Just read through this today. It is actually a wonderful extension of the Potterverse in my opinion. Taking the magic a bit further. Didn't like how useful Blood-magic was, though. Just seemed too awesome with no bad side-effects.

The fact Harry can see magic and slip into another world is incredible. Simply amazing. The ship was great, and how Harry used magic to defeat his challenges was believable.

The writing was actually some of the best I've read, though I think it seemed to meander too much. That is personal taste and not against the author.

So all-in-all, I'm pretty impressed. Going to go ahead and give this a 5/5.

 

And here I thought there was an update...

 

Just a general fyi, all chapters on fanfiction dot net are updated, along with the newest one.

 

...and with that I am looking at this thread for the first time in almost two years, furiously pumping my fist and banging my head.

 

...Ew? :awesome

No, Seriously. This is the best thing I've come across on this forum. It's refreshingly new and superbly handled. The plot is complex and intriguing without being overly convoluted, the new elements are balanced well against canon, neither overwhelming the other and coming together to make the old, familiar world of Harry Potter new again in delightful fashions. The characters are done justice and it's free from the common pitfalls of flaming, character bashing or Directionless Writing.

If you lurk around DLP and you haven't read Ectomancer yet, do it scrub!

 

So I was going through an old email account today and saw an email that this thread had been updated. Now I haven't been on DLP in like 2 years, and haven't read any fanfiction in even longer, but I couldn't pass up an update on this story. Mad props Rusty, glad to see you're still doing your thing.

Big fan of pretty much all the changes you've made, but probably my favorite thing you did was leave the scene of Harry getting pelted by Ministry owls for his underage magic in the 2nd/3rd chapter; that always gave me a hilarious mental image and I'm glad you left it in there. Oh, and fuck all the haters saying Harry rushing off to Azkaban isn't a good idea. His world is in shambles and, in his eyes, nobody seems willing to or capable of helping him, so the classic Harry Potter move would be to do something like that that's so stupid in so many ways, yet kind of makes sense with his twisted logic.

So yeah, hope you've rediscovered your muse, I love everything you write, and update soonish, cause rereading your story singlehandedly got me re-interested in this fandom it's that good.

o/ DLP

P.S.

Lol, don't think you should be calling anybody scrub just yet my man, usually takes a bit longer than 2 or 3 weeks to earn a little respect around here.

 

God, I just reread this today. I love it so much.

Please, go reread this and look at all the subtle world-building stuff that you could overlook the first time through. Nicholas Flamel, oh, you're going to be important aren't you.

Better the second time,

5/5

 

For a single, interminably brief moment before I clicked this thread, I thought RustyRed had actually come back from the dead and updated this story.

... I hate you right now.

 

Holy shit I love this so much pls tell me it's coming back my heart can't take this if it turns out to be just another ruse. Seriously tho, Ectomancer is one of the best fics in the HP Fandom. And that is a tough bar to vault considering how many there are.

 

Absolutely loved it, was such a good read. I love the way magic is expanded, especially the blood magic, and all the clever uses of magic like the polyjuice drip are really interesting. The action scenes in this were definitely some of the best I've ever read in fanfiction.

 

This story had one interesting idea, and that is already quite a lot, when compared with the usual dross of fan fiction. This is the idea that liquid surfaces can be manipulated and crossed, thereby allowing access to another, hidden, underworld. There is a huge amount that could have been done with this idea, especially when you take into consideration the other brilliant intuitions that went along with it: visible magic, water spirits, dementors. These are all new concepts that could have worked very well with canon.

But then things went haywire, and the author literally lost the plot. S/he went looking for it on a boat, of all places, but didn't find it there. The boat interlude is an example of why random, under-developed plot points are not a good idea. Something about this whole passage doesn't conform to the Harry Potter feel at all. Even if one overlooks the repetition of the fake-Dumbledore ploy, the mysterious kidnapping seems to be grounded in nothing other than a will to sow chaos, which is all well and good but does nothing to further the general plotline. The battle with the troll is superfluous, and the Malfoy and Minister episodes are quite poor, as they only exist to make wizarding society look bad: there is quite enough society-bashing in canon without having to add to it. Then, predictably, Harry escapes. What is the point of this whole adventure, apart from making Harry look good and the rest of the characters look bad?

3.5/5 for the excellent original idea.

 

The story had an original idea and is quite unique. Exapnding on the worlds' lore is something that I appreciate, because it give the story a more epic fantasy feeling.

The problems with the story is aptly summarized by Astahpta.

I give the story 3/5.