). Some people find this frustrating, everything from her not listening to competent adults to not glorying in the wonder of the magical world to her cheating on her boyfriend.

I guess the greatest satisfaction I can take in how I write her is that no one has ever said she's unrealistic as a teenage girl, and I generally get pretty high marks, even from female readers, on making her interesting and believable and not a stereotype.

So on the subject of Harry: Harry, to me, always read as a (middle aged) mother's ideal of what a teenage boy should be: gentle, meek, moral, but completely not aggressive or bullying or arrogant or mean, ever. This became much more evident as Harry got older, and especially Rowling's cringeworthy attempts at depicting Harry starting to have sexual feelings. I cut her some slack for the fact that it was still a series aimed at the younger end of the YA audience, so I wasn't expecting anything even as explicit as what I wrote in AQATWA, but Harry with Cho and later with Ginny never rang true to me as a teenage boy who's got the hots for a pretty girl. And his angsty phase in OotP read like a mother's detached, external observation of what an angsty teenage boy looks like. Then there is his general passivity; Sesc is absolutely right that Alexandra would have told Umbridge to fuck off and taken the consequences. (And then people would have called her an idiot...)

 

Goodbye for now to the old crowd, and so many new characters at this point in the story, it's always difficult to keep track of who's who at first.

Spoiler: Mildly spoiler-ish speculation

None seem too relevant for this book's plot if one has a look at the mini-spoiler. I spot a Pete the size of David and a smaller Rachel in there, but it's easy to miss names in the soup. A larger-than-Burton Larry looms ominously, and it seems we get to know Lu at some point.

Erdglass umbridging the fuck out of the students. Let's see if Alex can get the school shut down before Christmas. After all, Claudia just pointed out how important it is for Livia: them's fighting words, you can never alienate too many sisters.

 

Getting back to Alex's development, an area where she has improved is the height of places she jumps off without proper means to guarantee a safe landing. I am expecting nothing less than a plane for next book, otherwise the pattern will break and I'll be disappointed.

Just for the sake of continuing the debate on Harry as a believable male teenager, if no one minds the derailment...

Alex took aunt Lil's caning like Harry took Umbridge's quill: stubborn, silent defiance. Although, in Harry's case, he was not doing this for just himself, but with an eye on the larger picture.

Harry's intended role is that of a sacrificial hero, and his meek behavior has some narrative justification if one looks at how he was brought up by the Dursleys: he had to learn to lie low from early on, or face the consequences. He still indulges in plenty of stereotypically male rule-breaking and slacking at school, anyway. About romance, heck yeah, definitely far from one of JKR's strengths.

 

True enough. Though Harry was 15, and Alex was 11 at the time. But you are right that the parallel is there.

Alex is about to deal with her own Umbridge.

 

12, just to be precise and insufferably obnoxious, all in good fun. Don't mind my crap, fair point taken anyway: 1st year vs 5th year.

Oh dear, poor Livia...