Title: Rebirth in a Magical World
Author: Flying JMW
Rating: M
Genre:
Status: In Progress
Pairings: N/A
Link: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/26581/rebirth-in-a-magical-world
Summary:
What would you do if you were reborn inside the Harry Potter Universe. Follow Alexander Fawley's adventures as he is reborn in the Harry Potter world. In this tale, he will have new unique adventure to call his own, And he will discover that the Harry Potter Universe is much greater than he had imagined. This is my first story, so please leave reviews, to let me know how I am doing


I don't think this one has been reviewed before despite being pretty well known? At least I didnt see it reviewed anywhere.

I was VERY impressed with this fic.

It is essentially a SI into a pureblood (but not dark) family. The SI aspect is very well done in that its minor. Its essentially only book knowledge and

Spoiler: spoiler

He actually loses most of his previous life's memories part way in

. If SI's scare you no reason to be scared of this book. Past the first chapter you could probably pretend its just an OC and not miss anything. It is barely relevant after the first chapter.

But first the things I think will scare people off.

1) It is not Harry Centric. The trio so far is barely mentioned. The main character is in Cedric's year. Currently the story has advanced to Harry's first year. But its not really about the trio. You will see a mix of characters you know and don't know (Cedric is a main secondary character, all the teachers have decent roles etc). Harry may start to take on a larger role now that he is in Hogwarts and the adventures are starting up, but so far he hasn't been relevant.

2) The main character is a bit of a genius at magic. The author does a good job of giving him plenty of failures and set backs, but he is definitely a 'young dumbledore' type level of genius. Again balanced in that he often fails. I normally hate reading those types of stories, but havent minded in this fic. I know its a deal breaker for some.


That said. The good of this fic.

First off, it is very well written. I breezed through it and stayed up all night to do so. It sucked me in. The author has done an AMAZING job with the wizarding world. One of the best ive seen. They have managed to take JK's world and flesh it out/expand it so it seems like a full and nuanced *world* (not a few hundred random wizards). However, the author did so without turning it into one of those annoying rationalization fics. The HP world feels like the HP world just more fleshed out and bigger. The magic system and world were spot on. True but also original. Its the biggest strength of the story.

The story is fully engaging despite not being Harry centric. I enjoyed every twist and turn. The characters quickly become real people not OC to me. With the possible exception of a couple of the minor friends.

It is just well *written*. I'll forgive a host of sins for that.

I get some DLPers won't touch it when they see "not harry centric" "si-genius." And fair enough. I almost passed it by for these reasons and its why I started off saying that so you knew what you were getting into.

But if you can put that aside and just read the story I suspect most will enjoy it. The world building, the exploration of his future house (I won't spoil it) and so on are just SUPERB. One of the best buildings of the wizarding world i've read where again it gives it depth but doesn't make it seem something completely foreign. It definitely takes a "the wizard world is a real society with tens of thousands of wizards" approach.

The story starts with our main character as a child and is currently about halfway through the hogwarts years.

My advice is read past the SI 'transfer' bit which is whatever (I hate those) and give it a few chapters. This isnt a story you need to read 100k words to get the measure of. A few chapters should tell you if your going to like it or not.

 

Seems the story is on FFN as well, in case anyone doesn't want to read on royal road.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13361607/1/Rebirth-in-a-Magical-World

 

For those giving it 1 star reviews I admit im kinda surprised (since in my head 1 stars is reserved for typo filled trash you just cant read not just for stories you dislike and this one is written fine even if you dont like the setting). But certainly your right. Im just curious if you could share some thoughts on what made you think the story was so horrible?

 

rabbling thoughts -

Like you mentioned the opening scene of the transfer into HP world is an immediate turn off. The following scene of the argument between him and his mother also came off as more annoying than endearing, which I believe was the goal.

Upstairs in his room, Alex had no idea that his parents were deciding how he would be spending the next few months.

Sometime later, I descended the stairs into the living room, where I found grandma sitting with my parents drinking tea. It was hard for me to keep my eyes off of grandmother's enormous burgundy hat. Woven into the cap, was a hawk that seemed to be glaring at me.
​

The 2nd chapter switches perspective between lines.

Writing is fine, as in they're are few grammatical errors, but nothing is good. The scenes could take place in a black void for all the scene setting the author does.



I made it to the end of chapter 1 and didn't want to keep reading. I read to the end of chapter 3 and dropped it.

The author doesn't do a good job of setting a scene, characters are boring, and nothing is making me want to read more, in my mind that's a 1 star story.

 

Thats fair. Thanks for sharing Wyatt. Shame you didnt enjoy it much as I did (your awesome avatar makes me want you to like it if nothing else.) but appreciate you sharing your thoughts!

 

I've read this story till chapter 7. I'll list out the problems I found with this story:

1. OC/SI with sob story origins
2. Adult tone of the afore mentioned SI, plus the childish dumbing down of adults
   
3. Characters reading the HP books (Chapter 1)
   
4. Repeated incidents of powerful accidental magic from birth. Even worse, magic after just being born plus the unneccessary Hogwarts Roll description
   
5. Well connected family
6. Protagonist learning 2+ languages. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but is a definite warning sign
   
7. Magical creature, Lamassu. The list of character traits make this worse. In canon, magical creatures have a natural lifecycle. The only ones which are focused on humans are metaphysical or dark and you wouldn't want to tangle with either of them
   
8. The frankly mugglish tone of the family. They could be off a muggle street doing magic
   
9. Excess of poorly done humour

This is basically a pureblood genius angry Harry (but not Harry) with living parents, but somehow ends up sounding worse. The only redemption this story has is world building. It's solid.

Spoiler

The Nimbus angle does seem promising. However, I can frankly no longer read this story at this point.

Rating 1/5

 

It's not terrible for a self insert. That's basically how I'd rate this. It's a passable self insert that does self insert things. Like damn near anyone who grew up wishing they could go to Hogwarts the SI is driven to learn magic, and this of course puts him on the "genius" path that every one of these types of fics does. Unrealistic? Sure. But that's the bread and butter of the genre. After all, what is self insert, but wish fulfilment?

I think that the best thing the author did was make the SI start Hogwarts 3 years before Harry and has kept the it away from the Trio's story. He's got his own things happening disconnected from Voldemort and Harry. Too many authors just want to tag along with Harry and that gets boring real quick.

The world building is pretty good too. Better than most indy!Harry fics back in the aughts.

But of course it's far from perfect. The SI is a walking luck potion. He discovers, iirc, at least 2 places that very few people knew about that contain treasure troves of knowledge (of course). The author changed the creator of the

Spoiler

Firebolt

to the SI's dad for plot purposes, which is fine since it's one of the driving forces of some of what's going on. The family feud with the guy who runs the

Spoiler

Nimbus Broom Company

is a decent conflict and I'd like to see where it goes.

HOWEVER, a big strike against the fic is the grammar in the early chapters. There are some sentences and paragraphs that I had to reread or figure out what word he meant to use cause it's missing. Sometimes a random = sign or something is spliced into a word. Early chapters need major revision.

This story is better than a 1 star imo. I think it's passable and if you go into it knowing what to expect from a self insert fan fiction it's a good 3/5.