I'm in no way dismissing it. It's actually the first fic that came to mind when the urge for Slytherin!Harry started a few days ago. Unfortunately, upon rereading it for whats probably the 5th or 6th time (You know how it goes with WIP fics, find em, read until the last update, forget about em, find em again a year later, repeat) it just didn't hold up to the lofty vision I had of it in my head. I'll admit that that probably played a large role in me calling it "Mediocre at best" but compared to some of the great works we've seen in recent years, I'd say that it simply doesn't stand alongside them. But taken for what it is? It's a great fic.

I will also agree with 4/5 of those, if only because I can't remember if I've read The Potter Politics or not, it sounds familiar but I'm falling short on the details. I'll give it a read later today.

I know I have a few more Slytherin!Harry fics lurking around in both my bookmarks and brain, I'll take a gander later and see what I dredge up.

And thank you for that logical and well delivered response Averis. I really think my problem with Grey Maiden stems from the constant piling-on of awful things happening to the main character. I'm not exactly a sunshine and daisies kind of guy, and understand that the world can be a brutal place, but it just seems like a copout that a great many authors take in order to garner sympathy for the protagonist. The entire first book of Grey Maiden screamed "Look at this poor, poor, boy! For a simple donation of 3 reviews a month, you can bring a ray of hope to young Harry's life." Either way, the story just didn't sit well with me, though I can understand the appeal for some.

EDIT: I'm actually rereading this right now, and it somehow slipped my mind to rec it here, its been recced on DLP countless times, but this thread hasn't seen one yet. Perfect Slytherins by Jeconais, a strange little crossover that I think delivers quite well.

 

Path of Decision is a crossover with Sandman, sorta, and has a Slytherin Harry worth the appellation. The author sometimes gets overly poetical and non-linear, I suppose to integrate some of Neil Gaiman's style from the comics, but the story is worth it.

 

I agree with you there, hence my statement regarding the Hero's Path, which starts out as a Dursleys beat the fuck out of Harry fic. We've all read those fics, and there are some that are very good, but there is no appeal in seeing a terrible childhood rehashed, especially when it is to garner sympathy. We already know how assinine the Dursleys are and how big a pile of shit Harry had to wade through just to survive, but I've conditioned myself to avoid any and all poor-Harry!fics.

Potter Politics is four chapters long, but its good and worth at least a cursory glance. It would be awesome it there was more, but who am I to judge... I still haven't finished We'll All Fall.

 

And you really need to...

 

For another Harry in House Slytherin story, check out They Shook Hands by Dethryl. It's been awhile since I read it, but I recall it's readable. He finishes writing an entire Hogwarts year before uploading it. He's also revising with canon compliant names and is closing in on finishing year five.

In the past he updated his yahoo group first.

 

Grey Maiden is pretty awful. Maybe five years it would have been good if you had no standards. It's just stupidly extreme polarization of every characteristic and cliche that you could possibly hate. When I read it and left some pretty scathing reviews, the author responded pretty quickly that he was going to do a update/modernization of them, but I'm not holding me breathe.

On the Way to Greatness only really starts to shine in the later chapters, when there's enough writing space to actual develop characters. The first few years just don't feel that whole and fleshed out due to the writer's self-restrictions. On one hand, we get to the juicy story faster (theoretically), but, we lose out a lot on characterization, which can be the most interesting part with Slytherin!Harry. The early years could be what makes a person.

 

I enjoyed the Grey Maiden series when I read it, but I gave up on it long before I signed up with DLP, and I think he's still writing the same installment of it that he was then (book 5). I think there have been about five, maybe six updates in the last three years, and frankly I wouldn't have the patience to re-read it all to refresh my memory. If he's planning a modernisation as well, then it's never going to be finished.