Title: Becoming Lífþrasir
Author: Midoriko-sama
Rating: T
Status: Complete
Summary: People often wondered what kept Hiccup going during those early years. When that single, most-treasured thing is taken from him, there is little left to keep him on Berk. The day Stoick returns, and the day before the best recruit is finally chosen, Hiccup leaves Berk; little knowing that he would one day return under ... strange circumstances. H/A, R/F, rated for violence.
Links to each story, as it is a trilogy:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10049374/1/Becoming-Lífþrasir (T)
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10358517/1/Winter-in-Líf-s-Holt (M)
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10615538/1/Meeting-at-Iðavöllr (M)

The first story starts of with what is a very popular HTTYD cliché of Hiccup leaving Berk, only to come back years down the line. I forgive the author by the fact that this fic is better than 99% of all the other crap I've been sifting through and it was blessedly on the first page when sorted through by favourites.

In this story, Hiccup (who is masked the whole time) helps his old village fight the Red Death with the aid of the other tribe heirs who he had befriended on his self-imposed exile. Of course, whilst the tribe is grateful for the help, they are also very suspicious - most of all Stoick, who doesn't trust the new stranger in the least.

The reason this story (and the rest of the trilogy) works so well is that each character actually feels human. Everyone has an actual personality (which comes in great through the narration of the story) and their own feelings and ambitions. We see the story develop through many different character's eyes and that's where this story shines for me. There is also no character bashing (Snotlout is an asshole at the beginning, but he gets his redemption) - which is a great plus as I've never understood the need for it.

The author also makes great use of a lot of old viking laws and traditions, which certainly drives a lot of the plot in the later stories.

The technical writing is also stellar, so no complaints from me there.

I do think the story has some pacing issues sometimes, mainly in the second story with maybe one or two things dragged on for too long, but overall it doesn't detract much for how enjoyable it is.

I will say that the last story has a lot of, well, raunchy scenes just because of what the plot leads to, but it's not mindless and fits well.

The first story I will give a 4/5 on its own - but with the trilogy I'm going to have to give it a 4.5/5, rounded to 5. There are only a handful good HTTYD fics and these three are definitely up there.

 

I remember reading this years back when I was interested in HTTYD fics. My impressions of this, from what I recall, is that it started out strong but quickly plummeted in quality as it fell into a lot of horrible tropes.

No idea on the sequels, but for the first one, as I recall, a 3/5 was generous.

 

Given that I read this at the same time as Rep and we talked about it, my opinion's largely in line with his. 3/5