Title: Allusions of Power
Author: ReflectionsOfReality
Rating: T
Genre: Fantasy/Angst
Status: ABANDONED (but has nice 86,779 words to it)
Pairings: None (SLASH was planned, but he never got that far)
Summary: All it takes is one moment, one decision and everything changes. A gift and a curse Harry learns the truths behind the lies and adapts. The world of darkness shall protect him when the land of light is lost. Dark!Harry
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1317712/1/

One of the better Independant! and Dark!Harry stories I've read lately. It branches right off the finale of "Philosopher's Stone". During the struggle with Quirrel, a strange magical accident, involving a Killing Curse and shards of Philosopher's stone make Harry super-sensitive to magic. Thanks to his new tallents, he realize the extent of Dumbledore's manipulations on his life and lives of Hogwarts students...

The best thing about this story is excellent magical theory and invention of original concepts (spells, branches of magic, creatures...). ReflectionsOfReality's Dumbledore is especially interesting - I don't think anyone else had gone this far into the Evil!Dumbledore teritory, without turning the man into complete idiotic jerk. Harry's position is also very interesting - he's like a character from one of those conspiracy theory movies, when he sees that everyone except him is being controlled by aliens. but there's nothing he can do about it. Harry's character is also rather good - very powerful and smart, but far cry from some sort of superman.

Downside is bad writting style. The author usually has an idea what he wants to say, but fails to write it down in a way that is easy to understand. His dialogues and plot-flow are especially bad. It's sometimes hard to comprehend what is actually going on, who's speaking with whom, whose POW is currently being used, where the plot is taking place, etc. It's like a jumbled mess of conversations and descriptions, without anything holding it together.

Another potential downside is announced SLASH, but seeing how the author is actually a gay male, instead of some silly 13 years old girl, that's understandable. It doesn't matter anyway, since this story seems to be permanently stuck in the middle of 2nd year, way before any relationships had been planned.

The last words from the author were from the first half of 2004, saying that story is not abandoned, but since it has been more than a year since than, I'll label it so. Still, you should read this story for it's excellent ideas and generally interesting plot.

 

I used to follow this story back when it got updated. Gay and intended this to be a slash story... funny I was completely unaware of those facts back when I was reading this, either that or I forgot since then, its possible since I continued to read something something Gentry Green event though she said it was going to be slash, it never got to the point where it became an issue to me.

Im bored so Im going to go read it again now.

 

Ive got to agree with Raven... while not particularly well written in practical senses it is brilliant and I would actaully read this unless it became completely graphic about all of ithe slash thing...

 

Dammit! This story is not abandoned! I swear it isn't! And it is only going to be slash if too many people make slash-hating reviews. At least, that is what the author said. This is a seriously awesome story, even if there are some writing style issues, but Reflections said that he was going through the chapters and EDITING them, and may be posting sometime this year. So I have it on (decent) authority that the story WILL be continued.

 

Great then. Where did you hear that? Does he have a group or something?

 

I PM-ed Reflections of Reality from the homepage, offering to beta and asking why the hiatus. Apparently the author is currently revising everything, but said that he would send me a chapter to be betaed when the revision is done.

 

I shall.

 

I actually like the idea of Harry becoming exceptionally sensitive to magic and learning that Dumbledore is manipulative. It's interesting how Harry's in this situation where no one else knows the truth - that conspiracy scenario doesn't occur too often in fanfiction.

But the way the sensitivity is implemented is very simplistic and vague.

Whenever Dumbledore lies, it's described as 'magic laced his words'. Harry literally just asks the magic (that's all it's ever defined as) for an answer and he receives it. The magic is apparently omniscient since Harry has not yet met Fawkes, yet the magic knows about the phoenix.

I didn't get too far, but by chapter five Harry learns Dumbledore manipulates the Dursleys into abusing him, and he gets saved from Privet Drive by an OC couple.

There are severe problems with the writing. Many of the sentences make no sense, even if intuitively you get the gist of it. An example:

2/5. Slash or not, it's bad either way.

 

Wow. You must have been thinking about these comments for......oh...about 3 and a half years. I hope it was worth it.

 

I can tell you've never written a peer review.

No huge loss though - no one would benefit from it.

 

I believe RipperJack was trying to zing you about necro'ing this thread, not flaming your review skillz.

That said, it was a stupid post, as lately the big trend has been revisiting all these older fics and re-evaluating their quality to decide whether or not they should remain in the library, recycling bin, etc.

As for an actual review, well... it's an interesting premise. I think someone could probably have done a good job with this "absorbing magical properties" device used here with the stone. I do not think such a good job was done here.

For one, Angst is supposedly one of the story's genres. That put me off this story for a while. I was pretty bored earlier, so I gave it a chance.

Rewrites of the encounter between Quirrel and Harry aren't exactly "few and far between," and this one is nothing special. The entire story seems to be lacking description, and it jumps around rather more quickly than I'd like, but I moved on to the third chapter.

Here's where shit gets weird: apparently, Harry can interrogate magic itself. Dumbledore gives Harry his customary "end of the book" speech about Quirrel and the stone, and Harry discovers subtle machinations through interrogating the magic Dumbledore laces his words with.

The author seems to favor the "already inside quotes" variety of quotation marks as opposed to the correct ones. The author doesn't like to use apostrophes to signify ownership and possession ("...the voice of the nurse carried...", "I cannot believe the nerve of him!", etc.). The author apparently tags flashbacks. Mechanical errors can be fixed by revision, and usually indicate a lack of effort on the author's part. But, in chapter 6, the author apparently decided that he hated periods, as they all appear to be missing.

As for the story: Harry is blinded, finds out Dumbledore compels the Dursleys to abuse him, apparently can "accidentally" tear down wards set by Ministry professionals but is skilled enough with his accidental magic that he can detect and avoid wards erected by Dumbledore, the PoV changes rather jerkily, and apparently Vernon can "throw open" the cupboard door twice. Although, lending the Masons the role of savior wasn't that bad of a move. Again, if handled differently, it might have turned out alright... but that can be said of nearly any idea, can't it? "Just give it to a better writer!"

Overall, this story was unimpressive. The few decent ideas the author had were ruined by poor execution and dreadful mechanics. Through chapter 6 (of 15) I've not run into any discernible plot development; there's nothing telling me why this story was written; for what purpose. It doesn't hold my interest.

I think Andro's 2/5 was too generous. Abandoned WiPs shouldn't really go in the Library unless utterly brilliant. Imagine checking out a book critic's web page or something and being directed to a half-written book that showed promise 3 or 4 years ago.

Anyway, my $.02.

 

Wow, you must not of known what he was doing. I hope appearing like a complete and utter retard to anyone who reads this thread was worth it too you.

I for one am happy to see people reviewing all the old fics, so that the shitty ones can just finally be removed from the library.