Title: Harry Potter in the Claw of the Raven
Author: BakenandEggs
Rating: Fiction T
Genre: Friendship
Status: Complete
Library Category: General Fics
Pairings: Eventual Harry/Daphne
Summary: When a more studious Harry Potter entered Gringotts with Hagrid, the Goblins managed to talk to him privately - Dumbledore never saw that one coming. A Ravenclaw Harry story. Warning: child abuse, character bashing, and pureblood society.
Link:https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11496914/1/Harry-Potter-in-the-Claw-of-the-Raven

This is a four-part series, so let me put the rest of the stories here as well.

Spoiler

Title: Harry Potter at the knees of the Marauders
Author: BakenandEggs
Rating: Fiction T
Genre: Friendship
Status: Completed
Library Category: General Fics
Pairings: Eventual Harry/Daphne
Summary: Harry returns to Hogwarts for his second year. A year that will be filled with books, good friends, basilisks, quidditch, prattish friends, horrible dreams, and pranks.
Link:https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11647003/1/Harry-Potter-at-the-Knees-of-the-Marauders

Spoiler

Title: Harry Potter and the Interlude
Author: BakenandEggs
Rating: Fiction T
Genre: Friendship
Status: Completed
Library Category: General Fics
Pairings: Eventual Harry/Daphne
Summary: As Harry gets used to living with Sirius and Remus, he, along with his friends and family, must deal with the knowledge of Voldemort's return. What will this mean for Harry's friendship with the Most Ancient and Noble House of Malfoy? The third part in my series, 'Harry Potter in the Claw of the Raven'.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11950925/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Interlude

Spoiler

Title: Harry Potter with the Power the Dark Lord knows not
Author: BakenandEggs
Rating: Fiction T
Genre: Friendship/Adventure
Status: Completed
Library Category: General Fics
Pairings: Harry/Daphne
Summary: After a summer spent attending Quidditch World Cup games and tutoring sessions, Harry returns to Hogwarts for his fourth year of schooling with plans to study hard, have fun, play Quidditch and become an animagus. Too bad there's a Tournament that gets in the way. The fourth (and final) part in my series, 'Harry Potter in the Claw of the Raven'.
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12057689/1/Harry-Potter-with-the-Power-the-Dark-Lord-Knows-Not

The premise of this story has been done to death and beyond. Harry Potter goes to Gringotts where the goblins tell him people have been keeping information from him about his heritage, there's a block on his magic and his ability to learn, and he has two lordships. Understandably, they're gonna give him a bunch of books from which he can learn wizarding culture and become a sophisticated traditionalist.

The thing is, this fic uses traditionalism/non-traditionalism/anti-traditionalism in a way I've rarely seen done before. The traditionalists and the anti-traditionalists have a culture war going on in magical Britain which divides them into two separate political camps. Dark magic users aren't all traditionalist, and neither are all light magic users anti-traditionalist. It's a bit more nuanced than that. The two groups are pretty antipathic towards each other, and being in one political faction nearly guarantees that the other won't take you seriously.

Harry loves traditionalism and becomes a traditionalist in the true sense of the word. He befriends Draco Malfoy, hates Ron Weasley, and is a Ravenclaw. Dumbledore, as you would have guessed, is an anti-traditionalist.

There are a few very good reasons to like this fic. Harry's development is slow. He's pretty darn smart, but there's so much to learn and he's interested in so much he's making very little progress on a day to day basis. He's better than most people his age, but he doesn't suddenly become the next Dumbledore. Next, Sirius Black is a really well-done character. Out of all the characters we see (apart from Harry himself), Sirius is the most 3-d character. We see his character progress very visibly. Third, there's no Hermione as a friend, so there's no contradiction of a traditionalist being friends with a muggleborn. Fourth, the romance is barely there. They're kids. And finally, the technical writing is very good. The author falls prey to some obvious cliches, but this is fanfiction. Nearly everything is cliche here. The author is better at avoiding them than most people.

Reasons to hate this fic: A good number of characters are very one-dimensional. It doesn't truly detract from the fic, but we don't see the supporting cast grow much. Second, Ron Weasley-bashing. Third, the author seems to have thought up some plot points and discarded them; you can tell by the writing and progression of the plot. Fourth: Voldemort is kinda lame. But the greatest reason to not read this fic is that Harry is Super!Harry and a poor man's Indy!Harry. There's few meaningful challenges and a kind of lack of tension in the story. It's well-done, but if these tropes don't get you going, then well, skip this. If they do, the first one is the best of the lot.

TL;DR: It's a good fic if you're into fics where Harry starts asserting himself and being a traditionalist. Just don't hope for magnificence.

Rating: 3.5 rounded down to 3/5 for the series. But since we're reviewing the fic here, 4/5

 

The instant you see the words "character bashing" in the summary you know that the story is likely to be bad. That held true here. This story is drivel.

The prose is bland. It just has a detached, choppy feel to it. The technical aspects of the writing aren't bad, granted. Besides that, the writing isn't engaging. It's boring to sit and read through 56k+ words without anything to get and keep your attention.

The biggest issue that this fic has is the characterization. The only character really developed well is Harry, though that's not saying much. Almost all the other characters are undeveloped. Replace them with cardboard cutouts and you'll get the same result.

As if that wasn't enough, there had to be bashing. Bashing shows a level of juvenile, horrible writing. It didn't enhance the story-line. Rather, it made it worse. The Ron-bashing shtick just gives the fic a puerile feel and makes it even more of a chore to read.

The fic has a boon, though. It is fairly original, but that originality is inconsequential in the wake of the plethora of issues that this fic has.

2/5

 

So I'm on chapter 5. That's halfway through, and I'm a bit bored of it.

The writing is technically sound, but it's a bit bland. So far, there is no plot, no conflict, nothing of interest really happening. Harry is just muddling through Hogwarts and being a genius in Ravenclaw. Part of me likes the fact that the author hasn't tried to do the obvious and connect him to the canon companions and canon troubles, since that gives way to original ideas. The problem is, there aren't any really. Basically only new thing is a few technicality about magic and how Dark wizards aren't all bad. Frankly, that makes it worse because there is even less conflict now. Reading it is like reading about some guy going through school, which is uninteresting, because most of us have already done it.

Where's the action? The drama? The mystery? The intrigue? There is nothing to keep my attention in it. So far, this barely makes it 3/5 because it's got good writing technique and isn't a factory made fanfiction, but it has little else to offer.

 

So I read the whole thing. Then I read the sequel (year 2) and the next one (summer between year 2 and 3, and 2 chapters which skim over year 3).

It doesn't really get better. There isn't a great deal of meaningful conflict, and the entire thing essentially reads as one big training montage. Harry has an extremely regimented week, practising all those skills (wandless magic, meditation, occlumency etc) along with Quidditch and studying hard to make sure he's top of the year. The entire year moves in that fashion, with the occasional scene depicting something else - though ultimately meaningless happening. In first year, the entire philosophers stone plot is completely ignored, with only background mentions that things resolve themselves. Likewise with the chamber of secrets plot in year 2 - Harry works out it's a basilisk fairly early and doesn't do much else about it. This by itself could be avoided as an issue if these plot lines were replaced with something equally satisfying, but they aren't. Harry and friends just sit in the common room like keenos and bang out their homework.

There's potential there for sure, with the cultural divide between traditionalists and anti-traditionalists, but once the original arguments for each side were discussed in the first book it just becomes repetitive. Far too many words have been allocated in every single seen to reminding the reader about this, with the author writing out who greeted who and who bowed to who in every conversation without fail. The conversations sometimes have a stilted feel to them, as if bland robots were talking to each other rather than human characters. This also randomly jumps after Harry receives a few months of 'traditionalism tutoring', so characters become suddenly eloquent orators at age 12.

There's more to say, but you get the picture. I admit I read a lot of trash, but I can't say this belongs even in 'Almost Recomended'.

2.5/5, rounded down.

 

I wish he had explained how the Mimblewimble spell works, as I can't help being curious, considering Uncle Vernon's seeming familiarity with it. Indeed, that would be the one thing which could help me forgive the poor characterization, lack of engaging plot, and the lame ending. As he didn't expound on that, I can't bring myself to give this more than a 2/5.

 

Ok. So I read all of the series. It's about 100 Chapters of Harry explaining his views on Traditional Wizarding views. It has some interesting ideas, but it's very boring.

If your taste leans toward a light political story with a lot of studying, training, and a look at a random view of the authors version of a Traditional Wizarding world then this story may interest you.

It's mostly readable. The writing is ok. It's just that almost all of the conflict is eliminated. Their is a pretty interesting take on some of the Triwizard events. The duel with Voldemort was interesting. It's just that all of the other conflict is missing.

It's a 3/5 for me, probably more of an Almost Recommendable type of story. Also the author misspelled Ogden throughout the entirety of the story. I at least think they meant for it to be Ogden. It really bothered me.

 

This is a review of book 1: Harry Potter and the cliches in lieu of a plot. This is one of those strange fics that keeps me reading, even though it's full of cliches that have been done better in more interesting ways: everything is over explained, every conversation has the same greeting and ending to push the idea of formality.

Too many unimportant things are repeated for no real reason, while actual important points are glossed over and easy to miss. For example, Lucius Malfoy's past actions are excused and explained away in a throw-away line, but twice in one chapter harry tells someone that he's reading an advanced book, with a dictionary for the difficult works. The very next chapter opens with the same conversation happening with a third person.

While all of these things add up to what we're used to in fad fanfic writing, the biggest problem is that book one, which covers all of Harry's first year, has no plot. He goes to diagonal alley, finds the usual goblin ally, has the usual 7 paragraphs of looking at magical trunks, gets tested and has the usual blocks on his magic removed and so on and so forth, but there is no actual story. Dumbledore is practically screaming at Harry to find out about the Stone, but Harry doesn't care and then the book ends. That's it. Nothing else.

Book 2 opens with taking Draco to see the Star Wars movies because at this point the author must be TRYING to hit all of the cliches at once.
I'll keep reading, because I've now committed enough of my time to this literary trash fire that I want to see what it will take for me to give up.
Not unreadable, but nothing original and definitely not worth your time. 2.5/5 rounded down to 2 as per DLP rules.