This fic really has me going in two ways. On one hand, the story itself is a guilty pleasure at best, riddled with little problems that add up and become a detriment to the overall quality of the story. On the other hand, the world-building is superb. It really feels like a sci-fi world instead of the future-wank so many science-fiction stories tend to turn out to be.

Harry's constraints on his magic are painfully contrived and his character is inconsistent at the best of times. Mostly he acts like a teenager, but then he has bouts where he acts like he's lived for 100+ years, however brief those moments are. He "brought the world to its knees" and the author seems to think Harry is this evil, repulsive bastard who you can't help but hate. In actuality, I've seen Harrys more deranged than this in generic harem stories.

Harry's proclivities make me laugh every time they come up. Whenever he acts "evil" I laugh. It's what keeps me looking forward to the next chapter, and really makes the story for me. Without it, I doubt I would have made it past the first two or three chapters.

On the technical side, there are a handful of tense issues in each chapter, and some misused phrases. If he had a native or native-like English speaker go over his work it would go far to smooth out the wrinkles and turn the writing into something worthy of note. As it is right now it's better than average, but unrefined.

The world itself is wonderful. It's refreshing to not have ships exceeding the speed of light, and humanity's progress is believable. I felt like I was coming up for air when it was revealed that humanity hadn't progressed past the solar system. There is no real attempt to explain the technology, but what few brief mentions there are jive well with my knowledge of physics, with the one exception of the control ring.

All in all, I'd give the world itself a 4.5/5 and round down. I'd give the story a 2/5 for the inanity and inconsistencies, but I find myself enjoying this romp through the galaxy regardless of the problems it has, not for the world itself, or the story being told, but for the times where something that would normally be so despicable appears, and comes off as nothing more than humorous.

It's not something I would recommend to someone. It's not hilariously bad, and it's not all that close to good, but it manages to be enjoyable, and something I would semi-jokingly send to someone already into fanfiction.

3/5

 

So am I the only one who got an alert for this story for a chapter that doesn't seem to exist?

Also, I think this story is probably not going to be updated for a while (or abandoned completely, looking at the authors track record) as the authors page lists it as 'inactive', whatever that means. He was also talking about writing a new story in the latest chapter. I'm somewhat annoyed, as the story had a good update rate and was definitely readable.

 

It had a new chapter listed in the main archive, couldn't access it, but later it went down with all the other stories from today, somethings wrong with FF.

 

He said that it feels like writing a new story, not that he actually was. Besides itw as listed as inactive before this recent influx of updates, so I wouldn't worry too much.

EDIT: The story is now updated, and Fatality got it right, the guy is starting a new story. My bad.

-SK

 

Since he's already come back once after a long hiatus, it's likely he'll come back to it again. Personally I prefer a series of quick updates over a couple weeks with long breaks between than a consistent one update per month rate. This way when the fic starts updating again I can read a few chapters back to refresh myself and be all set, instead of constantly needing to either deal with foggy memories or reread chapters.

 

Welp, that's a day of revision lost to the internet. Again.

I enjoyed it. You could tell that English isn't the author's first language, but the mistakes aren't too terrible - the only ones that really stood out to me were any irregular verbs got mangled sometimes.

Whilst I don't hunt out rapist!protagonist fics, I don't stop reading just because of them. And this handles a rapey Harry reasonably well. We all know he's a rapist, it gets mentioned quite a bit. And we don't get warnings from the author before it happens (I have seen 'rape' tags around scenes before). And whilst these scenes don't necessarily contribute hugely to the overall plot, they do sometimes show character development. And we only see those scenes - there aren't any rape scenes thrown in just to show how nasty Harry is (after the first), which means it isn't too nasty.

I'll agree, however, with the fact this isn't truly Harry Potter. This bears quite a resemblance to the 'Lost Fleet' series, only the time-locked hero's speciality is magic, rather than tactics (in fact, the author mentions the Lost Fleet as one of his influences). Using Harry Potter does give a large amount of backstory though.

I loved the little mentions we got of artificing early on - the creation of the blood-revolver was awesome, and something I hadn't seen before.

One of the things buzzing through my head whilst reading this was the similarity to Doghead Thirteen's Top Dog mega-crossover universe. With a bit of tweaking around, this could possible fit in as a sidestory of Harry Johnson before the Hogwarts Collegium.

Very entertaining, with several excessive scenes, and imperfect English - 4/5. BUT, easily not everyone's cup of tea.

 

I glanced through it earlier, the plot feels like it belongs in a 99p spaceship game. Essentially: start as a novice on a shitty ship, rape and kill your way up to a better ship, repeat.

I enjoyed it, but I had to skip large parts at a time and just read bits that didn't bore me within a sentence or two (skipping shit like "Turn on the lasers!! TURN ON THE CANNONS!! ROTATE SO THEY HIT OUR OTHER SIDE!!" when it goes on for more than a few lines)

Hard to say what to rate it as, because I probably would glance through updates in the future just for the lulz. 3/5 I suppose.

 

Never insult the plot of a classic space opera novel. We know where you live.

Seriously though, I can name tens of good novels that follow this premise (WJW's Dread Empire's Fall comes to mind). It simply works, so quit your bitching.

 

I read through this story and while I'm not a big fan of science fiction myself, I can enjoy a good blending of magic and technology from time to time. From that aspect the story is good. Harry uses various magic to strengthen his ship or assist in his mission or simply to fight, but he doesn't really create technology using magic except for those guns of his.

As for the rapist!Harry; I don't really mind. It actually serve the plot and it is not in excessive quantity so far.

What truly amaze me about the author is his ability to turn our expectations upside down. He finds unusual way of doing certain things or build up tension up to a certain point and bam, you thought Harry would succeed only for him to encounter another difficulty.

4/5 for me.

 

I read this a while back, and it was pretty good. But you find our real quick that this guy loves dirty smut...not that i don't.

But i think he killed the story when it became more about Harry getting his butt hole munched on by a nurse (he goes in depth) then about...w/e the plot was, i forgot.

3/5 for good writing, but i think the in depth dirty smut killed what liking i had for it.

 

Just thought I'd post this in case anyone can't find the story anymore. The author or the admins seem to have deleted it from FF.net so you can now find it here at another site.

Kind of annoying as that sites layout seems to be pretty terrible, but whatever.

 

Sad that the story seems to be abandoned now, despite whatever flaws it had it was pretty much completely unique.

 

Actually, the author just posted a new chapter yesterday I think. Like I said, it's on the new site though - the one I linked to in the post above yours.

 

If you have an account Fatality, maybe you should let him know PC exists? shouldn't we try to spread the word more?

 

I don't actually have an account on that site (for good reason - it looks pretty bad, honestly) but his FF.net account still exists. Apparently he just deleted the one story because he didn't want to risk being banned in the crackdown or something. I'll try sending him a message there though, in any case.

 

It has officially been abandoned according to an authors note at the bottom of the last chapter.
I bid farewell to this enjoyable story.

 

Actually, the author stated "You have come to the end of this version of The Star Empire. This is an abandoned work and it will not be continued."

So, who knows there maybe a rewrite and continuation in the near future.

 

Oh yeah, when I was talking to the author about putting the story up on PC (which he didn't seem to be interested in, unfortunately - something about quality control, I think? I told him he didn't need to worry about that, but he hasn't yet replied) he said the story was now also posted on adultfanfiction.net (sigh...).

Not sure if this version is also abandoned or not (though there isn't a note saying that or anything) but here is the link he gave me.

 

What I took from that is that he had abandoned it and we would not see it anymore in a recognizable form. Personally I hope there is a rewrite but I doubt it.

 

He explicitely states there that he abandoned the story.