you know it's been as long for me, and I still find myself annoyed by little bits like that.

 

The teaser is good, confusing, but i'm sure it'll be explained.

Enjoyed Unholy thoroughly as it's the best take on DE/Apprentice Harry i've read, but with a different twist. I'm not a fanboy, but Jono is 'not' a prick.

If anyone could be bothered to go on his Yahoo Group, he's explained that..

1) He passed his Uni exams back in June, ended up drunk & woke up in Blackpool.
2) His Beta's have lives and want to enjoy summer too.
3) He's been up & down the country, suffering for lagre periods of time without the internet.
4) I'd like to see a few people knock out chapters the size he does every month that near-perfect. Good luck, I still figure you'll cave.

I guess he does have too many Beta's, but eh, it works for him, so leave him be.

 

I have located the passage from Unholy Land which is the cause of all my woes.

This shows us several things:

1. The Dark Knight was magically skilled as well as a good fighter: he was able to create the stun baton, an enchanted item which impressed many in the story. Harry has not only matched this, but also surpassed it, as he was able to modify the baton to improve it. So Harry is magically skilled as well as physically so. So Harry should be able to do the Hogwarts curriculum with ease.

2. Harry has absorbed all of the Dark Knight's skills, to their full extent. Moreover, and most importantly, he is able to use them without succumbing to the Dark Knight's temperament. He has full control and mastery of them. This means that the two excuses Jono has used for Harry's incompetence do not wash: firstly, that Harry is less competent than the Dark Knight was, and secondly that Harry fears to access those abilities for fear of "going dark".

There is no reason for Harry to be as "canon" as he is.

Basically, in Promised Land Jono reset Harry's characterisation and abilities back to his pre-Unholy Land state, presumably to make conflict easier to write. It wouldn't do to have Harry go all out and beat Grindelwald on his first attempt. No, we have to have an unrealistic build-up of tension leading to a predictable climax, so Harry must be downgraded so that he can slowly become strong again.

It's not a sequel, it's a rewrite of Unholy Land, set in a different AU.

I realise I've said this loads now, but it just annoys me so much when a great story produces such a lame sequel.

 

QFT man. I think Jono is just trying to add crapload of teenage angst into this. Even Katie's character a played a bit thick. Neville was cool though.

 

To be fair though, the story is set in the OOTP timeline/universe where canon Harry was pretty angsty(Canon!Harry = AU!Katie).

 

I agree with most of the general sentiment here. Basically, at the end of the first story we had a hero with enough skills, power, and intelligence to defeat a pretty damn impressive Voldemort. You'd think you'd have something similar at the start of the sequel, but instead we're treated to a hero with enough skills, power, and intelligence to act like a bumbling fool, struggling with unimportant, pointless, whiny teenage angst-filled issues.

The problem being we've already established this version of Harry is capable of opening up a can of whoop ass and taking down a Dark Lord. Now we know the real Dark Knight has probably been in Harry's body, or in Harry's own world, tearing the place to pieces. Maybe working with Voldemort again, maybe not. But instead we have to deal with teenage angst bullshit? Are we supposed to give two shits about Rita Skeeter writing that Harry and Katie are a couple? We know, without a doubt, that this Harry has to leave this world and go back to his own. He's learned to fight, kick-ass, and kill when he has to.

So what? We have an epic length sequel where he has to learn to care? To love and rise above the darkness? I just think this storyline and plotline would work so much better cutting out this middle story and just having the two. One in the changed world, where Harry grows up. And one in the real/canon world where he returns and faces an even greater challenge.

Okay. This has been said a million times and I just said it again. Sorry about that and cheers if you read it all again.

Ignoring the usual stuff, I would like to reiterate that after re-reading the ending of Unholy Land, and the last full chapter posted, Jono really does a nice job writing and describing a pretty clear and brutal battle. The action sequences get my blood racing, the attacks, even the excessive use of muggle weapons like swords and daggers sound good.

And even that long explanation with Harry and Headmaster Riddle telling Katie the truth, etc... It was written pretty well I thought. While I may dislike this unnecessary drama!Harry, the scenes still go together well. And there are so few fics of this length and breadth still in progress, that I've stopped trying to place my personal preferences on how things should be handled.

It's made reading the fic far more enjoyable and palatable.

If you're not following what I mean, think of it this way: If I see a WIP fic with five chapters posted, I will constructively examine it in a different way than if I just read the first five chapters of a finished fic.

That is to say you care more, and think about how you'd do it differently when your criticisms, reviews, or comments can actually affect future updates. But when the decisions have been made, the outline, plan, and levels of pussy-emo!Harry are set in stone, you just read it and enjoy it for what it is.

And there are few fanfics I'm enjoying as much as this one. I'd still give this 4/5 right now, and I'd be surprised if it's not back up to 5/5 by the end of this fic.

 

He modifed it. While still impressive, not ground breaking.
And all Harry did was enlarge it to be sword length. Not really all that skilled.

You dont really know that. All Harry said was that he wasnt going to become the other Harry, or let the evil Harry take over like with the Vamps.

Different situations really. Unholy land he had nothing to lose. His parents and sister were gone and it was an all or nothing battle. He wasnt going home until it was over.

He had full control over the abilities that he was able to remember. The lessons got cut short before he could complete the whole past memory training.

Remember that Harry was suffering from 'Phoenix Fever' for awhile.
I think it started around Borgins(maybe just after) till after the RA was busted. That was most of the battles he did.

And Grindelwald was much more skilled and educated than Voldemort. So beating Voldie doesnt make him equal to Grindel. Two different styles(Voldie-Grindel). And Grindel doesnt mind using Muggle methods(swords).

 

How do you assume that Voldemort is more skilled or educated? The books said the Voldemort was the worst Dark Lord in a century. If Harry can beat Voldemort, Grinde shouldn't be too much of a stretch.

 

I said that Grindel was.
And the Books are from a different world.
EDIT-- Plus those books were made after something like 11years of terror in Britain.
Grindel had all of Europe in his hand. He did what took Voldie over a decade to do and on a larger scale.

Grindel didnt die till Katie so thats like 50 or 60 years of training.
Voldie is about 50 yrs old. So thats 39 yrs of training.

 

Actually I'm fairly certain at the end of Unholy Land that it said that he had all of the Dark Knight's skills.

 

Grrr, all this talk makes me want an update.

Had a thought about Harry being weaker in this story, it's a poor explanation but considered it and thought I'd toss it out into the void. Self-fulfilling prophecies. It's a corruption of the original idea but I think it evokes the same feeling. Harry lands in a world, talented and powerful the Dark knight we've grown to love. He sees that the Harry of this world is a Neville replacement, perhaps even worse. In trying to live up to these low expectations he dooms himself to actually lowering his standards for himself and his abilities. No one expects him to be great and so he isn't.

As I said, crap explanation, but a possible one. Mind it makes me a little less fond of Harry's character as such would mean that he so easily impacted by public perception. Still, it is a reasonable human response.

Then it could be merely an attempt to try and prop up a flaw in the writing, also likely. Still, as I started in saying, I find myself now wanting to read it again.

 

From what I've heard, Jono has a pretty expansive beta process, so much so that the finished product is far different from the unbeta'ed version. For the sake of continuity and such, giving us an unbeta'ed chapter would be confusing, because everyone would be like, "Didn't such and such already happen?"

"Oh, that was from an unbeta'ed chapter."

 

2 months to beta??? Fuck War and Peace, sounds like he wants to challenge Ayn Rand.

 

Good point. An unbeta'ed version would probably by nasty as shit considering it goes through four-month beta'ing.

 

He could always release what he has now and just release the completed beta'ed version when its done.

 

If you will look on his group he asked if that is what people wanted him to do. Apparently his beta is on vacation right now.