Title: The Wheel Unbroken
Author: TheAnimaniacDude
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Genre: Peggy Sue
Wordses: 56,712
Chapters: 8+
Status: WiP
Linker: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19003756/chapters/45128014

Oh hey look I went in a megathread and found some misappropriated library thread posts.

4/5

 

Ok, so I’m caught up with this.

The author does a lot of things right, here. The characters, technical quality, world building, and even story itself are all pretty on point here. I feel like they’ve done an excellent job laying out the world as we knew it at the end of season 8 and then showing us how it progressed without pages of “Jon did this, then Jon did this, and then Jon fucked every woman ever.”

Where the whole thing fails and loses a point, is that we’ve basically been shown the end, and it’s kind of underwhelming. The author showed his hand too soon, and it’s made everything feel a little boring as a result. That said, we could be in for a twist and I’m hoping so, because the writing quality is there.

4/5

 

5/5 so far. A bit wary of any loops that are too heavy on magic, but the author has done a good job showing warging as not a free lunch. Nice little bits of lore strewn around too.

 

Solid stuff! 4/5. Good writing, though nothing exceptional. But, it is very enjoyable in the way well written peggy sue stories are.

This was actually my first GoT fic, and I have neither read the books or watched a single episode - so beyond reading the wiki I have no clue if anything is correct. Thus, I'm not sure if the characters are well written in terms of being accurate to their canon selves. I get the feeling though, that this is much more lighthearted than GoT in general - less grimdarkiness.

I'm going to echo what was said before about the plot, i.e. that some elements were revealed too quickly, but it may not hurt the plot too much depending on what direction the next "life" takes.

 

Enjoyable level of writing, Jon seems like he should be, plot is intriguing.
As said earlier, the main worry is that the elimination of the main villain seems to happen too quickly. Hopefully, there are more depth to the story planned.

4/5 so far, with potential for 5/5 if the story maintains its current level.

 

Imagine my surprise on opening this and finding that I had read it and just had to catch up on the latest chapter.

Peggy-sue ad nauseam is my particular weakness due to a long-abiding family habit of watching Groundhog Day most christmasses. Regardless of the quality of writing, I'll give it a go. Generally speaking, I think the conceit brings out the best in fanfiction writers. The author's love for their favourite characters can be warped into horrible and unbeatable challenges that they fail against, compared to the usual wank, because the author isn't afraid of having their character lose. Purple days, Shane T's Harry Potter one and, of course, Mother of Learning are all stories that I've enjoyed - and I think it's almost entirely because of this.

I offer this preamble as a defence because I really like this story. And it's not even that far in yet. There is every possibility that it will turn to shit, but at present, it's completely my jam. However, I am optimistic that it won't. The author from his/her ANs is reading the series scripts and respecting the TV series canon, even while he completely disagrees with their direction (in both senses of the words). He appears to have a deep understanding of the setting - and he appears to have written it without knowing that Purple Days existed, which I take to mean that he is not a fan who is recreating something without much hope of succeeding.

The story itself:

It's technically well written, with a good copy-edit.

The characterisations of the secondary characters to me (a non-book reader) seem on good form. Theon has the easy dickish of his pre-reek years, Stannis is suitably stern and so on and so forth.

John himself is introspective but suitably action-focussed. It doesn't take too long before we have some of the important details of the time-loop, and a suitably intimidating antagonist. John quickly decides to do something about it, but it's definitely an uphill battle and the knowledge of the peaceful post-defeat of the others time from which he comes keep offering up little nuggets of emotion or loss which are affecting.

There's some good action, and it's building quickly so that I'm excited to see what comes next. In ASOIAF, there's a lot of opportunity for John to learn some magics, or politick and be involved in Essoss and Westeros shenanigans, all while dealing with white walkers 2.0 and Daenerys and every issue he remembers from his run through canon. In this time-loop format, it's exciting that we don't get to choose, he'll probably do all of it.

I like it, it's good, so it's a 4/5 for me. It's worth reading, and when the story has progressed a little further it might be better than that, it might become something greater.

 

While the initial villain is pretty dangerous there’s still the whole standard set of Game of Thrones enemies as well as the Others. There’s no shortage of foes for Jon.

 

That's a good point well made.
I think my issue was comparing the format to Purple Days, a mistake given the fics' differences.
My problem with this is still that I don't feel that anything is teased beyond the current (as of chapter 8) villain. I might have missed something, but I feel I should have some sort of rough idea after 60k words.

I do hope the point of the fic is not simply "defeat the Others or the world is ruined". The similarity with Purple Days (perhaps the most known time loop fic in ASOIAF) would not exactly make the premise more new and exciting.

Apologies, if this discussion is out of bounds for a review thread.

 

I like the premise and the dynamics between characters. I was pleasantly surprised by what the author did with

Spoiler

Theon. I think I was conditioned to expect Theon to be as idiotic and naive about his place in the world as almost every other fics present him. Not saying they don't have a point, but this fic managed to do something with him I haven't seen yet.

The conflict between the Three Eyed Raven and Jon is interesting and going on at a great pace. Might be an unpopular opinion here, but I didn't mind the villain reveal being so early. As it is, I doubt he is the main villain anyway, as some of the author's notes implied there will be more conflicts to come in many parts of the world.

I agree with this. Jon's time in the South showed that other political players can bring conflict into the story organically, which I loved. In fact, I can't wait to see how the author handles those bits, if I'm being honest.

I'm not going to lie, there were some moments in which I thought Jon was shown to be better just because he's the main character and/or the author's favorite. This didn't lessen my enjoyment of the fic at all, but I think the writing of the parts like people being impressed by Jon's physical strength and magical potential could have been better. It's fine that Jon is better, and there are some things we don't know about Jon's situation that might contribute to his strengths, so there's a foundation for that. I guess such things become more obvious when you like everything else in a scene.

Again, this was a very minor nitpick, and it could be just me that felt like it for all I know.

(On another note, I couldn't help but have flashbacks to Harry finding out about Dumbledore's evil ways, shouting out loud and swear vengeance during a particular part of the story.)

I like what the author is doing with magic. Some things are teased and they seem to be stepping stones for greater stories in the future. It also doesn't seem strange that Jon would be getting involved with the magical elements of the setting, and side characters during these parts are written well.

Spoiler

I hope Varamyr's interest in Catelyn leads to a mini-storyline, down the line. The potential for interesting dynamics between Jon, Catelyn and Varamyr is there.

4/5 from me.

 

I had actually only read up to chapter 7 before. Now checked out chapter 8, and goddamn, everything that was missing before has snapped into place.

Going to up my rating to a 5/5