Title: Prophecies, Secrets and Lies
Author: shinysavage
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Drama
DLP Category: Alternate Universe
Pairing: None (for now)
Status: Complete
Summary: AU: Harry Potter has a pretty good life a loving family, a great group of friends, he's powerful, and he's about to go to Hogwarts. Unfortunately, Dark Wizards keep trying to kill him, and not everyone around him is quite what they seem...

First in a series by this author with three sequels at the moment.

Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3375803/1/Prophecies_Secrets_and_Lies

Though overall it's nothing original, this story is well written with few spelling and grammatical errors. My main interest in this story lay in the author's unique characterisation of Pettigrew. I don't remember reading anything quite like it before.

This book would get a 3/5 but the third and fourth books easily warrant a 4 or 4.5 from me.

 

The dialogue, in the first chapter anyway, is too poor. The author needs to learn how to use commas in sentences. -_- The characters come across as too shallow and excitable. Not the kind of settings I was expecting, especially seeing there's a war on.

Also, Pettigrew's character is not very interesting, but rather another, paler copy of the Snape that the dark fanboys so delight in writing.

And the ending scene of first chapter has Voldemort attacking the Potters. It successfully manages to botch up all of the characters involved, to some degree or another.

Spoiler

Lily screamed as pain wracked her body, and began to writhe on the floor. Voldemort held the curse on her for several seconds, before lifting it and watching as she gathered her breath, gasping and occasionally twitching. “So, care for another dose?”
“Sectumsempra!” The curse did little more than cut Voldemort’s cheek. He sneered at her. “Pathetic! You’re not as strong as I thought you were. Pity. This could have been fun. Oh well, can’t have everything I suppose. Avada Kedavra! Now Harry,” he said, stepping over the body, “Time to die. Avada Kedavra!”.

This is Voldemort? This?

Not planning to read any more. I'll be really surprised if the author gets up to anything more than Recycle Bin standard, if that.

 

Mors summed up all the usual complaints (grammar, characterization, dialogue, setting, etc.). And I can't see the Dursleys as nice people, so that's a problem too.

I could see this being a fallback for that boring afternoon when none of my favorites have been updated and I can't find promising new fics. Meh. It isn't exactly horrible, but it definitely isn't a first pick for reading material. No rating. I might get bored and come back to it.

 

Yeah, this story alone isn't exactly great, but if you can be bothered, try getting through it for the sequels at least.

 

I enjoyed the latter stories. The author builds a fairly complex plot, if you can get by the technical errors in the first story. Harry has what I feel is a realistic level of power and flaws, and the plot has an element of darkness that is very well done while remaining fairly consistent with the major story elements of canon. Certainly, the third book was rather good, however the first story on its own not so much.

 

And this is what happens when you accidentally highlight part of the spoilertext.

Spoiler warning.

 

lol, nice!