Title: Strains of Melody
Author: hoshi-tachi
Rating: T
Genre: General/Supernatural
DLP Category: The Alternates (or General)
Pairing: None as of yet
Status: WIP
Summary: AU: An abused 5-year-old Harry Potter is rescued from the Dursleys' by muggles and adopted. There's just one problem: the person who adopted him doesn't exist.
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1523888/1/

There are so many reasons I shouldn't like this fic, but I was fascinated and sucked into it. Abused!Harry's piss me off, but barely play a role here. Child!Harry's where we take forever and redo the canon years are rarely interesting. Super-powerful Harry with elite rare special familiar is a tired cliche. Merlin as mentor is another.

And in spite of these things, this fic really works. It's not really a crossover with anything but all sorts of other creations pop up in this, including Ranma, the Luggage from Discworld, Xander from Buffy I think had a line, and probably a bunch more animes I'm not familiar with. And it's got one of the better sorting scenes than I've read in a while.

I can see how this fic could easily take any of a dozen turns for the worse, and the update schedule has been very sketchy (almost 3.5 years, 14 chapters and less than 30K words) but so far I'm far more intrigued and interested than I expected.

4.5/5 for me.

 

What a coincidence that I re-read this yesterday

Anyway, the writing is decent and I kinda like the plot, but it's filled with a bit too many holes, then there's also the matter of update rate...

I'll give it an 3/5, worth a read but not all that great.

 

I did read it a long time ago and it has definitely no new ideas... but this is in the HP-Fandom always rare. Interesting is the overall concept and how the author works with the ideas and the persons... and this is what I liked.
I didn't realise he references to other animes and books before... but you're right. They're there and subtle.

All in all a story with great potential... for the good and the worse. But if the author gets a real new plot this would be awesome. So it's a good read.

4/5

 

Lightning, when it started being written, it was probably full of new ideas. The author just has several stories going, and I believe said at one point that they didn't have much inspiration for this one.

It has come to a general faultering point though, hasn't it. If the initial idea was to have Harry raised by this guy, that parts over. Now the author has to either re-write the series, or copy it nearly word for word.

But 4/5 so far.

 

I remember this fic well. I read it a couple of years ago, during the summer.The concepts in it are interesting, but I had dropped it due to low update rates and possible Slash. It decent, I suppose, but I wouldn't really call it DLP worthy.

3/5

 

I remember that fic I have read it about 3 years ago..hmm..Thought it was abandoned... Well when I first came across it I really liked it, right now I would say that it's average and as the update rate is horrible, only 3/5 from me..

 

It's amusing. I'm always up for a good "multi-verse" story and at least this one doesn't have vampires so far.

Extra points for the non-vampire story.

3.5/5

 

This has been updated recently.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1523888/15/Strains_of_Melody

hoshi-tachi has a competent writing style. I would like to to steal the way she wrote Malediction, yet another of her thirty WIPs.

Obligatory mention of random Japanese, which includes an ancient mage OC who lives in a massive crystal tower whose last name isn't remotely Japanese, and which extends to renaming Harry to Kaze. Later we learn it is Kaze no Kagayaku. The author herself admitted the error of her fangirlism on her profile.

I'm glad the child!Harry passed quickly. What little there was was utterly ham-fisted. Harry is abused, I quote, 'physically and emotionally', all the characters are surprised Harry lets one of them grow close to one of them - and then it ends against all odds before the hurt-comfort could take off.

The super OC turns out to be Merlin.

Too much importance is placed on Snape accepting Harry and overcoming his hatred of James.

There isn't any originality to speak of. It's basically content to be a canon rerun. If the writer intends to deviate from canon, I doubt we will ever find it given how it took her 6 years to write 34,000 words, minus the author's notes, the headings that appear on every update, and the poems.

2/5. All it has is readability, which alone doesn't make a story library-worthy.

 

I read this quite some time ago, and while I found it memorable it wasn't for the right reasons. Now, whenever I see it updated I scowl and skip over it in the listings. This of course means that it could have improved since the last time I've slogged through it, but I highly doubt it.

All the good English in the world cannot a good story make. This story doesn't have much going for it beyond the fact that the English isn't cringeworthy. The plot evokes more than enough grimaces of pain to make up for that. I found nothing terribly original about this story. I do not pretend to be all knowing about Japanese Anime and such, but the author liberally borrowed characters and concepts with such a relish that I felt ill reading it, it was pointless, it was basically self service.

The story was riddled with cliches, starting with abused Harry, Harry whisked away, random Japanese, Snape focus, ad nauseum.

I'm rather surprised to see this in the DLP library.

1/5