I will grant that many teenagers act in an emotional and irrational manner and are prone to unseemly public displays of anger. However:

1. Is this the kind of teenager we want to read about?

2. Is this the kind of teenager Harry has previously been characterised as in the story? There are, after all, many teenagers who do not fit this stereotype.

3. Is the reaction of the adults realistic?

You say that you allow the teens you work with to vent. I would submit that this is not the standard reaction of adults. Generally speaking, if a teenager has a loud angry tantrum they will be immediately disciplined, before they've even finished speaking. This is especially true of an educational context.

They key with Harry's outburst in Dumbledore's office in OotP was:

1. The reader could get behind it, because we were equally frustrated. Not so much in the dragon scene.

2. Dumbledore's reaction was consistent with what we've seen of him previously, because he's eccentric and they were in private.

Also, regarding the method of death of the dragon: my objection was not with "its mouth is the weak point" but rather "a dragon can be killed with fire".

 

I think you've justified your actions pretty well to be honest.

Except blowing up a dragon by using a fire spell in its mouse - I think that's what happened?

EDIT: Then I flip the page and Taure has raised more good points. God damn it.

 

Disliking the way Harry behaves is an issue that is different from whether or not he's a readable. There are plenty of characters that I don't like (Voldemort, Hannibal Lecter) that I still find compelling to read about.

As for Harry's his readability as a character, I'd argue that one scene out of 5 books of material is probably not representative of Harry's total readability. And while you might find this scene particularly distasteful, you've said yourself that you think the rest of his character is very different from this scene.

True. But doesn't the fact that Harry is acting out of character draw more attention to how much he has been affected by this event? When a brave character is scared, when a calm character is angered, when a gentle character is driven to violence... we as readers know that these are important moments to those characters. They have been pushed beyond their limits, and now we know what those limits are. It adds dramatic tension when we approach those limits in the future.

For example, if Harry were to feel as if he were being manipulated and persecuted by the government, constantly on the front page of the newspaper, forced to participate in an unwanted spectacle, publicly accused of lying, subjected to a kangaroo court trial, and wrongfully accused of bieng a threat to society (thereby being compared to the very thing he hates the most)... well, if any of that were to happen, then Harry might find himself approaching the breaking point once again.

Not that the Ministry would ever do that.

Again, I think the context is important. They're judges in a competition, not parents, or teachers in a classroom. Imagine if a gymnast of figure skater when nuts and started screaming at the Olympic judges. Would the judges scream back? Jump down from the podium and tackle the athlete? Or would they sit their calmly, maintain some semblance of decorum, and wait until a more appropriate time to deal with the tantrum?

I think they'd sit there and take it, calmly. If anybody stopped the athlete, it would be a coach or a fellow athlete. Maybe security, depending on the length of the rant. But not the judges.

My suspicion is that dragonfire developed through evolution as a way to compete with and combat other dragons. Dragons are a huge armored flying beast; they're already top of the food chain, and adding fire would be overkill. But what if the fire isn't about fighting different species? What if it's about fighting other dragons?

Lots of animals have horns, antlers, etc., that are used to assert their dominance over other members of the same species. Dragonfire, I think, is the same. Dragons use it to fight for mates, fight for territory... And if dragonfire can hurt other dragons, then dragons are vulnerable to fire.

 

I get your explanation, but dragons being weak against fire is still pretty stupid. Especially in the mouth, where they breathe fire from. However, if I remember correctly it was foreshadowed, so it is slightly forgivable.

 

I don't think it was actually fire in the mouth that was the coup de grace, but the explosion that pushed flame back down towards its guts. Dragon mouths/throats are no doubt fireproof. Dragon stomach, and maybe even lungs, probably less so.

 

I don't like it, it's boring and pretty stupid.

 

This shouldn't be in the recycling bin, as it's at 4 stars.

Quality reviews here, boys. What a piercing analysis of the writing and the story. Why don't you do this for a living?

 

It went downhill in book five, I stopped following it part way through. Harry became pathetic and all traces of subtlety vanished.

 

I think book 5 was alright, what soured me was the update rate to be honest. It's hard to feel involved in the story when it's something like 60 chapters long with an update schedule of once every two weeks. If I were to read it all over again from beginning to end in one sitting I'm not sure what my opinion would be but it would certainly be different. I do remember getting kind of pissed off from waiting two weeks only to get two pages of new story though. Much of it, especially at the end, uninteresting or predictable.

The Emerald Trance itself took sooo long to make itself known, but on reflection I feel that may actually be a good thing. When extremely over powered shit gets used all the time it becomes less interesting and ruins stories. I guess it's for the best we don't really touch it until the final battle.

It's really hard to form an opinion when I've been slowly consuming it for literally two years, my memory is good but not that good and I'm sure I'm forgetting shit actually worth talking about.

tl;dr I guess I don't really have an opinion until I reread the series, which I probably won't do until the entire series is out or I'll have the same issue with book 6 and 7 anyway.

 

Not a fan of the fifth book.

It just went on and on about how Harry could get shat on from up high in a number of ways.

Then, there's the Malfoy business. Then, the deaths at the end. It was very, very unappealing to read, I basically had to force myself through just for the sake of completing the story.

And as far as the sixth book is concerned, I have virtually no hope for it being good.

Also:

An update, which won't be lengthier than 2-5k words, every three weeks and it's shorter than the previous one? Yeah, I got no intention of following this one from chapter to chapter. Maybe in a year or two when it's done I'll take a peek at it.

Oh and Harry's attraction to Ginny doesn't bode well.

I'm not against the pairing itself, but the way it keeps leaning towards in the story feels extremely forced.

 

Meh. I've already rated this thread, a 4 out of 5 for the simple fact that, whilst the prose was done fine, and the update rate being wacky as fuck, the character of 'Draco Malfoy' is preety weird and funky, and just breaks my immersion in the story.

 

I started reading this story but couldn't finish even the first book. I had a hard time picturing Draco Malfoy acting the way he does and eventually just gave up. I get that we only saw a very limited side of him in the books, but his characterization frustrates me to no end.

The story itself is well written but just plain boring. The author doesn't have anything to add to the canon and the writing style isn't personal enough to keep me interested. I feel a little bad for the author since I can see how much work and time has been put into this story and how there's nothing exactly wrong with it - it's just the lack of originality that makes it so very dull. Or maybe I just see it that way because I've been reading HP fanfiction for so long that these very "basic" stories seem pointless to me. Maybe the story gets better later on, maybe not, but I doubt it will be worth putting up with Draco's characterization any longer than I already have. I might finish this story if I need something to read that doesn't take my focus off from other things - in other words isn't addictive in the least.

 

Rated this one a 3/5.

Don't know how many people felt the way I did, but this series was awfully easy to predict. Every reveal or interesting tidbit in the story was foreshadowed by the combination of it pretty much following cannon and an understanding of the relationships between characters. Draco felt very forced, but I tried to push that aside to get through the books. I haven't read much fanfiction, or at least quality fanfiction yet but I easily put this as my second favorite Slytherin Harry fic. The quality of the writing was solid enough.

Looking at this series both individually and as a whole, I stick with my 3/5. First year was a bit lower for me, given how hard it was for me to get used to the characters. However, fourth year astounded me with how well it was done. I enjoyed it mostly because everything started to click about then, as the fic had a different take on Sirius than what is usually seen (Sirius gets out of Azkaban, Harry runs to him like a lost puppy).

The fourth book was also the one where Drizzle introduced some more original ideas, without going off on tangents like in Emerald Trance. The series got far too angsty for my tastes in Book 5, and Umbridge seemed to play an almost excessive role although that was partially due to the substantial increase in fic length. Overall a decent series, that started weak, but peaked pretty strongly.


Edit by Minion: Good review, but I had to add some line breaks to increase its readability.

 

It's been almost two years since the last review and HP fanfic has changed a fair bit since. I tried the first installment a little after I first started reading fanfiction, which if I recall correctly was in mid 2016. I couldn't get past Harry and Draco becoming friends so easily and didn't read any further. It was the same thing with the Sacrifices arc. I read part of year 1 and that was more angst than I could stand. It's not that I dislike angst – I love Circular Reasoning and Control – but this was way more than I could stand, it was so emo than even my 16 year old self who listen to more Placebo than I'd like to admit would give it a few guesses.

Anyway, point is, how does this hold up? I haven't been reading fanfic as of late and I'm looking for an excuse to pick up something that's at least half-way decent. Like, what would pass as a strong candidate for the "almost recommended" of today. Is this story a good choice for that? I've read a lot of shitty Slytherin!Harry fics, and if this 3.5 rating is still relevant, then I strongly suspect that I will like this. Is it?

 

I think the author's writing gets better with each book. I'm now on Book 5 and enjoying it immensely. There are some issues, like Harry's tendency to act Gryffindor-ish at key moments, which seen like the author trying to recreate some pivotal canon scene. Other than that, it is a fun read.