This story has pretty much been summed up already. The author had a few good ideas, but the execution of them was bland and boring as hell.

The entire thing almost reads like a history lesson, rather than a story. At no point did I care about Harry, because the way it was written made it impossible to connect with the characters and how they were feeling.

Spoiler

Hell, we find out he killed Tracey, arguably the most important supporting roll, it's in an offhand, emotionless comment.

On top of that, Harry's character takes a 180 at the end, and for reasons unknown the author decided not to take us for the ride. It was just told to us, and we had to accept it.

In a nutshell: Bland writing, devoid of any real emotion and the ending seemed like a drunk battlefield medic patched it on. Poorly.

Edit:

enembee pretty much said what I was trying to. You don't feel any tension or conflict most of the time, like what happens just doesn't matter. Because of this, even though we have a tenuous attachment to the protagonist, we never become emotionally involved with the story.

2.5/5, 3/5 for rating purposes.

 

His writing style still hasn't changed at all.

I think I See Spot. In fact think I see him running.

Generic dramatic one-liner which heralds:

the exposition dump.

Whatever.

Sorry what the fuck? That's how you introduce what seems to be a major character/the love interest? No description, no witty or memorable entrance, not even the smell of rainfall or fruit, just the reference to a scent?

More of that godawful way of telling, not showing. You can see how wide the gap of talent is between Jbern and DW. How mercenaries were presented in Jbern's story and how they're presented here.

I won't criticize the execution because that would be too unkind - there is no execution. This is what you write when you're brainstorming, ie "Harry is tired of magic, reverts to his humble muggle roots".

Aha, he's doing that stylistic thing where you have two sentences starting the same way! Three of writing has enabled him to do this.

Aaaaaaaand there's where you can judge an author in two sentences. Where a decent writer could have made that phase of the story a gem, he skips over a massive chunk of it. This is billed as a one-shot, but it's really just a proper story without the depth of creativity. When I see writers struggle through scenes where they have to wring their creativity for all they're worth, and then I see this kind of cheating, I can only call it laziness.

The protagonist's a douchebag too huh.

Hmm, he died, then rewrote his will, kay.

Wut? I just realized in retrospect I just totally read past the first action scene without realizing it.

It amazes me that someone can be writing for so many years and be so resistant to improvement. You'd think that someone would try to compensate for lack of ability with perfection in the technical details, but no, you don't even get that. All sorts of stupid little errors, grammatical and logical, that add insult to injury.

1.5/5 - 2/5.

I AM OFFEND.