Ah, shit. I reread it literally less than a week ago, as you know. Well, not like I have anything to read atm, might as well read again.

 

You make that sound like such a burden

Congrats, and nice job Swim!

 

Same here. Though I'd be angrier if the fic wasn't so goddamn epic.

 

So I skimmed it... some interesting changes. Am I correct in assuming there were no significant changes past chapter 9 or so?

 

Nine, ten and parts of eleven have some of the biggest changes of the story besides the first three chapters.

 

Really? Updated today, or when you did chapter two? Because I looked through and they haven't changed much from three days ago >.> Maybe I'm just tired. I saw you changed apparation to portkeys, but that's all I noticed, really.

 

Did a lot of changes to the interactions between Harry and Shorner, which in turn changed the way I've written a bunch of the plot points. Compared to before where I pretty much bludgeoned the reader over the head with what I wanted them to know. I think I managed to open up a new plotline with Lily in the process - one that I wouldn't have gotten to for another ten chapters.

Blah. You're not the only one working with too little sleep.

 

I just reread this fic in its entirety. I think it's absolutely brilliant; it's exactly the kind of fic that I imagine when I think "Dark Lord Potter". I honestly thought that after awhile, the katanas, the Light/Dark families, the magical standard, dark veelas, and Harry being related to Grindelwald would seem so horribly clichéd but this is a work of art that has never ceased to keep me interested. Although, I do think of Captain Price from COD whenever I read the name George Pryce, this story has me absolutely immersed. I like the twisted beasts Harry can conjure, and animate. I even like the vampire in Knockturn Alley.

The only problem I have is that nothing major has happened yet. Still, this is an eternal 5/5 for me.

 

Damn.

The thing about this story that makes me angry, I suppose, is that it's really well written. The characterization is fantastic, the prose are phenomenal, the flow is very well handled, and there is nothing about it that's actually weak.

But... Light/Dark Houses? Harry with the martial-arts and pistols? Going slowly insane because he's secretly a 'Sharr Lord'? Just... Argh! It's well beyond cheesy and melodramatic, somewhere along that smudged edge of pure fanboyism, but it works.

I can't shake the nagging feeling that this fic should be a lot worse than it is. Still, 5/5 for me, as it is now. Well played Swimdraconian.

 

He's not insane because he's a Sharr Lord. He's losing it, because he's been pushed over the edge too many times. Which would do it for anybody, not just him.

Cheers all and danke for the praise.

 

I should say that this is one of my favorite stories still updating. It has perhaps the most perfect descriptions of a Dark Harry I've seen in a long time. The epicness of its world - from the Sharr Lords to the Sidhe - is absolutely amazing. I love it, and I hope you keep updating.

There are, however, three critiques I'd like to make about this absolutely amazing story:

1) Length. How far are you in the plot you've planned out? Are you 10% done? 50% finished? 90% finished?

So far, I'm counting 126,462 words. There are several very famous books that are shorter than that, but still tell a very rich story. The first Harry Potter has 76944 words. 1984 has 88,942 (I'm actually dubious about that figure, which I got off of answers.com)

There are, of course, other books which are longer. The fifth Harry Potter is 257,045 words. Dune is 208,993. The entire LotR trilogy is 561,792.

So, if you're at 126,462 words and the plot's halfway done, that's pretty good.

The problem is that, from what I get reading the story, I'd bet you're not halfway done yet. You seem to have mostly been just putting down the setting: Harry's meeting various people in the new world, he's now got his cover, etc. Taking out the Brazilian sorcerer is perhaps the most significant thing he's done so far.

Most (professional) stories get that done in around 20-30K words. You're already on 126K words and still, from what I'm getting, only 10% of the way through the plot. If that's true (I may be wrong), then your story's going to end up more than a million words long.

My advice would be to start hitting the wheels of the plot very hard. Compress the filler and the unnecessary descriptions. Get the battles and the action going. Your pairing is Harry/Fleur, and if you're still planning on doing that I haven't seen a glimpse of Fleur; get her in fast. Harry has to bring back the Lords of Magic, right? So far the story is halfway or one-third way through the typical novel, and other than Mab's mission I haven't seen any progress. Again, hit the wheels really, really hard.

2) I just re-read through the edited version while doing this review, and I'm at once a fan and not a fan. Obviously you've put in a lot of plot that wasn't there before. It feels a lot tighter. On the other hand, it kind of also feels like you lost some of the epic feeling that was going on in the original.

3) Try to watch the OCs. I guess this is pretty subjective on my part - you can certainly do a good fic with almost all OCs. But I sometimes find it hard to follow, especially when a lot of times your chapters include more OCs than original Harry Potter characters.

I guess this post turned out a bit more critical than I intended. I still very much enjoy the story, but I do worry about the length. I've seen so many stories where the author gets 200K words in and hasn't started the plot. Then they realize the overwhelming nature of the task they've set for themselves, and inevitably end up abandoning the story.

 

Hmm... well, technically since I started the story about halfway through, you could say that I'm just now entering 60% done. Plot has just picked up and is moving fast - total, I expect the story to wrap up at about 88 chapters.

Now the word length of each chapter will probably vary greatly. I have set points on my plot-line that I need to cover in each segment and sometimes I meet them or combine them and other times I have to push them back a bit. The whole thing is very flexible, which means the word-count probably won't end up at T3t's estimate of 600k.

Hopefully. I can promise you this much - I am not going to abandon this fucker even if it takes me ten years to complete. And since I'm no longer working on rewrites, I'm going to be moving ahead at a much faster pace.

Edit: 13thadaption summed it up so succinctly, I wonder at times if she and my muse occasionally have coffee together.

In the end, the story is about Harry. All else - the potential and past girlfriends, the action, Mab's schemes and agendas, his heritage and all of the shit that goes with it - is secondary to Harry's growth from a borderline serial killer with PTSD into something more. What that really is remains to be seen.

I'm not Joe. I won't even pretend to imitate him as I think that would be insulting actually to his talent as an author. Thank you for the kind words and praise, but I'm not an 'epic' writer - I have no talent for that whatsoever. My skill lies in crawling inside peoples' heads and seeing what makes them tick. And in the end, that's what CR is about: How far down does the rabbit hole go?

 

Yup. It is.

No way, I don't believe you.:awesome

Okay, talent-wangst aside, you've missed the point. You're writing a time travel story that is geared to culminate in the screaming, fiery death and rebirth of the wizarding world, and you believe you're not writing an 'epic' story? Joe, as talented as he is, writes overblown melodrama packaged as 'epic'. Reread Wastelands and The Hero trilogy some time and you'll see what I'm getting at.

'Epic' in this case refers to how the character effects the world. What your characters do will twist the fate of the world. Your main character's inner turmoil is played out across your setting and you discover the nuances of your characterization through the reactions to this change, which is pretty much a textbook case of 'epic'. Dune, LoTR, Armor, CotBC, Elric- these are just a few examples of similar plot shells.

 

I'm not presuming to speak for the author, but I find your comment interesting and would like to discuss it. That's my disclaimer.

I've never read Armor, and haven't finished all of the Black Company books yet, but I would put Dune and especially LotR at the opposite end of the fantasy spectrum from CR. Epic tends to be applied towards any major literary work, but I consider 'an epic' to be a long narrative about a hero or heroes and their deeds told in an elevated style. CR doesn't really fit with that, while Joe's work does. I kind of get where you're coming from about Harry effecting the world in a drastic fashion, but I don't think that's the point of the story. The story is about how Harry is evolving.

Leaving aside Harry's dubious quality as a hero, let's say he's on a quest. I don't really know what his long term prospects are, but we do know he's trying to bring back the Old Families...because he's being forced to by an amoral tyrant. But I don't think the story is really about how the outcome will affect the world, it's about how the outcome will affect Harry. Just like LotR isn't really about the character development Aragorn must have gone through before accepting his role as king. It's mentioned, but it's not the theme of the story.

That's my two cents. I think I get what you mean about reactions to the change in Harry becoming part of characterization, but I don't see how that qualifies CR as an epic. And I don't really understand what you mean by similar plot shells, but you seem to be a fan so you're good people in my book.

 

That is one definition of epic, and perhaps the traditional definition. However, I would strongly suggest you pick up Armor, by John Steakley, as the parallel is very readily apparent. When you write the story of the hero's quest, a lot of writers run into the issue of: Characterization. How do you write a list of deeds while making it read as anything other than a list? How do make the hero anything other an generic strong man, if you only tell about what he's done? How do you build the conflict that makes a novel interesting?

A lot of the modern epics (and yes, there are modern epics) have hit on a winning formula: up the scale, and have the deeds done reflect on the protagonist. Give him choices and questions that will rewrite the world as we know it. An excellent example of this is the Dresden Files, as each book is a chronicle of a hero's deed. Look at Harry Dresden's deeds affect the world: He tries to save his girlfriend, he gets a war. Slowly he gains ground by making allies through his deeds, which makes the War generally get better. So on and so forth. An older version of this is the Odyssey and the Illiad.

On the subject of Harry being a hero, yes he is. He's a tragic, fallen hero, but he is the textbook definition of such, writ large.

 

Who the fuck cares whether some people think it's epic or not? Epic is clearly a term that can be defined by an individual, instead of having one singular meaning. Some people take exceptional writing as epicness, whereas others, like me, require a certain flair and worldly significance to the plot to consider it epic. I don't think this is epic, but then again I also don't think that Name of the Wind and Wise Man's Fear is epic. However this doesn't stop both this story and NOTW/WMF from being some of the best in each of their respective fields.

The purpose here is to decide how good a fic is, not argue over insignificant facts that in the end have no relevance to how good the story is.

 

Because we're talking about story structure? An epic is a list of deeds, each one more world-shaking than the last. Circular Reasoning starts out breaking space-time continuum and goes from there. I don't see how you can call this story anything else.

 

An epic, since you put it that way, is an epic poem. This ain't.

Whether the story itself is epic, on the other hand, is subjective. As such, whether or not you think it's epic shouldn't take more than one post. And certainly shouldn't become a thread-filling back and forth over differing opinions.

That's just my two cents, however.

 

I know this is a massive necro, but does anyone have the latest updated version in a kindle-friendly file? I'd usually just use fanfiction downloader to grab it off FFN, but it was last updated over a year ago on FFN.

Alternatively: is there an easy way to edit PDFs or epubs so I can manually add in the new chapters myself, while keeping the formatting?

Thanks.

 

It's not a necro, dude - this story is still live and kicking over in WBA. The ff.net version is the most current. Unfortunately, I don't update the ff.net version much anymore as I mostly work on this story for its DLP fans.