I enjoyed the beginning of School Spirit. I'm very leery about the direction it's going, (Harry's vault apparently has anything he could ever need, and the author has a disturbing fascination with magical trunks) but the writing style is fantastic. It's blend of humor and sarcasm that really appeals to me.

My favorite line so far,

" I didn't feel right wishing him the chance to eat kittens or whatever it is Goblins did on a good day, and the well-wishes got me another evil grin in return. Possibly he was off to do something cheerful, like repossess an orphanage."

 

I posted this earlier in the thread. As I said there, it's got potential but the fact that esama is writing it doesn't exactly give me confidence that it'll ever get finished.

Still, I wouldn't mind seeing more Temeraire crossovers. Dragons are, after all, cool. Talking, highly intelligent dragons are even more cool.

 

Tanages picked up on my problem with school spirit. I want to see how it all pans out,
But if harry is smart and keeps his head down it could just be a curb stomp.

 

The Road to Freedom by Gatonio
Summer after 4th Year, Harry is having a hard time; Dumbledore's policy of isolation coupled with a dementor attack and Harry loses it. So, he runs away. How will this affect his friends, the Wizarding World and the War? Where is Harry Potter?
Harry Potter - Rated: M - English - Suspense/Adventure - Chapters: 7 - Words: 133,523 - Reviews: 256 - Updated: 1-28-11 - Published: 9-1-10 - Harry P.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6291257/1/The_Road_to_Freedom

[first 30k or so words of story were posted in WBA but not updates there since 9/12/2010]

Pretty decent timewaster. Harry leaves (though not abandons - he intends to come back) Britain. He gets himself an apprenticeship in Romania, of all places and begins to get more skilled/stronger with magic.

Favorite parts of the fic: Realistic repercussions of Harry's absence ; diverse glimpses into other points of view, from Sirius to Hermione to Dumbledore to Ron. No motherfucking grandstanding! Author's personal feelings about characters do not bleed through the story. Not one character's views & opinions are presented as more important than the rest (which pleases me immensely). A good amalgamation of cliches and original content regarding magic. Harry gets laid. More than once

Disliked parts of the fic: Early chapters are somewhat weak, though later ones get better. Too many commas in early chapters make the story feel rushed. Author is too wordy .. 133.5k words into the story and the stage is almost set, while the reader's left hungering for the next chapter who will, maybe, provide some resolution. In the last 2 chapters, perhaps too many new plotlines were introduced.

Still, despite all of that, definitely recommended. Was the first story in a week that I could sit down and read, without reaching for the X button even once.

 

While the review is generally good, the story is not.
While it is well though out, the chapters are long, and the writing is solid, nothing about this story is entertaining, it is probably the most boring 40K words I've read (I stopped reading three chapters in). Nothing happens, Harry runs away to Romania and gets trained by an expert in transfiguration and enchantment, the Dursleys are tortured and murdered, and Harry is acquitted from his charge of underage magic. It took the author 40K words to do that; so far there is no plot, Harry's "training" is almost as bad as Canon Dumbldores (they're basically activities meant to teach a lesson). The three brief scenes of action are also boring, and I've never read a worse blowjob scene.
Overall it's obvious that the author can write, unfortunately being able to write doesn't mean you can write an interesting story.
2/5

 

The story is, in a word, boring. The plot progresses, but not in a way that keeps my interest. I don't find the characterizations compelling, or even that believable. There is character development, but I didn't find the progression to be realistic.

Also, the author doesn't seem to grasp the idea of different characters having different voices. No matter who's point of view the scene is from, internal monologues and thoughts sound alike and are written alike. Ron's thoughts should not sound like Hermione's thoughts and so forth. Here's an example, "Who would think that those marauding little midgets could be so cumbersome? " It's good writing, but am I honestly supposed to believe that Ron thinks using these type of words and sentence structure? I'm not buying it.

As the story goes on, the writing falls more and more into the category of ridiculously overdramatic melodrama. Again by Ron, ""I stand in Harry Potter's name. He is my brother in all but blood. I will rise to defend him, but this is the last time I come to wands' end against my own House." Seriously? Who talks like that. That's fairly typical of the writing in the later stages. It's also clear that the author frequently used a thesaurus to try and look up big words, because the context they're used in is just absolutely wrong.

Furthermore, the writer can't be bothered keeping certain basic facts in mind, like that Lucius Malfoy was kicked off the Board of Governors after CoS.

EDIT: The further I read the less I like it. Character interactions get worse and worse. The story becomes needlessly complicated, with new subplots springing up out of nowhere.

Spoiler

Sprout runs the DOM? Really?

The authors explanations of, and musings on magic are uncreative and completely unnecessary. And the Cassandra character is just god awful. The sex scene is terrible and beyond retarded. Every thing the author does related to "Seeing" is handled terribly and is just lame.

Not my cup of tea at all and really not very good. It was widely panned in WBA and it hasn't gotten better since then.

 

This. I like Little After Dark, surprisingly. I'd like to see more Temer where Harry isn't a dragon. And maybe less Hermione. But hey.

And yeah. Esama... Not the best, but writes guilty pleasure style stories ... Pretty often, actually..

 

New chapter of School Spirit is fairly decent. Trunk cliche is lol, but the wand scene is fairly interesting and the ending is mildly amusing as well.

 

Trunks? As in magical, 'uber' trunks that have a mansion inside of them? Do not want.

 

It's not that bad, really. It's one of the few readable DF/HP crossovers so far, so it's something to read.

 

Meh. It's an unnecessary scene but it's not that bad. The trunk has some cool features, but it isn't a mansion or a base of operations or anything like that. It's got a bunch of compartments and can turn into a desk. And it's moved past pretty quickly. Don't let it stop you from giving the fic a look see.

 

Hell, a trunk turning into a desk isn't that bad, lol. You can use a normal trunk for a desk if you sit on the floor. >_>

But yeah, it's an unneeded scene, but it doesn't kill the story.

 

Eh, I think any story that spends 3 chapters describing the first trip to Diagon Alley is auto-fail.

I like the prose, but if he takes 15 chapters to get through the sorting, the story is going to really suck.

 

Even though it seems like a lot of wasted time in the story, a)Its been sort of enjoyable and b)The updates have all come really fast, so it isn't actually progressing slowly in terms of story progression/RL time, as fucked up a measure as that is. In this thread especially, a fast update rate can forgive a lot of sins.

 

Nah. Its Future Trunks, come back to whoop ass on Cell.

 

Just a humble reminder: Trunks with multiple, individually locked, compartments, at least some of which are large enough to serve as decent-sized bedrooms, are canon.

Extras like self sorting libraries and fully-stocked uber potions labs... not so much. Still, it's not a deal breaker.

Unless he gets new familiars too. Especially if he still has Hedwig.

 

Very early on the latest chapter of "Stranger in a Too Familiar Land," I found myself shaking my head. I believe I will pass on the remainder of the fic. What caused it? The words "manipulative old coot" and Dumbledore insisting Harry not harm Death Eaters even in the face of danger. Strangely, it was caused by a dream.

It didn't come out of nowhere (the first part, at least; the latter point was a massive WTF), but it's disappointing nonetheless. What's most disappointing, perhaps, is that there is no middle ground, no subtlety or ambiguity. Not a new issue in fanfiction, of course. It is tiresome to have the issue driven home again and again.

Then, coupled with continued emphasis on Harry's memories of being tortured, which are excruciatingly dull (especially after five or six chapters/40k words), we have a fic that's falling down the crapper. A rapid closure to the torture storyline would benefit the fic, if only to serve as a means to encourage plot elsewhere.

---

Meanwhile, "Letters" maintains a score of 2.5. I continue to follow it in hopes that the Tri-wizard Tournament will prove interesting. The author has taken the approach to heavily modify it with different tasks and more competitions (academic and Quidditch). The Harry and Fleur interaction is passable. Nothing special so far.

 

Going to have to disagree. The new chapters of Letters were atrocious. He hasn't added any competitions that haven't been done better in other stories. His grammar and writing gets worse and worse. His character interactions are mind-numbing. He has set up the situation at Hogwarts as being very different from the book, yet he still uses dialogue taken word for word from GOF. He's clearly going to Ron-bash to no end throughout the story.

I found it nearly unreadable. 1/5

 

^ I love this guy.

 

The competitions haven't even started and there are no description beyond what I've already said. While I don't doubt your claim (that other fics will have done it better), I'm not prematurely condemning the fic on this front like you are. Something can't be done better or worse before it has even begun.

I don't see grammar or writing as any better or worse than earlier chapters. Dialogue is indeed painful fairly often.

Most of what was used word for word was largely irrelevant. This past chapter, for example, had the reactions of the other Champions, the Headmasters/Headmistress of the schools, and fellow students to Harry's name in the Goblet stay largely the same. I fail to see how writing letters to Fleur has altered that conversation on any significant level. Fleur's interactions were different, thankfully.

The Ron bashing does irritate and is something I sincerely hope ceases in a chapter or two. Has gotten old.

Letters has a lot of issues, but the Tournament still holds plenty of potential. Regardless of that, I don't see how it has crossed the threshold into 1/5 territory (i.e. should be purged from existence/memory).