This author arguably wrote the best Pokemon fanfiction by bring realism into that universe. The writing here is definitely solid. The author seems to be doing what he did with his Pokemon fic, the people are not unrealistically stupid like in canon.

The only bad comment I have is that the pacing is way too slow. There's 33k words, but nothing really happened. I really hope the pace picks up soon.

 

I pretty much agree with this, except that I felt that the first two chapters were fairly necessary for background info and such. Granted, they could have been shorter but not having them at all would leave us hanging.

 

While D&D 3.0 is not exactly where I would choose to take a magic system from if I was going to be writing a story; I can still a least see that J.K.'s world completely lacked any form of cohesion when it came to it's magic.

That said even with only 3 chapters I find myself disliking the characterization. Not one character really stands out from the rest. Draco feels almost just the same as Hagrid, who seemed nothing like himself.

3/5.

 

Ellisande, look at some storys in the lib. Most of them were posted in "For review" after 5 000+ words. But it was from established members of DLP, so noone was bitching.
As of characterization. I disagree. It's really good, that someone with good writing skills started to describe Hagrid like adult. but Sparkly Hufflepuff Hagrid is really the best:awesome

 

Hagrid's lower intelligence makes sense. He's a half giant, and from what we've seen, Giants aren't the brightest creatures in the universe. Doesn't stop the guy from being awesome though.

This guy 'isn't' the Hagrid I enjoy reading about.

Spoiler

I'm glad that so far Luna is still the same age as in canon, and that's something. I do dislike that Harry gets stupid for about five minutes while Tracey's brother conveniently explains the benefit of having a friend in each house. No shit sherlock. I thought he was already doing that on the train.

 

PS was 76k, and it told a story from one end to the other. This is 33k, and we've only gotten through the introduction.

Since there are so few stupid characters here, I bet that at least one of the main plot points will be triggered by someone holding the Idiot Ball. It's inevitable in a story like this.

I honestly don't like Luna at all in this. The author introduced her far too early; First Girl Wins (or whatever the title is) will probably be in effect, and while I liked the scene as a way to show how magic can end badly, I think it still would've been done better with a character Harry wouldn't remember.

Since I'm remembering that scene, did it feel weird to anyone else that Harry would break out of the house just to find a charm? And that he would do it in the middle of the night?

 

We've got through the sorting. The sorting in PS ends at page 97 out of 223. Just before half way.

 

With the way Hermione used this new magic system to repair his glasses we can expect round based duels where the opponents can drink a tea while reading spells to smite the other. I devine that I'll be yawning a lot in future chapters if I can convince myself to read them.

P.S. I don't like his characterizing either. But I already had that problem in Wit of the Raven story where some characters just felt completely wrong.

 

I think fighting will be more intense once Harry's secret is out, or we watch someone duel against Voldemort. Someone will have/must have already thought out a way of fighting that doesn't make it a curbstomp. Maybe they make weapons and fight to the death with those? Or maybe duelling just isn't a part of their society at large.

 

So far, I find this story enjoyable. The writing is way above the average found on ffn and the characters are well written.

I am looking forward to the interaction between Harry and his roommate. It's going to be interesting, to say the least.
I also wonder how the character of Hermione, Snape, Dumbledore and Voldemort will be portrayed. Will she be the annoying know-it-all we know from PS? Will Snape be the spiteful bastard? Most importantly, will Dumbledore and Voldemort be a senile old fool and an insane sociopath we know from most of fanfics or will there be some depth to them?

Speaking of Dumbledore, I wonder whether, or rather when, he will find out that Harry is a sorcerer.

As to the wizarding world and it's monetary system I like the introduction of Peregrine (although why platinum, why not adamantium or some rare crystal?), however the exchange rate between knuts, sicles and galleons is a bit off to me.
It's a British monetary system. Don't expect it to be easy. Or logical:

Besides that, I like the way time and space is bent in wizarding world, as well as how common illusions are. Not just the ceiling of the Great Hall but every blood window in Hogwarts. Diagon Alley being in a pocket universe or somewhere outside of London.

All in all, I find The Sword and The Sorcerer to be a well-written story that is a real pleasure to read.
I might be biased, as I was recently browsing through ff.net searching for something good to read, but it's a strong 4,5 to me, rounded up to 5.

@semkar
Duels in D&D books between wizards tend to be fast-paced. It was mentioned, that wizards can prepare a spell beforehand and cast it instantaneously with a trigger word.

 

I just caught up reading it.

Spoiler

It's interesting, although some plot hooks in the beginning haven't gone anywhere yet, and I was kind of confused why Harry seemed unable to use his sorcery in the hut on the rock or where the letter in the vault came from.

 

@EsperJones

I'll take a wild guess: water grounding magical energies??

 

That may be true; I know nothing of D&D.

However, the reason Harry gave in the fic was that the room was small and he had nowhere to practice magic without the Dursleys seeing.

 

From what I know of D&D 3.5, which is the most recent system where there are common casters that use a spellbook in this manner for everything (4.0 has more or less streamlined everything away from that system), there is no automatic heating effect that comes from just using magic, even in the flavor text. In addition, there are many spells which do not need components (Spells may or may not have Verbal, Somatic, or Material components). I'm not too well versed on 3.0 or earlier editions, but it seems to me there are some significant differences here even from the place the system originates.

However, I think that concerns about snoozer wizard's duels are unwarranted. It seemed to me that Hermione did not have her "Mend" cantrip prepared, and so had to spend all the time preparing the spell, and then casted it. Typically competent wizards will have many "spell slots" per day, into which they will prepare multiple and various offensive, defensive, and misc spells just after waking up. For the rest of the day, a wizard can cast any of these "prepared spells" once spending only a couple seconds on it.

A wizard's duel is actually an extremely fast paced and worryingly deadly event where lots of really intense stuff stored up for the day is flung back and forth as fast as the wizards can activate the spells, and it would be extremely rare for one to last more than a minute or so (this is partly because the nature of offensive spellcraft in 3.5 is much more lethal than what we see in the HP-verse).

 

Has the author actually said that he's basing the magic on DnD, or is it just something that seems like DnD magic?

Also, I bet that casting time is a lot quicker for people with more than a 3rd year's education.

 

Hey everyone, I've got to say that I'm a little surprised by how quickly this one found itself on the forum. First, I appreciate all of the (constructive) criticism, and everyone keeping it civil, although I think we might have jumped the gun on this one a little bit.
Nothing against anyone here, but as any of you who've even glanced at the Sun Soul (or that other story I'm working on) know, I'm a big fan of long stories, foreshadowing, and Chekov's guns. S&S isn't going to be any different and there are several plot elements which will only become apparent in the future. Events in the prologue, for example, might not be felt again until arc two and some of the events witnessed as early as chapters two and three won't come into play until as late as arc six.
At any rate, thanks for reading!
Oh, and a quick note on the magic... I am basing it off a structure similar to D&D's 3e, with several ideas (such as arcane heat and aspects yet to be introduced) borrowed from the Scarred Lands setting.
Peace.

 

30K is actually the cut off mark I used in Dresden WBA to move a story from snippet level to full fledged work. In my personal opinion 30K is enough to recommend, review, etc.

On topic:

Hagrid's character has been a classic 'tell' instead of 'show' plot device - it was tiring to read him and frankly I just skipped the majority of his parts. If I needed a mediocre treatise on magic I would read....well nothing really.

The kids are a little too mature, it would be nice if that was scaled back a little, on the other hand it's a common enough complaint of mine so I've learned to live with it. Harry's plight is interesting in this AU world and I will probably look at this fic again after a couple of chapters.

Main issue is that the story is paced too fast; all the AU elements are stuffed down your throat up front, there's very little development. Storytelling is poor because of this.

So in short: interesting idea, hurried execution. As of now 3/5.

 

I don't know, personally I felt that the writing was slightly off, it made me want to skip ahead. Technically quite good, but the style just didn't capture my intrest.

DnD and HP, huh? The magic systems are far too different. Frankly, using catalysts in HPverse make little sense. Kudos for still making the magic feel 'arcane', which I love, but it's looking to be somewhat confusing.

The friendship 'alliance' with Tracey felt forced. Didn't much care for it.

I have some faith in the author's abilities. If Harry becomes a scholar and goes in-depth into magic instead of stumbling around, I'll probably like this fic. Now, it's teetering beetween 3 and 4, really depending on how things turn out in the future.

 

I don't like this. For some reason, I find myself skipping chunks of the story at a time. The style of writing, while good, doesn't hold my interest.

I'm still stuck at the beginning of chapter 2 and I don't find myself heading forward anytime soon.

Might try to soldier on forward sometime later, but as of now, I would rate it a 3/5.

 

For all the people saying, omg 30k!!! I just want to say that it was 2 chapters and 20k when it was first recommended, and when I posted what I did.

30k, more reasonable. 20k, with 2 chapters of what will be an extremely large fic going by the Sun Soul? No.