I read House of Shards. The whole thing. The idea I can get behind, I don't mind a cold Harry, his faking with Fleur is potentially interesting. But I'm waiting to see if the author'll go beyond that to explain Harry's motivations. EDIT : Yeah, I'm with Silens Cursor on the Goblin thing. That was pretty ridiculous.

But seriously, the writing is atrocious. The forgotten words (there are many - the author has a particular dislike for 'the', it seems), the punctuation rape, the weak turns of phrases, it's all too much. Ugh.
I'm not usually too demanding on the technical side of writing, but this is way beyond my comfort zone.


2.5, rounded up to 3/5 because I just can't pass up a Harry/Fleur.

 

House of Shards... I enjoyed the tone, despite the grammar mistakes. Which is surprising, since they usually kill the story for me.

Unfortunately there were far too many for me to give the story full marks without feeling rather guilty. I did enjoy reading it though, and I'll have it on alerts.

Edit: The scene with Fleur at the end of the third chapter was rather bad.

 

I honestly can't go through with it. I started reading it with the good reception it had, but halfway through the second chapter I couldn't stand the missing words and unrealistic characterisations anymore.

I could live with a callous Harry. I find it a little ridiculous that the author continued to alude to the fact that he wasn't lazing about during his seven years, but that could work. What I hated, however, was that Harry was a whole different person; he hated social interactions with those he once considered family, and seemed to be antisocial all-around. Seven years is a long time, but with no given reason for the change, I have no reason to continue reading and find out whatever grammatically-challenged excuse there is for this complete change.

Draco Malfoy...what a pathetic introduction. 'Potty', really? And this man-boy got fourty-four votes in as the Minister for Magic?

But the thing that really made me not want to read it was that most sentences were grammatically wrong. Not always just because of missing 'the' before nouns, but also because of the severe lack of commas, and confusion with diologue. It actually got worse with the second chapter.

I opened the story expecting The Count of Monte Cristo, and got a misplaced Azkaban!Harry story.

I can see this story being good, no doubt; but I would never rate it, with the first two chapters as they are, at 5/5. It would have to become truly spectacular to deserve a 4/5, in my opinion. 3/5, and rightly fits into this topic.

 

Well, I can't comment on the grammar since I tend not notice mistakes unless they are holding a sign in my face.

It's quite amusing that most people reading this come to such different opinions about the quality of the plot though. I personally think that Harry is a little too cold, there should be something that triggered said coldness. Sure, Ginny's backstabbing (Which came very much out of the blue) must have hurt but not enough to make him the man we see in this fic.

Still, I have high hopes. All of my complaints can still be fixed, perhaps the story is too short still for the author to have revealed all there is to say about Harry's past.

For me this is a 3/5 at the moment with an expected rating of 4/5 a few chapters down the road. The author could expand upon the foundation to create a really, really nice fic or this could turn into a bland story that keeps on going in the same old tracks.

We'll see, I would not be surprised if I give this story 5/5 sometime in the future though.

 

We've got nearly a decade of unexplained character progression. I'm not even remotely the same person I was 8 years ago. My only hope is that this story will continue to have his character and his political career progress, because I'm not sure if I can take this cold, uncaring main character for too much longer, and that continues to be my only real flaw about the plot and story.

I don't really have a problem with the politics, because frankly, with all that happened in the series, you can expect some outdated, ridiculous politics in the wizarding world. Trying to modernize it comes out a lot more fake than trying to age it even further in my opinion.

The grammar and spelling issues were noticed throughout, which is very rare for me because I tend to not notice much in terms of that in any fiction. It jumps out in this story quite a bit for me though, and that's the main thing hurting this fic.

A beta and some character progression(at least a little) to show he won't be a careless dick for the whole story is key to bring this story up in enjoyment.

 

Fatal Fascination

A very good story.

It's HP/DM slash but the slash is fairly minimal and there's only one sex scene and its very mild.

Harry is the Head Auror and he is given a sensitive case i.e the suspicious circumstances of the death of Draco's wife.

The explanation for the wife's death is something I think is quite original, I know I didn't even have an inkling of how she might have died or who did it.

The mystery is good and the way it was resolved was well-handled.

Ultimately, one of the better fics I've read. I'd give it a solid 4/5. The only reason this is here and not in For Review is the slash, but it doesn't detract from the plot at all.

 

House of Shards left me with mixed feelings. The idea seems sound, but it's very jarring to read. I'll cut him some slack, because English doesn't appear to be his first language, going by his author page, but even so. If the writing gets polished, I'll rate it higher, but for now 3/5

 

Decent vignette about Voldemort's early life.

 

House of Shards:
I actually only noticed real, jarring mistakes in chapter 3. But the author said that he's going to fix that, so I'm gonna disregard it.
What really intrigues me to the story is that we have a cold Harry, who continues being cold even with Fleur, something I haven't seen before. I can't understand other people saying that he is too cold, because I definitely don't feel that way. It's interesting to see whether he will change, true, I even want him to change some way, but the way it is, I love it.
About the political stuff. IMO, I have actually never seen canon proof that the political landscape is as ancient and backwards as always depicted. Anybody can correct me on that, but I think we have only ever seen the Minister as a representative of the government. And that guy was either a corrupt fool without backbone or a powerless leader intent on showing something to the public.

 

Tried the last chapter of the House of Shards, and I'm not impressed. The premise is fine, but it's technically painful to read. If he stuck to the basics, he might be a decent writer, but he tries for a dated, sophisticated style, and his idea of sophistication is disjointed dialogue, missing words and weird circumlocutions. Never mind the way "Harry" adresses the reader.

And I'm surprised JWH didn't bitch about the French, because it's quite bad. He fails 50% of the formal adresses, and naturally the effect is ridiculous.

tl;dr - if you're going to do something pretentious, you better not fuck up.

 

This Pre-Hogwarts series is written in four one-shots and one five-chapter story, the links to which you can get in the author's profile.

It features a cross-dressing Harry adopted into the Addams family after murdering his relatives. The author doesn't provide any explanations of how he does what he does and the appearance of the Addamses seems badly justified. The series will in all probability end with a slash fuck-fest, but until now there hasn't been too much of it. I guess this is worth a 3, just because the grammar is decent and it's somewhat amusing.

 

Lolwuuuuuuuuuuuut?

 

Well, the killing and adoption part happens before the cross-dressing if that will soothe you.

 

Quite true. I wasn't expecting better after reading his English, however, and there are probably only 2-3 other people here who care one way or another. Didn't seem to be worth the bitching

 

'The fuck?

 

Soul Thief by Walter Sobchak, Marked Mystery/Romance but at the moment it's a Mystery/Crime story.

The story might be library potential. It's about a criminal case a few years after DH where Harry left the magic world because of a tragedy in his job. Narcissa convinces Harry to return after a year of isolation to help Draco to escape the Dementor's kiss for the alleged murder of Cho Chang with a deeper conspiracy connected. Seems to run into some Harry/Hermione pairing. Excellent and realistic characterizing and updated almost daily.

 

I rather enjoyed this oneshot although it's your common manipulative Dumbledore coupled with ginger-love-potions. A couple of funny lines, I liked both Harry's and Voldemort's character and their dialogue was well written. ~3.5/5

:awesome

 

The Grey Maiden series by Chris Widger,

Summary: Raised by Lily's best friend, a legendary ex-Auror haunted by her tragic past, Harry must learn to survive to fight the war that he was born to fight. For to vanquish the Dark Lord, Harry must conquer both his own fears and inner Darkness, battle loss and tragedy, and learn to love, all while becoming the leader that is needed to unite the fractured wizarding world.

One of those series that may have been library worthy when it first came out but isn't anymore, this seems like a good place for it, and just a warning it's Harry/Ginny after year three.

Edit: Apparently the first two books are actually in the library at the moment though I'm going to guess that's because no ones look at them in forever.

 

I actually read the first two or so books in the series, but I just hated "Daphne Artemis O'Connor Dressler" too much to go on reading it after awhile.
There were probably other reasons too, but I don't remember them after 3 or 4 years now.