This fic misses a lot of the potential in Loki as a character, but comes far closer than most portrayals of him achieve. There's a gentling of his more acerbic edges, and a willingness to consider mortals his peers which is incredibly out of character, but allowable for the sheer fact that it's necessary for the story to work. It's tamer than the action-packed romp of deception and magic which I really want to see from a Loki fic, but still enjoyable.

I would be ashamed of myself if I wrote this, but am happy to read it. I guess that's as much to do with stylistic choices as anything. It's never particularly thrilling, but the milquetoast character pieces of tumblr-based MCU authors never are.

Probably the most coherent and canon-compliant Loki protagonist I've come across so far. I'm about two-thirds of the way through the material written so far, and am still interested - even if just to find out if this version of Loki got mounted by a horse.

3/5

 

I enjoyed reading this fic. The plot, while somewhat slow for the first 20 chapters, picks up quickly once the main conflict is introduced and kept me interested in continuing for the entire time I was reading. The action scenes were somewhat lackluster, but the character interactions excelled.

Unfortunately the main character, while named Loki, never read like Loki to me. The Loki in the MCU is a goal driven character. It's not always clear to the audience what his goal is, but he is always working towards it, and will use every trick in the book to reach it. He avoids straight fights, and his go-to option is an illusion in front of you and a knife in the back. He is an extremely skilled liar, to the point of being able to fool all of Asgard into believing that he was Odin. He also has a tendency to boast, and the Black Widow was able to exploit that to get him to reveal his plans in Avengers. In addition, he is extremely proud and has a tendency to view those who are not as powerful as him as worthless.

The Loki in this fic has almost none of that. He is without purpose for most of the fic, and even when he gains purpose he goes about accomplishing it in a disappointingly direct manner. He uses two illusions that I can remember while fighting, and one of them is of an animal. Almost every character he comes into contact with sees through his lies immediately, and he is humble to a fault. There is even a point, where a villain got one over on him, and he turns his back and walks away on the orders of a superior.

The main character is not Loki, but the character the author wrote was well developed and I was able to connect emotionally with the story. The problems with OOCness do not extend to the rest of the characters.

3/5