I'm not sure I agree - he's definitely shown a pattern of keeping things far closer to his chest than is necessary or helpful.

 

Oh Harry plays his cards close often too close but when he gets into a ton of trouble he goes and gets help.

 

Initial thoughts as I go.

I like the scene with the portrait, a nice tool to advance that piece of the plot, and an interesting problem presented to Harry at the conclusion.

I'm baffled by the Edison/Tesla thing, I assume thats something that the author is a nerd about? I mean, I know that some folk are Team Edison, and others are Team Tesla, but I really struggled with my suspension of disbelief that muggle born/muggle raised kids who left the muggle world at 11 would either care particularly much or have much knowledge beyond a kids book or a magazine article they read when they were young. Maybe this scene was an attempt at humour by the author, but it just fell really flat for me.

The scene at Chevenoir was good I think, a nice way to advance that bit of plot without providing them with all the answers, but also very believable.

Spoiler

Particularly I like that its Sirius's fault they don't have the answers, if he'd been a little bit less of an idiot in the past then they would have the book.

So to become an animagus you just...decide what animal you want to be, and let the "wild" spirit of that animal into your mind? That seems too easy, and also doesn't explain Wormtail becoming a rat - I can't see anyone choosing to become a rat, especially when the reason you're learning to be an animagus is to run around with a werewolf. I also find it hard to believe that someone like James Potter wouldn't choose a lion.

"pour herself a cup of tea (milk, no lemon)" - clearly the Sinister Man is not familiar with drinking tea.

Spoiler

However, I do like that whatever mind magic the horcrux in Harry's scar used on the Dursley's is being discovered by a nosy reporter. That'll be interesting to see what happens next with.

 

I like how we are slowly getting closer to prologue. This is one of the few fanfics where I actually am on the edge of my seat.

 

I think we‘re… what, ten months off now? From the World Cup to (what I assume is) right after the Third Task.

 

How much is ten months in TSM word-time? 500k words, at this rate?

Summer of year three to summer of year four was well over a million, I believe, but the author's said that year four is meant to go faster. Seems to be the case, as a lot of the long setups are quickly paying off.

 

Yah summer before year 3 had a few one shots for Theo, and Blaise and Hermione, plus the Azkaban breakout and the Ron and Jim in Shambala arc. That bloated out the books in a way this summer hasn't had to do since it has focused far more on just Jim and Harry and they characters that they are interacting with plus a few other options.

 

Finally caught up with this. I cared little for the World Cup, and was hoping we'd be over and done within a single chapter, but oh well.

I'm itching to see what names come out of the Goblet, and the ensuing drama, but I bloody well hope we're not in for another five-parter of Reactions and Overreactions.

I enjoyed that too, but was annoyed by the floating cameras in Little Hangleton, or rather the specificity of what necessitated them in the first place. The Fiendfyre sequence was also too anime-like for my tastes.

I liked the interaction between the Dumbledores, and I suspect the Fidelius modifications will have some far-reaching consequences for the Azkabal, but we'll likely not see any collaboration with Albus until at least after 1995.

I suspect Fate has some involvement in this. Recall Remus taking Jim into the woods, and his vision about the raven, the cauldron, Pettigrew, etc.

So I imagine Pettigrew didn't choose to become a rat, as much as he was fated to become a rat in every sense. I might be a little off here, but I think his grandad also had something to do with rats, in addition to the werewolf control thing.

Something about James wanting to become a lion and ending up a deer who gets pawned by a rat is quite fitting. Can't help but feel bad for this goofy idiot now, and to think he pissed me off so much for the better part of the story.

LMAO.

That bothered me more than the Tesla/Edison thing

Agreed.

The interactions between Jim and the walrus gave me the shivers. I'm curious what Jim is going to make of his mother's role in all this when he finds out, as well as when he finally hears about Harry's cupboard.

 

Chapter 147 has been posted.
https://m.fanfiction.net/s/11191235/147/

 

Woops, you're right, it was posted a week ago. My bad, I thought I was ahead of the game.

 

Been a while since I've posted, but overall happy with year 4. There are a few headscratchers (Edison vs Tesla, a few weird perspective shifts, the fiendfyre scene) but overall it's been a lot more straightforward.

Ludo's plan to only have 1 person running world cup security was a funny call back to canon, as was Barney Weasley.

Happy to see a few long-terms plot points being really followed through (Dark Lord McAvity, portraits and the Fidelius), and Jim continues to be the most interesting part of the fic IMO.

To be completely honest, I don't really care about Harry's "research group". It feels like a lot of rah-rah about something that basically will result in Harry being richer than before.

But all in all excited for how things will shape up.

 

I despise this eye-spy shit. It makes no sense in-universe, and it's obviously just a half-assed mean for Harry to get even MORE wealth, and it's boring as all hell to read about.

But the worst part is that the author has the nerve of being self-conscious about it and using Jim's misplaced jealousy as a catalyst to tell his audience "aha of course I know it's retarded and literally any number of wizards should have thought of doing that hundreds of years before cameras were even invented, and every muggleborn born after 1950 has even more incentive to have thought about it and since I'm aware and make it clear that I'm aware then it's ironic and I can get away with it "

It's really just one more symptom of the disease of cringe this entire fic still suffers, even past year 1.

I echo some of the ratings I've seen here before. It has some cool moments, some clever plot points, but if you're not interested in politics and economics, it gets a bit tiresome. The constant back and forth between Harry & the Potters has eventually gotten really annoying.
Year one 0/5
Then somewhere halfway in year 2 or so it gets to 3/5 possibly more
Stays at 3/5 if you skip half the paragraphs of incredibly boring stuff.

 

FYI there was just a new update it is on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26238679/chapters/75318930 FFN appears to be behind the 8 ball.

 

I think this last set of chapters, and probably the next few are suffering from being released periodically. They'd probably read a lot better and a lot more enjoyably if read all in one go rather than 1 every few weeks. There's so much going on that its hard to keep a track of with gaps between the chapters, which isn't usually a problem I have with fanfics, its just a statement of how much is going on in this fic.

 

I wanted to reread maybe, because I liked some of the things Sinister man did, but I just can't read 1,3M words and end with Quidditch World cup, damn.

 

Tbh, the story just feels like a massive slog right now with how much everything about it is drawn out and an update every couple of weeks.

Five chapters with probably well above 60K words (we’re at 50K for four chapters now) solely on the couple of weeks around the Quidditch World Cup is reaching new heights of extravagance. That ought to be almost the entirety of Philosopher’s Stone in terms of word count, which came in around 75K IIRC.

I really like Quidditch, but I don’t like it that much…

Just keeping track of all the Death Eater code names and side characters is a chore. The writing is still good, if a bit hammy at times, but I feel like both the amount of real-world time it’s taking to get anywhere with this story and the amount of exposition in each chapter is inhibiting my enjoyment more than it used to.

 

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26238679/chapters/77159531

New chapter is up and as usual FFN is being slow. Unlike the actual chapter which is action packed.

 

Latest chapter is great and super intense. In general I love this idea of Voldemort actually staging a mass terrorism event this way - there's a main goal, it's executed very well, and there are secondary goals (some of which happen, some of which don't).

Also it seems that the goblet of fire is being reworked here to explain 2 big canon questions (1. why go through something so convoluted as the TWT to get to Harry, and 2. why didn't anyone try to resurrect Voldemort earlier than Harry's 4th year). So excited to see where this goes.

And honestly the fact that guns/grenades were involved also makes it a lot more believable (and also that Voldemort is very aware of and uses muggle means too).

On the topic of this fic suffering from being released periodically: I had some free time earlier this week and on a whim re-read Book 3 in one go, and it flows much better as a single unit than as individual chapters released every few months. I think it's because all of those "pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3" arcs just feel like 1 long chapter when you read them back-to-back so there's no real issue. The arc with Snape in Bellatrix's head, for example, dragged on when I first read it. But when you can read all 3 Bellatrix-chapters back to back, there's much less of a drag.