I've heard the endless praises sung about this fic, though dubious of the author. I went and checked it out.

DLP, I am disappoint. Seriously.

It takes fucking forever to even get to teh epycs, in which I am reading a mediocre style of writing recapping shit that I knew save a few things changed. Bleh! The dialogue could have been a hell of lot better; in same cases just dragging. The HP characters were pretty ooc. The only ones who even seemed normal were Harry and Dumbledore. I doubt Hermione or even Ron would condone that punishment on Umbridge. Harry in this? Yes he would.

Most of it just seemed like a crack:story with serious overtones tossed in. Which, as I am learning, seems to be ruskbyte's style of writing. That would forgive the ooc, but the serious tones ruin that.

Also, way too goddamn much explanations in the dialogue. Harry telling everyone could have been a lot more concise.

Honestly, it's just really frustrating to go into this with such high hopes only to have them dashed, and, I'll be honest, that's what happened.

However, there were some positives. Harry's relation with the Box was good. His fear, his obsession, all points of quality writing. Why couldn't the rest be so good? The torture scenes, teh epycs, were fucking fantastic. Such original thought put into them. And Harry trading all their souls? Nice. I smiled quite a bit, and the end with Fudge and Umbridge? Yeah, I smiled, big. Though, there was a missed opportunity with Voldemort's horcruxes I think. It would have been interesting to work that into the story somehow, including the one in Harry, and considering the author's obviously talented imagination, he could have worked it in.

So the torture scene was awesome, everything I had hoped and I can see it letting everyone else give it a 5/5. But not me. I judge the story on all it's merits, not just a third of it being great. I really want to give the story a 3/5, but that is due to my own letdown, so I'll push that aside and be objective.

tl,dr:For fanfition, its a great idea but executed mediocre with ooc elements and too wordy in some areas. There is a big heaping of WIN in the middle, though. So I'll give it a 4/5. It does deserve to be in the library, but it's not 'all that and a bag of chips.' Just 'all that.'

EDIT: It was published a few weeks prior to HBP. The lack of Horcruxes did not affect my rating, though.

 

Man, just look at the publish date, it was written before the 6th book, I think (so no horcruxes or whatever). It was really awesome then. The dialogues suck, I agree, but that evil guys and Harry are done great. Still great for me.

 

I still like it. It's a very unique one shot, but I guess our we just have different tastes, 789.

Clearly a 5/5, Ruskbyte captured the Hellraiser atmosphere so well that even Jeconais decided to borrow his idea and integrate it to his own HP/Addams crossover.

 

It was awesome and clear 5/5, but after reading sequel and so many "this is so better" I am a bit disappointed - the Umbridge scene had serious OOC from Harry's friends, some grammar problems that even I noticed and Biblical repeat (A, B, C and D happened; Harry telling that A, B, C and D happened).

But it is still great, though I am not sure how much of it was directly copied from Hellraiser.