Just finished a full reread of this now that it’s complete.

Acomplete story at 420k words which has a real beginning middle and end?

Practically a miracle.

is it perfect? No. Too many cliches, a couple cracky bits, but overall well written and fun. Should be in the library.

4/5

 

A really nice fic, it's a different Harry he is not immediately all powerful which is nice.
Also the story itself is good, through the last 5 - 6 chapters it become bit too clear to how it gonna end.

In my opinion it's a solid

4/5.

 

Mmh, just like this story, I'm a bit torn about this.
It is definitely worth a read if you got time, which by itself means it's probably 3/5 at least in my heart.
The characters and their dialogue is well written, the drama is engaging sometimes, the humour is funny sometimes, the romance is cute sometimes, the action... not good but serviceable. But overall, it felt like too many things in the same fic. The author couldn't choose one of the plot bunnies running around in his head and just set a net to catch them all and cram them in one box. And I'm not talking about clichés like Daphne, venom wands or The Trunk, honestly I'm fine with those.

My main gripe with this story, is I think it would have worked a lot better if Harry didn't just train and train until he was basically Dumbledore level as a duelist. When you consider everything that happens, how it progresses and how it ends, it could have happened more or less the same way if Harry had been adequately weak, just with less combat and a bit more creativity. It would have cut a lot of the fic that pertains to Harry becoming bad-ass and focused on what this fic does best which is everything else.

What I enjoyed about this story was the drama and romance, although the drama is a bit forced, and the romance kinds of goes nowhere, but that's maybe realistic of a 15 year's old relationship? That I can't judge but it was pleasant to read. The whole harem aspect doesn't actually devolve in a harem at any point, so I didn't end up hating it.

The end comes too abruptly in my opinion. The relation with Narcissa barely made any sense before but it's rushed into this super-central thing that just left me baffled. Tonks is pretty much set to the sidelines even though SHE was central previously, for no reason that I got. All the relationship stuff got put on hold until Harry and Voldemort finally fight, and I didn't really care about that. I wanted the relationships to continue evolving until.. they made sense?

Anyways I'll stick to 3/5.
It's really good in some ways, but it doesn't really do anything new and special, nor does it excel in any way.

 

Started reading this after seeing a bunch of glowing recommendations on reddit. Currently about 10% through, in mid-chapter 4. I don't see cliches per se, but way too much exposition of stuff that is already familiar from the HP world, like the explanation of what the room of requirements is, along with the premise that hardly anyone knows about it (really, it's used so much in so many fics that I'd expect basically everyone knows about it). I like Tonks' personality and wonder if something might happen between her and Harry, but then go omg, he's 15 or 16 and she's in her 20s? Um nope.

There's a disease in a bunch of fics I've read recently where the author writes a lot of words just to be able to hang out with the characters and in the settings, without much of anything happening, interesting observations, or whatever. New Blood was like that and this is similar. The cure is similar: cut about 50%.

I guess I'll finish chapter 4 and then decide whether to continue, maybe after reading more posts from this thread (I read the first dozen or so). I don't feel hooked on the story, except I wouldn't mind having Tonks here in my bedroom with me.

 

Update: I'm through chapter 9 now, 25% in. It gets better after chapter 4, though still drags in places I will probably read it all.

Another update (next day): at chapter 18. Story is mostly a page turner screen scroller by now. This particular chapter (battle at the ministry) has some cringe moments though, and there is an unreliable narrator thing that falls flat.

I would call this story mostly good after chapter 4 and I can recommend it, though it leaves some things to be desired.

 

Ok, I finished reading it. Basic review:

* story concept is good, and becomes more ambitious as the story goes on. Ending was mostly satisfying.
* first 4 chapters are weak and could be chopped or compressed a lot
* there are some repeated cheap literary devices like starting a scene in the middle before telling the reader what is going on, to create bogus suspense. This can work if done once or twice in a story, but here it is done much more frequently and detracts from the work.
* The long winded writing gets better as the story progresses, i.e. the author's writing skills improve with practice. Can't complain about that, I guess.
* story is LONG, 450k words or something like that. I didn't take note of this length before starting. It's as long as LOTR but there is not nearly as much story there. Still, it was a mostly good read
* there are some pretty bad plot holes, some fixable, others harder.
* many small writing gaffes, like referring to "the animagus" when Sirius is in a room with someone, forgetting that the other person is also an animagus.
* There are some protracted wizarding duels (thankfully not too many) that are supposed to be suspenseful, but I tend to find those boring, not just in this story.

I'm going to rate it 3.5, but it could be a solid 4 given a bunch of editing.