Title: Fallen King.
Author: Zenzao.
Rating: M.
Genre: Adventure/Drama.
Status: Work-in-Progress.
Fandom: Dresden Files.
Pairings: None.
Summary: The lost King of the Sidhe Courts has been freed from his prison within the Earth's core, loosed to regain his reign of dominion over all Fae of Summer and Winter disposition. In 72 hours his strength will return, the world plunged toward ruin at his second-coming, and only Harry Dresden, Winter Knight, has a chance to stop it. But as ever, the course is never so easily run, and his task will take him from one realm of the Nevernever to another in search of a way to succeed.
Link: Archive of Our Own, FFN.


So, yeah. An old TGYH prompt dating to just after Changes that got turned into a currently 35k word, 12 chapter story over the course of a few years.

In essence the plot is that Oberon, the titular King of the Sidhe, has been released from his prison in the center of the Earth by an unknown force, and suddenly every Fae alive knows that bad-shit is coming, particularly the high courts.

Things have changed so far since he was around ten thousand years ago that terrible consequences will erupt if he returns to power again and runs roughshod over their dominion, and Harry Dresden is recruited by Mab to go out and find him while he is still weak and recovering in order to bind Oberon back into his cage.

Things don't go nearly so smoothly, but Harry escapes his previous death-sentence by sniper and proceeds to stumble along grasping at straws. He finds himself facing Dragons and a dismantling of the Winter Knight mantle, crossing the Jotunnheim and the domain of Hel, and a whole host of other Nordic issues along with confronting Lasciel one last time as the hours slip away toward doomsday. As it stands he has just opened the doors of Valhalla again after several thousands of years.

I finally got the next update out earlier this week and have since spent the the past few days going over all of the old chapters and revising the plot, adjusting Dresden's thoughts and reactions, and building the story up to the tune of 5k more words. I think it has improved pretty vastly from the original WbA chapters, but if you'd like to make a comparison yourself, you can find it here.

EDIT: Hm. Perhaps I underestimated that stigma mentioned in the guidelines against posting your own work. I suppose I would have been better off just posting the newly modified chapters in the WbA thread and waited for verbal feedback rather than try posting this here. I think I'll go do that shortly.

Changed status, Abandoned. --Zombie

 

Bumped to gain attention.

I know that the interest in Dresden Files went downhill, but I am surprised that even after a week no one reviewed nor rated this story.

Based on just one vote I'd move it into the Recycling Bin - apparently it is so boring that no one can even be bothered to rate it.

I'll move it in 10 days.

 

I rarely ever check this side of the forums - and I assume most other people don't either, hence the low interest.

I've been reading the rewrite, and the quality has risen quite sharply from the first portions - it's much better now, though it was good before. I'm not done yet, and I'll edit with a proper review later - but safe to say for now 4.5/5.

Cheers Zenzao!

 

Although I had followed you when you originally posted, I didn't read the rewrite because from what I had remembered the writing was not so good.

So, I'll note that I read the FFN version and I'm not sure if that was edited in the rewrite or not. However, I still think the writing is not very good. There are lots of typos and poor word choice throughout the piece. The imagery is not very strong.

Here are some examples of things that happen a lot in the story. They could be potentially fixed by a beta. The bolding is mine:

Typo for eminent.

Would Dresden really be say this instead of using either "frankly" or "honest with myself"?

Surely this should be give up? Like what the crap is he submitting?

What fold is this? The grip Lasciel has Dresden in? This is just a very confusing description in my opinion.

aid

Damn he almost had his feet amputated.


Another problem I found was that the internal monologues just doesn't sound like Dresden. The fight scenes were also lackluster. On anothe rnote, how the crap doesn't the translation powers of Lash/Lasciel not work when he's wandering the land of Jotunn.... And is Midguard separate from the human world? Kinda weird.

Alright, I've bashed enough. The things I liked:
The plot are interesting, if confusing, but that's probably because Dresden is himself very very confused.
There are some good explanations like the elemental thing, but this also makes me curious about the elemental Fae powers.

Overall, I felt that this was an okay, acceptable time waster if you find that you like the premise, though I didn't like it that much. 3/5