Title: With Strength of Steel Wings
Author: AngelaStarCat
Rating: M
Genre: Action/Adventure
Status: WIP (about 560,000 words)
Pairings: no definite pairing yet, but no slash
Summary: A young Harry Potter, abandoned on the streets, is taken in by a man with a mysterious motive. When his new muggle tattoo suddenly animates, he is soon learning forbidden magic and planning to infiltrate the wizarding world on behalf of the "ordinary" people. But nothing is ever that black and white. (Runes, Blood Magic, Parseltongue, Slytherin!Harry) (SEE NOTE 1st Chapter)
Link: FanFiction.Net

I wanted to copy the note from chapter one, but ffnet doesn't allow it, so you'll have to make do with my summary.

I know this story has been posted in the "Almost Recommended" section in September 2013. It had 17 chapters and 178,136 words back then and was in Harry's first year. Since then a lot has happened.

The first 15 chapters deal with Harry's time before Hogwarts. To be honest, in this part of the story I sometimes skipped whole paragraphs, and I really didn't like the tattoo idea in the beginning. But I kept reading because I was bored and had a lot of time on my hands - and I was pleasantly surprised.

Yes Harry is more powerful than your average wizard, but there are good explanations for this. Yes, the tattoo idea seems stupid as hell, but I really got used to it and wouldn't want it any other way now.

There are two main story lines.
1) The wizarding world: The author only changes events that are directly influenced by Harry. The rest (Lucius and the diary, Sirius breaking out etc.) stay the same. Though she made quite interesting changes when it comes to the Triwizard tournament. Harry is a lot more aware of the machinations and manipulations surrounding him. He really is a different person, and that changes a lot. It is in NO WAY a canon rehash.

2) the muggle world: opposed to canon, the muggle world plays an important role here. Harry is adopted by a muggle man who is aware of the wizarding world, and as the story progresses we find out that there is a whole organization trying to find out as much as possible about the wizarding world.

A lot of time travel stories have Harry travel back and take Voldemort's side because muggles found them in the future and a war between muggles and wizards broke out.

This story is the first I read that not only refers to such a war but shows in detail why muggles might want to find out more, how they could go about it, how the muggles might react to magic etc. Here muggles are powerful in their own right, and Harry who grew up with them is torn between both worlds.

----
As the story progresses it expands to the wizarding world of the US, which is interesting in itself.

There are a lot of original ideas, but it never feels forced (tattoos aside). The author has very interesting ideas concerning magical rituals and theories. She's not really contradicting Rowling's magical rules, but adding to them.

In general it is very well written, there are hardly any grammar or spelling mistakes (as far as I can tell). And no character bashing, thankfully.

The updates are enormous - around 30 000 words each, every one or two months.

I'm really not sure how to rate it. The earlier chapters can get quite boring - and considering that I'm talking about 100 000 words that's not easy to ignore.

Though even considering this I would definitely rate this story 3 or above. probably a 4/5.

When Harry finally enters Hogwarts things start to get more interesting, and now (in year 4) it's at a point were I find myself constantly wanting to read more. Things are really heating up on all fronts. (magical and muggle that is).

 

I'll say that churning out that wordcount in 1,5 years is an achievement. Unfortunately, this fic bears all the bad signs.

The summary mentions a fancy tattoo, the author starts off by introducing OCs with generic, forgettable names, Draco is listed as one of the main characters and one of the genres is Angst.

I won't rate it because I have no intention of reading it. Also, by your own admission the story takes 100k words to get rolling.

Do not want.

TL;DR: you need to lurk some moar

edit: Just saw the "no slash" in pairings section, so at least that's a plus for those who will read it.

 

I always did wonder what Sirius' tattoos from the movies meant. Imma try to check this one out.

EDIT: Uggh. Chapter 1 takes forever to do anything. Apparently Harry gets found by some kids after Vernon puts him in a box and dumps on the side of the road somewhere. These kids are apparently taken care of by some bloke who has been taking kids in for decades, and using them to snoop around Wizarding society. And Harry is an undercover muggle wizard thing. Yeah. I'll give the idea a 2.5/5 for being average but thought out. I can't get into it past a few chapters. It's a bit painful.

 

Probably nothing. He didn't have them in the books.

 

To be more precise, there was no mention either way of him having tattoos in the books, but that's perhaps more pedantic than anything.

 

Bleh.

I linked this in Almost Rec. on the grounds that I thought the magical rituals involved in the tattooing were quite well written but everything else was kinda bad, and the only thing that's changed since then was that I got so bored while reading an update that I'm now 2.5 chapters behind. The plot isn't a canon rehash, but it still just isn't very interesting.

 

If I'm not mistaken, they were copied from russian Bratva prison tattoos. So in-universe, nothing. But they are badass.

 

This sounds like a fic I read once in which Harry smoked grass with Dobby all the time and had animagus tattoos. Only this sounds worse.

 

This fic is like a warehouse of all the things I hate.

 

This story is of "almost recommended" quality (at best) and does not belong in the Library.

Too much of the plot hinges on serendipity, making it pretty unbelievable: Harry is abandoned and instead of having to give blowjobs to smelly men to survive, it just happens that the first people he runs into set him up with a Muggle who fosters kids and has them investigate the secrets of the magical world. He just happens to discover a latent magic sensing ability, which totally helps him out with this new career. He just happens to get a tattoo that comes alive, turning into real wings that he can use to fly. He just happens to gain access to all the rare stuff he needs to begin carving all these rune sets into his body. Etc.

Edit: 3/5. The writing is not that bad, just not that good either. It's still updating fairly regularly and the last chapters have indeed been better than the first, if cumbersome in having to juggle several different largely unrelated (for now) plot threads.

 

Any story that takes 100k + words to engage the reader is bad. Honestly, if the author can't engage the reader in the first thousand words than it's probably not a story I'm going to keep reading.

 

Got it. No stories that need 100 000 words to get started for real. Geez, you guys really are demanding.

I still think that the second part of the story is worth reading and recommending, but as a whole you're probably right and the story is better left in the "almost recommended" section. The first ten or so chapters really leave a lot to be desired.

I posted it here for one because I liked the later chapters a lot a but I guess it is a bit much to ask readers to fight their way through the earlier ones up to the point where they might find it more interesting.

The second reason was that this is the first story I read that describes in detail and with an effort to keep it "realistic" how the muggle world would deal with the revelation that magic is real. Presumably it will also describe a muggle vs wizards war.
I don't know if there are any other stories of this kind, I certainly never found one, but if there aren't then I think this uniqueness should also be taken into account.

Of course this doesn't change the (justified) points of criticism you brought up. I've heard the author plans on ending book 1 after fourth year. Maybe the sequel will be a more well-rounded story and better fit for the library.

 

Yes. We are.

In other news, rain is wet.

 

I actually powered through just about all of this when it was in the almost recommended thread a little while ago (I was really bored okay). It starts silly and gets worse really fast, a muggle who happens to be investigating wizards finding an abandoned Harry Potter. Then he starts learning and performing insanely powerful ritual magic that the muggle got a hold of because...they're intercepting wizard mail somehow? Finally he goes to Hogwarts a stupid amount of time later and that's where my memory gets fuzzy. I do recall something about him needing to do 7 sets of 7 runes carved into his body for some poorly defined reason (oh and he's already OP with just 3 sets so there's that).

Long story short, reads like an old school Indie!Harry, which hasn't been decent in a long while, 2/5.

 

Well I just finished this and I'd probably give it a 2.5/5. It has a couple of interesting ideas but they are vastly overshadowed by the ideas that fall flat. Like the entire muggle conspiracy. I really dislike that entire story line and yet it seems to be increasingly important to the story. There are also long stretches where absolutely nothing interesting happens at all. Lot's of OC's that I have a hard time caring about.

 

I had forgotten about this story. Read it back in January, I think. I remember it being... meh, for the most part. It does get better as it goes along, but it's certainly nothing particularly special. The OCs didn't help, as they're all completely one-dimensional. (The mean one who's really okay underneath his cold exterior, the nice, protective one, etc, etc.)

In any case - 1.5/5 from me, rounded up to 2/5.

 

170+ words and its not even into his 1st year of Hogwarts? No thanks. No thanks. No rating, not even going to read this. Sounds like bullshit already.

 

Tried to read this at one point maybe a year or more ago, it was indeed pretty bad.