450k Words. Wow, that's a lot. But now that I've read it - Wow! That is not enough!

I love the world-building. To many people, they may think that there is a lot of filler or that the story meanders quite a bit but this is one of the very few stories where I loved the extraneous details. Well nearly. I am much more invested in Ryouko's side of the story than those from others' point-of-view but those are few and far between, luckily. The more I read the story the more everything seems to be coming together. All those hints in the earlier chapters, all those questions that I wondered.

Ugh, I'm not sure I can articulate my thoughts on this story very well, so I may come back with an edit. I've only read up to the second arc and I don't want to read further for two reasons. Firstly, I'm terrified the author will abandon it, and the current point is a good place to stop. Secondly, I'd rather binge a whole host of new chapters together and, hopefully re-read the earlier ones if I get the time.

This is one of the best stories I have read - if only because of the world it is set in, the story that is being told and the many ideas that I've been able to consider or had to consider. For example, I went back and forth, as I was reading the story and finding new things out, on whether it was acceptable for this supposed-utopian society to be forcing ten year old girls into a war, when the minimum age-requirement was otherwise 100.

Ah, one negative point. The relatively new pairing. Off-putting. I liked Ryouko because all the romance stuff washed over her. I was hoping it wasn't going to happen.

Secondly, there are quite a lot of (minor or otherwise) plot-threads some of them seemed to have tapered off. (For example, Simona's past seemed sketchy, but perhaps it was a deliberate red herring? Also, the grief-seeds mystery was hardly brought up in the second arc). But, based on how things have gone so far I have faith in the author.

This is a 5/5 for me in terms of all stories and novels I have ever read because it also altered my perspective on the world (or perhaps, reaffirmed it).

 

I watched PMMM for the first time last week and immediately went looking for PMMM fics. I initially passed this story up because it was OC heavy and seemed so far into PMMM's future that it might was well not having anything to do with PMMM. So glad I couldn't track down any good fics and came back to this. I read through all 630k words in about three days (and may have flunked a piece of uni work because of it).

The good:

• The author has clearly written this with a lot of planning. Long plot arcs are getting resolved (as new ones open up) and tie together in a manner that could only be achieved with careful planning.
• The world is detailed and has done a pretty good job at looking at a transhumanist society.
• The world isn't perfect. Far too many stories in the future have the world created exactly match up with the author's belief system.
• Everyone is flawed and a lot of poor wishes are made.

The bad:

• The world was once described as "libertarian". No way. It certainly has a technolibertarian bent in some areas but it's certainly not libertarian. Other things like economic theory (just throwing out words like capitalists to describe things) need to be research and/or described better.
  
• The divine purpose plot line is a bit annoying. Mostly in regards to how secretive Madoka is being yet at the same time showing the MC more than anyone else.

It helps that I read this with PMMM songs going.
--- Post automerged ---
I'm re-reading the first few chapters because I rushed them in an effort to decide if the fic was readable.

I'm concerned about the socio-political situation:

• You can't join the military (magical girls excepted) unless you're 100.
• You can't become a colonist without 30 years military service (effectively until you're 130).
  
• Overpopulation is a serious issue so they issue child licences.

This does not make sense.

 

I stumbled onto this during a wiki walk of TVTropes - it's got quite the page over there, and some of the descriptions got me curious. I ended up reading all ~800K words over the last week, despite knowing nothing about the source material.

It's the rare fic that I pick up and actually enjoy despite that lack of knowledge, so it seemed worth bumping this.

I think what I liked most about this story is that it does that whole "extrapolated sci fi humanity futuristic utopia" thing with a ton of worldbuilding, but manages to keep things, for the most part, not dry. I've seen a ton of Mass Effect fics absolutely fail at this, with gigantic codex entries and pages and pages of stuff about how the society and military function, all just dry as hell and without really connecting to the story.

Make no mistake, there's a fair bit of infodump here. Pretty early on there's almost an entire chapter that's a character watching a movie about historical events, and every chapter begins with a snippet from an (in-universe) article or book. How To The Stars gets away with this is relevance, perspective, and secrecy. The "codex entries," for lack of a better word, are all pretty relevant to the chapter they preface, and there's also an interesting game-within-a-game of the different levels of redaction / security clearance that lets you do some interesting inference. The "watching a movie" chapter is from the perspective of someone who was actually around for those historic events, and is even in the movie herself, so there's a real element of like... personality and character and perspective to it.

So, while the infodump elements certainly exist, it manages to make them feel interesting, like you want to read them to understand the setting better, and that makes it work.

I think there's also this element of mystery that the story does very well. At the same time you're being introduced to this future, semi-utopian society, you're almost immediately getting hints that not everything is as it seems. There's both a personal, character type mystery, centered around the protagonist, and there's also more grand/societal mysteries. One of the things this fic does very well is spool them out in interesting ways.

It also balances this - frequent situations where some non-PoV characters frequently know more than the reader - with one of the main plot points invoking dramatic irony such that the reader knows more than every character. I had to look it up on the wiki to get how this works, but the way the canon series ends kind of like... rewrites the universe or something, and everyone but Homura knows less about that then the reader.

So, there's a nice tension and balance in terms of information.

As far as the story itself, the plot, the characters... well, there are strong points and weak points. The protagonist, Ryuoko, has this kind of... placidity / lack of direction, and though it's very much by design - it's frequently commented on by others and sometimes even her - it sometimes gets to be a little much. Having your main POV character be a bit of an everyman, lack of a bit of direction or focus, can be a good thing in terms of the reader sinking into their head and identifying with them. However, it's taken a bit far here. Like, characters will straight up call her on the fact that she complains about people controlling her life, and then when she's given the opportunity to do whatever she wants... has no idea what to do and just kind of flails around until she's hit in the face with the next Plot Point. Again, this is very much a choice on the part of the author and probably something that's going to attempt to be a hinge the character development swings on. Which, fine, but doesn't get rid of the urge to whack the main character over the head with a 2x4 at times, and that's not awesome.

The interludes are hit and miss. Some of them, like the police investigator one, I liked a lot. Others, like the one about Asaka, I just struggled to get through.

The cast of characters gets to be a bit unwieldy, at times. Part of it is my own non-anime perspective not being able to keep track of all these similar-sounding Japanese names, but part of it is that some of the characters are, well, a little too similar. Like, just off the top of my head - Ryuoko's therapist and her aunt. They sound kind of similar, have similar-ish conversations with the MC, both have a slight air of mystery, etc etc etc. They're distinct enough that it's not jarring, but after a while people do tend to blend together for me.

Anyway, this is pretty good. It's not on Dragon From Ash levels or anything but it ~somewhat reminded me of that, in terms of a long, epic story trying to mix worldbuilding with actual good story and characters.

If you're looking for something to dig into over the holidays and would ordinarily avoid this because of the source material, give it a shot. Any writer who can combine "teenage girls with magical powers who transform into colorful frilly dresses when they use magic and fight demons" with "semi hard sci fi space marines 'n aliens" and somehow make it work is doing something right, at any rate.

4/5