I really did not enjoy this. As someone else mentioned, you'll dislike reading this purely because of the writing which almost solely constituents of dialogue where characters are grunting, rasping, shouting, with gritted teeth/anger in their eyes, betrayal in their face etc. The amount of emotion on display is exhausting.

In all honesty I could only read until chapter 25, but even from how much I did read it feels like this fic sacrifices pretty much everything in the effort to maintain it's plot - stuff like Harry planning this super elaborate 'escape from the Hogwarts express' which gets a guy killed casually rather than just asking Dumbledore for a portkey (which he admits he can do) and also stuff like him making up some kind of elaborate false story to the ministry when he can just tell the truth that he was having ice cream with Fleur (who is a witness lol) is just purely contrived.

Pretty much every character here in unlikeable - Sirius is all over the place, Snape is fundamentally misunderstood (I laughed a few times when he complained to Dumbledore about being scared that Harry would kill him) and I can't for the life of me figure out why Tonks is helping out Harry this much. Harry himself is at peak angst and paranoia and the worst part is that everyone around him will make excuses for it.

More than anything else though I keep coming back to the writing. If real humans had that much frustration in every single sentence they ever spoke, I'm pretty sure they would have an aneurysm.

1/5.

 

Too much pointless talking and stupidity. Harry keeps trying to run and everybody keeps accidentally dying. Aurors keep dying like retarded flies, and there is this boring plot arc about a vengeful auror whose brother was one of those flies. There is this big plot set up, but it's not well thought out and everybody and their mothers act like idiots for the sake of plot progress. Pacing is slow, and the ending is a terrible disappointment especially considering this long and overcomplicated set-up. There are some good things, but they don't really outbalance the bad. There's not a single likable person in the story. Harry is just painful to read.

 

Wasn't this the one where Harry dunked Malfoy's face in acid during a Potions lesson?

 

It was.

To be fair here,

Spoiler

Harry had just escaped from a fiery conflagration where Lucius Malfoy stole Potter's gold out of Gringotts (and pissed off the goblins who attacked Malfoy Manor), the ministry of magic was bombed and he had accidentally killed Charlie Weasley in a crossfire, suffered pretty severe injuries, attempted to get rid of all of his memories of the event by dumping them in a Pensieve (which doesn't quite get rid of the underlying emotions behind said memories), and was very clearly traumatized by the whole affair as he still tried to attend classes the next day.

Fuck, I almost forgot how insane this story got, and I wrote the damn thing.

 

To be fair? Fair was what he did.

I gave it a 5 based on that alone. I am a simple man. Give me a Harry that abuses Malfoy and Snivellus, and I approve mightily.

 

When I read Renegade Cause I would have thought that it was a 5/5. I've revisited it subsequently, and I'd say that it's still at least 4/5 for me. I quite liked hitwizard Kemester, he was a good secondary antagonist with a very clear reason for doing what he did.

 

With ghosts raping teenage girls, Voldemort taking control of Harry's body and raping Hermione etc. This fic relies way too much on shock factor and gore. I dunno maybe the author was influenced by game of thrones, but you keep thinking the fic just keeps jumping the shark every chapter. I mean the fact that not one person in Hogwarts including the teachers and Dumbledore could figure out Malfoy, Nott, Zabini were rasing the ghosts and fucking up Hogwarts working mechanics was one of the most stupidest things I've read. Relies way too much on characters being idiots to stick too the plot especially with how dumb Harry behaves.

 

Hi, I'm the author - funnily enough, I didn't actually follow GoT (the show started in early 2011, my story finished in early 2012), and I've never really been a Song of Ice and Fire fan (around that time I was reading more Sword of Truth), but I do agree that the intended 'shock value' of certain elements has aged poorly. It was the early 2010s, it's not altogether surprising how much edgy shock value dominated popular culture and has aged like shit!

Being self-critical here as well, though, I do think there's a very tangible critique as to why the above poster thinks everyone is so dumb and couldn't figure it all out (although I'd be properly stunned if he figured out the final twist), and that is that I give the audience way too much information. The perspective isn't just focused on Harry or Tonks or Sirius or other protagonists, but also to the several other factions in the story, from Malfoy to Kemester to Voldemort, so you see their plots and schemes interweaving and you see all of their intentions in the picture as well.

And some of that was absolutely intentional - this isn't a mystery story, it's closer to a crime thriller where often times you know what's coming and you're trying to watch and see how characters will counter and throw it all together with the knowledge that contingencies have been planned. You will have more information than any one party at any one time, it's intended to amplify the sense of stress and dread that comes with various plans are in motion and how they intersect. What's more, this is OOTP-era Harry, a hormonal teenage asshole who is about to face a lot of added stress and tangible trauma throughout the course of this story and one of the primary themes of Renegade Cause is what the weight of that trauma will do to someone. After all, the taglline of the story is "A difference of a few seconds can change a life. The difference of a few minutes stained Harry's hands with blood - but for the Dark Lord, it was insufficient. After all, you do not need to kill a man to utterly destroy him."

Of course, the risk that comes with a story like this is that the omnipresent tension becomes too much and folks just bail or find it unbelievable, especially when the weight of that stress and damage causes characters to act irrationally or badly (it's why the first several chapters lose so many people because Harry is SUCH an asshole). On my part it got so convoluted that it became exhausting to track all the details (which is the reason every time I try to go back to the sequel I get drained and bail), and I can only imagine how that would make some audiences feel, which is one reason I tried to keep the action going and hit on the character beats so there'd be at least enough to keep folks engaged (which is asking a lot for a story that went a half-million words). But if you're coming here saying the characters are stupid... ehh, I disagree given the complexity of these plans and the emotional states they've been pushed to endure, but given that you're seeing all the plans in motion from a bird's eye view, it's the frustration of 'well, I plainly knew it all and figured it out, why couldn't they get there?!'

As for 'they should have all known it was Malfoy et. al'...

Spoiler

keep in mind that the first time that plan kicks into motion - the attacks on Su Li and the Ravenclaw girls in the ritual in Chapter 19 - all the protagonists know is that there's possession and blood magic involved, and even then they're able to connect some of the dots quickly, amidst the real stress of fighting with the Ministry to throw H.A.I.T. out of the school; that's why they brought in Moody. Snape tips Malfoy off to that in Chapter 22, but then Snape gets pulled into his mess with Kemester that same chapter. The next chapter Harry and Dumbledore learn about the time displacement around Hogwarts (the major wrench that makes solving any of this much more complicated when it comes to coordinating with outside the castle, and the sort of magic Dumbledore himself is cautious dealing with - he freely admits he doesn't know every secret within Hogwarts), but even by Chapter 24 they've made progress on the matter of identifying the ghosts as the issue and there's the second attack that they encounter some success in thwarting.

The NEXT CHAPTER, Moody, McGonagall, and Dumbledore are able to interrogate Snape and get some information about Death Eaters in the school, and Dumbledore has already figured most of it out. Hell, Ron and Hermione have pieces of it put together in Chapter 26... before the Ministry attacks and everything going to hell, including Dumbledore being trapped and vanishing from the next dozen chapters of the story. Snape bolts from Hogwarts, and while Moody has leads on this including Malfoy (you find this out in Chapter 30), pinning down the exact culprit or in any way how to stop it given that Snape has said Malfoy is a foil to the real enemy and you're dealing with magic far beyond your understanding means that Moody is out of his depth too. That's why the 'just go get it all out of Malfoy' plan is exceedingly dangerous - it'd be like storming a building where someone has taken hostages knowing the hostage taker has a bomb... but you don't know where that bomb is, how big it is, and your bomb-disarming specialists have vanished into thin air.

 

Just a short note to say that though it's been years since I read this, and though it was definitely an exhausting time, it was one of the best fics I'd read then. Who knows if I could bear it now, or if it'd hold up, but I'd happily endorse it for that alone. And though the twist has been lost in time for me, I do remember being truly shocked by it, and remain eager to read a sequel, if you ever add more chapters to it.

 

@Silens Cursor Honestly I didn't really have problem keeping track of things but I did feel exhausted all the way through. It could have used break chapters and interludes to slow things down. Honestly the pace of the fic is in complete break neck speed and for 500k words it's almost impossible to read it one go. As for your sequel struggles I don't know if you have read Brandon's Sanderson Stormlight Archive but it's a war epic apocalyptic fantasy series similar to your book. Each book is 500k words with multiple perspectives of main characters with hundreds of side characters. Each book has up to 120 chapters including 20 interludes so in total 140 chaps. Anyway what i'm trying to say is the plotting is similar to your fic but hundred times more complex plot lines to keep track of but it's easy to read because he uses interludes, flashback chapters, relaxing chapters in between so you barely feel exhausted or the fact you have read 500k word book but want to read more. Have a look at how it's structured it might help your to continue your series.

 

The later Stormlight novels are overindulgent and somewhat hard to follow in places imo. Either way though, it's hardly fair to criticise a fic someone wrote in their teens 10 years ago for not being as well written as a book from the flagship series of the current best selling high fantasy author who writes for a living and has access to world class editors. Renegade Cause is a product of its time. It comes out very favourably when compared to other fics of a similar nature, and imo was a very enjoyable read. As far as I know Silens Cursor isn't planning on continuing the series, and this isn't a WBA thread where constructive criticism would be welcomed.

 

Eh, Silens has a couple of chapters of the sequel out, albeit a long time ago, and his posts earlier this year sounded like it was still in the cards, albeit on hiatus. So we might get more eventually.