Quick question, the newest chapter has Harry having the favor of the Steward of Gondor for returning the body of Earnur. Was he the king who was featured in Eorl's father's story in chapter 26?

 

I’m rereading this and I thought I remembered there being a map of Harry’s progress but now i can’t find it. Am I misremembering and if not does anybody have a link?

 

https://forums.darklordpotter.net/posts/902197/

This it? A bit out of date.

 

Okay full review. This opinion won't be popular but that's life.

I enjoyed nothing about this story, and that disappointments me because I really wanted to enjoy it. 2/5 rounded up.

So some history here. Two or so years ago I took my first attempt at reading this fic, and I dropped after about 6 chapters. At the time I found the ham-fisted potions 101 cure all plot device to be an absolute deal breaker. This time I went in with the understanding that this aspect of the story I would not enjoy. With the internal realization that this is LOTR and if Gandalf says you shall not pass... you shall not pass. I gave it a pass. Just like I would shit syntax and grammar in a translated web-novel.

Unfortunately it was not enough, there was no diamond in the rough. As The Shadow of Angmar is all shortcuts and lazy plotting/writing.

Story
For me The Shadow of Angmar is a story that doesn't know what it wants to be. In my eyes it has no identity and no awareness of promises it makes and proceeds to break to the reader. It is the story of a young man trapped in a world not his own; and often these types of stories fall under two particular types of the MICE Quotient:

Character driven:

Having the main character there to act as a counterpoint to the world they find themselves in. Eventually leading the reader through how they melded themselves into this world and made it their own, giving the story a natural conflict for the Protagonist to overcome.

or

Milieu:

Which is less about the characters journey itself, instead it uses the characters journey to showcase to world. We are less concerned with the character arcs, instead we care about the coming and the goings of the world at large. Because in a Milieu story the Character leaves the new world in the end.

Unfortunately, after Two-Hundred Thousand words I still do not know what type of story Steelbadger is trying to tell. At the start it promised to be a Milieu. Yet, I lean towards Character driven, and, the only reason I say that - is because I do no not believe Steelbadger approached this with a plan. If I thought this was written by someone who had a plan, several of the aspects within the writing - that I will speak to in the future - would scream this to not be a Character driven story.

So as to why I think this is supposed to be Character driven story and where it fails.

It is established early on that Harry wants to go home. The whole first arc is dedicated to him powering up enough to hopefully get some information from the source of his teleportation. However, the author decided to ignore One-Hundred thousand words of build up and epilogue the whole entire conflict away, with an approx Seven-Hundred year time skip.

Throughout the early parts of Harry's adventure we, the reader, are fed little information about he world that Harry is now apart. We are rushed from one part of the world to the next with minimal effort to make the world around Harry feel alive. All this journey does is serve to show Harry having time to learn about the world around him, to help him in his initial quest to find the way to get home.

Every part of that says Character driven story to me, there is no focus on the world around us, it is all about Harry's quest.

I will explain the areas where The Shadow of Angmar fails the reader from a story perspective.

The First Failing is in the percentage of filler characters that outside of minuet portions of arc one will have no real impact upon the story. Due to certain plot elements outside of Saruman and the Elves, every character that is introduced in the first arc is obsolete - which ties in heavily with the second failing, but I will get to that later. The Shadow of Angmar is not a story set over months or years, or even decades but centuries. And because every character that is not immune to old age is effectively filler every character that is there to show Harry the world is essentially never to be seen again.

The problem with this is that if you as a reader are not heavily invested in reading Harry getting from point A to point B, there is literally nothing to keep you reading.

The Second Failing is that the Shadow of Angmar is not aware of the story it is promising to the reader. Due to the fact we have no other characters we can safely connect to, we are 100% invested in Harry's journey. Except over the course of about Two Chapters we lose the only tether that had been created by that point. Harry hunting the Witch King. Except as mentioned earlier it randomly becomes an epilogue because - and I can only assume - the author got bored and realized that this was not in fact the story he wanted to tell. So we epilogue and skip centuries into the future. Hence the no planning and my assertion the Author got lazy.

The Shadow of Angmar is a Character driven story, but one that clearly has no idea the story it promised or is even attempting to tell.


Plot

Plot is driven by conflict, Harry is Immortal with a capital I. As a result Harry dying is not a concern for the reader; which obviously means that when Harry is in a fight it is not the conflict. Therefore we need other aspects to latch onto. Is he fighting to protect the people around him? Not really, they will all wither away and die within the next time skip.

Is the conflict about watching Harry deal with the realization he is Immortal, and will have to watch everyone who isn't an elf or wizard die? No, because we time skip all of that.

The only real driving force behind the plot is Harry wanting to go home. Except we time skipped that as well, and we never got to see Harry have to deal with the consequences of the answers he got or didn't get from the Which King. Instead we are thrust into the future to witness the Crusade against the Orcs.

And so I have to ask... who the fuck cares? This is not Harry sitting in on all the historical events of middle earth and essentially being a glorified Gary Stu fix-it all. Or at least, that is not what the first One-hundred thousands words promised me. How does this crusade help Harry get home? It doesn't it serves no purpose, and I can easily see this degenerating into a Harry replaces Gandalf and the ring is destroyed by Harry because wouldn't that just be cool.

And I wont even rant on how the potions completely ruined an excellent character defining moment with his disfigurement among other things. Because a wish fufillment Gary Stu cannot be disfigured, oh no, oh my.


Characters

Not much to really say here that wouldn't be reiterating what was already said. Harry is the Immortal good guy that is revolutionizing middle earth. There isn't a three dimensional character in the story. Only a elf "waifu" who is absent for 85-90% of the first arc, and only exists to fuel the imaginations of horny teens everywhere.

Grammar

I don't rate or judge grammar. Is fine though.

Conclusion

I really don't like it, and I don't understand how people can say it is good. But such is life.

EDIT - Changed wording around Milieu to avoid confusion, realized I made a few logical leaps. Without explaining myself.