Hello there,

Jeez.
Well.
Ahm...what can I say ? Really, that was just - like a real good damn book. You know, you begin to read it and you can't stop.

It took me a full week and several hours to read it from the first chapter to the end - without the epilogue of course, because it is not written yet - but it will be, won't it ? *grin*
The plot was excellent. You've got a drow mind, don't you ? Very cunning, sly, violent, mature. ;) Although I feel like sometimes parts of the stories were rushed, I did well understand how tiring it might have been to write such a jewel in the fanfiction's kingdom. (And congratulations to Pratchett. He's a genius. In his own way. Which means, the way of walking luggages and lazy heroe, but hey, he's such a nice man.)

I don't even know what to say first - I feel like 'This, this and that was so col ! And that too ! And hey, this symphonie chapter - what's the hell ? It was so excellent ! ' and at the same time 'I wanna see the epilogue I wanna see the epilogue I wanna see the epilogue...will Valen get a little ribbon on his tail ? What will become Tarnash ?'

Oh, speaking about him. I've seen by reading some previous reviews of your fellow's readers that he wasn't well-loved at first, and that you've planned all the way to make him become who he is now. And - congratulations. I've always had a crush on those kind of characters, the 'cocky badass' ones. And I think he won the title. (and with Imloth [and Illiam...xD]...they make such a good team. However his reactions towards Shi'van are interesting. ]

And now I'm thinking about Shi'van. She was very fun to read about, but also very angsty and all. However, I understood her and I liked her so much. Not a very cheerful person, hm ? But oh, she was exactly...what she was ( I think it is the better compliment I might tell her). And she quite made me think of my own characters, so we go along so well. ( I've just remarked that this review is a MESS.) her relationship with Valen was gorgeous btw. I was not fond of Valen personnaly, the 'huhhuhu my love my blood is cursed' and 'oh but this is Cania, full of evil bad baatezu'...' I'm doing strategy : first, we throw ourselves into the big balor right over there. Then, I...huh...say, I hit him with my flail and then it hit me and then we repeat again till someone's dead.' ahm. Not his fault, he had diarreah this day.
So you did a very good work with him, and, - to me - deepened his character a lot. Everyone has his weaknesses and strenghts.

I feel like I could speak of your plot and characters for so long. I wish I have read this story before, so that I could have bury you under tons and tons of bad-written enthusiastic reviews, and listened to the Symphony Chapter's theme music. That would had rocks. Unfortunately I just finished to read it, so...

I had much fun reading The Devil's Arithmetic. I'm more fond of chaotic people, - personnal point of view - and all the way I just thought 'jeez, this dude is a petty stupid devil, whyishe here by the way?' And I suddenly wonder why, in the game, he's a giant naked man who lives in giant frozen lands. I'm quite sure that males tend to have some problems with cold temperatures, eh ? Oh, well, and the mention to the rivalry between Mepphie and Asmo...I bet on Asmodeus.

And when Vhaerun did appeared and kicked Mister Maths's ass - well, way of speaking, Shi'van did the most - I was utterly satisfied. But not when Shi'van got reduced to a pack of burned flesh and broken bones. I was growing used to her, you know. However, having created resembling characters, I'm beggining to think that dying is the only way for those souls to get some peace. But peace can get boring.

I don't really have the time to discuss all the points I'd like to discuss of, there are so many, and I'm quite a chatterbox. If you feel like speaking with my humble self, you'd make me glad.

(Oh, and I'm French. And I've got no translators. Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, to massacre the language. Hope you'll understand what I mean.)

What I wrote is a mess. But you're worth the effort. - And that was the most sensible sentence I've said in this review xD

i just thought you would like to know that your writing style is much better than most of the people writing on fanfiction and that i really like the way you give depth and personality your characters even the ones you didn't create!

*sque* I'm ecstatic that this chapter is finally up, and even more so at how cool it was! ^.^ (I'm going to be fangirling about Vhaeraun beating Mephistopheles for a while now.)
I love how his manifestation was so awesome that the Eilistraeeans are converting too, lol. Now, I just want to see if Shi'van is still healable, what happened to Valen, and what the gift she asked from Vhaeraun was. Epilogue, please!

A bit of crit first; perhaps it is the length between installments, but the climax of the story has been hit and despite the dimensional rift, it didn't feel as if it packed the punch I expected. It was, of course, another in a long series of excellent chapters, but I think you set the bar so high that I was expecting a bit more. This could also be because while Mephistopheles' entrance was grand, we didn't get to see him do anything except, well, make an entrance. I haven't played the game, so it may be that I just don't have the same appreciation for his grandeur.

Details, details; there are so many of them. I would have to completely reread the whole story in order to track them all. I don't know how you managed to do so! The knot is tied with many strings, only to have them all meet together in a nice tidy bow. (Perhaps 'nice' is the wrong word here.) It is all very well done. You excel in many ways in your writing; plotting, characterization, descriptions, and settings. You are exceptionally gifted with the plotting aspect and have an impeccable grasp on the epic. All of which were exhibited in this chapter.

The way you can direct so many characters and subplots makes me envious. And each of the characters is very individual. My only crit would be that it is seems obvious to me which characters the author favors. However, you are never shy about putting your own voice into the narration, so that isn't a surprise. (grin)

Yes, an awesome last chapter. And you have, of course, made me very anxious for your epilogue! Don't make me blackmail you any more with anticipation.

I really liked how you structured this chapter - cutting back and forth from the battle to the inter-personal perspectives of it. I'm also consistently impressed by your ability to describe such large-scale battles without losing sight of the personal details, like Imloth and Valen's reunion (you know my snarky opinion on *that!* ;))

Vhaeraun was, as ever, very well done, with his motivations both large and small (though mostly large), and was also quite illuminating on the theme of personal choice and freedoms that runs so strongly through the entire story. It's not the prophesy that counts, it's what you *do* with it...

And here's to one last chapter, then, yes?

Oh, oh wow. I can't wait to see the epilogue, except then there's the slight downside of it being over... and I'm reminded anew why I first thought Vhaeraun was awesome.

Holy... Where was I when this insanely epic rendering of HotU was being written ?!

Just done reading the whole thing in a row - took most of my day away, but I regret nothing. I fear I am a bit too much under the shock of the 38-chapter wave of awesome to leave a coherent review, though. Regardless, I felt the need to post *something*, if only to praise your skills at writing Drow characters. So, so many authors, whether of fanfiction or official writing, utterly fail at remembering that a sea of gray shades lies between the caricatural Drizzt-good and Lolth-evil; a great many more seem to fail at making the dark sides of their characters seem natural. You, however, have quite a knack for both. I am in awe of Tarnash and his cohorts (it is always a pleasure to see Vhaeraunites acting as Vhaeraunites should, and not as dumbed-down backward Lolthites hell-bent on being Evil Just Because) - and most of all, of Sinvyl. Her constant, almost routine evil, working on believability alone and not a series of overplayed "shoot the puppy" moments -- this has become so rare, especially in the Forgotten Realms. I love you for it, and was almost sad to see her go.

And then Vhaeraun. And Kimmuriel. And Shi'van. Gods, Shi'van. For the first few chapters I was afraid she would turn into a Mary Sue in progress, but then the few traces of Mary-Sue-ism disappeared into a complex mess of amorality, messed-up memories and madness -- and the character never stole the spotlight at all, sometimes even disappearing for entire chapters, only to reappear and fail her comrades spectacularly via this bout of craziness of that treachery. I have rarely liked an original "main" character so much -- probably because, for once, said character was only a part of the story, and not its sole focus. The lack of overbearing romance was also a large plus.

Thank you so much for having written all of this. Good luck with the final two chapters, and congratulations for having turned a linear, cliché-filled videogame module into thirty-eight chapters of undiluted awesomeness.

Ah, so even in the game Sinvyl was a naughty, naughty girl. Well, yours was a good rendition of her =)But how come Sinvyl wasn't dwelled upon too much? @_@ Wasn't she the main villain?

I think I should've phrased it differently about Shi'van. She wasn't that likeable, right, but she was so unstable that I could never predict where exactly her sick mind would lead her. Would she go completely insane or would she surface in some murky pool of indifference - her character did a lot to keep the intrigue. Plus, I wasn't sure she'd actually kill Sinvyl untill she did, and since I wanted Sinvyl to die, Shi'van looked like a good girl for doing it.=)
Ah, and also sometimes the Bitter Voice of Sarcasm spoke through her and on those occasions she was even funny.

Does Kimmuriel strike as the type to worry about whether Jarlaxle would be proud or not?=) It's a bit hard to tell with Mr.Salvatore (the inconsistent writer that he is) but I got the impression that Kimmuriel had a rather simple priority list, with Staying Alive and in Good Health right at the top, the benefit of Bregan D'aerthe following closely, then a great big gap and only then everything else, including Jarlaxle returning to lord it over the band once more and everyone's opinions)

P.S.: I remembered one of the things that Shi'van said that I liked - it was in I forgot which chapter in the beginning, when she said that being drunk surely beats being sober. =)

Well, with this chapter, you managed to melt a teeny bit of my heart and actually bring tears to my eyes. Quite the symbiotic relationship for Shi'van and Valen, and can truthfully say I was never expecting THAT. So now they must stay alive together...or die together. Expect I will find out soon whether it will be life (of sorts) or death.

I nearly cheered in the previous chapter with the wonderfully graphic, gruesome death of Sinvyl. Excellent choice of deaths, I must say.

Looking forward to the rest of your story. I has been so very well written and original.

I finally found that link to the forum on your profile page. Beats me how I managed to overlook it, anyway.=)

Actually, a really interesting villain with a compex personality is half the success, don't you think? That referring to writing in general, I understand that there wasn't much to be done with the pre-designed Sinvyl=)

Yes, it's just very fortunate you didn't go into fine detail about what Shi'van did to Ra'sin! I wasn't fond of him, but had you done it, I'd have started to wish for something horrible to appear and eat her =) But since you didn't, I liked her, although not all the time. Sometimes she seemed to be paddling down the river of insanity so fast it got on my nerves a bit.=)But mostly I liked the girl.

Nice to see her and Valen come into focus in this chapter and get some things more or less clear.

Kimmuriel carefully squeezing money and profit out of everything and everyone was fun to read. I can imagine him entering the treasury in the Bregan D'aerthe HQ and smugly grinning at all the money and valuable items aligned in alphabetical order or something like that.

Well done!)I liked this chapter a lot.

P.S.: Ah, and Yasvyrae got killed. Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Allow me to repeat, oh yes, worst poker face ever. *snicker* And then there's the scenes with Imloth, and "strength in hearing each other breathe." I find something interesting about the description of Vhaeraun dancing, probably because it's an activity one more readily associates with his little sis.

Couple of nitpicks, because they jumped at me: I think it's "Zhentarim" and "Tabuirr," and "thrash" instead of "trash" (in retrospect I think the last one was also in the previous chapter).

It's going to be a bit of an odd feeling having this end, but I'm raring for more all the same.

it's me again, because I only found your reply to my previous review after I'd written the last one (trust me to do things in a twisted, abnormal way) but it happened because of my complicated relationship with the site - I remember registering here, but could never actually log in and soon gave up. Fancy that =))

So I'm not the only one who thinks that there's something slightly wrong with Salvatore's writing. I was beginning to think it was just me. You know, everytime I read his book, his style (for the given value of the word) gives me this creepy sensation, like I'm struggling to breathe through an old dusty pillow, and it disagrees with my intentions. There air is definitely out there, but it's all used up and not healthy at all. And then there's the lack of the psycological insight, and that gets on my nerves so much. So I supposed you're right, most of his characters are, in fact, sketches and as for Kimmuriel, you sure did a much better job than Salvatore.

That's, actually, why your story first caught my eye.=) I found it by accident, while worming my way through the Internet, I read about half a chapter and felt intrigued because the characters had personality and I liked your writing style immediately.

I had no idea what the story was about, because I never played any games, only read books, so I had to go to the Forgotten Realms Wiki (I think!=)) and look the plot and some characters up.

As for why I found Sinvyl repulsive... It was the torturing, I guess. I realize that you described her exactly how she was supposed to be described and that's the kind of activities she was bound to be happily engaged in, but I couldn't stand her for it, no matter what other qualities she possessed. Her marching the great big army to conquer the world and coming up with diabolical schemes was something I found very interesting, but torturing, ew! =))Plus, you gave rather graphic descriptions...) That's why I was so happy to see her die, and why I was also happy to see Zesyyr get brainwashed and THEN beheaded - it was one of my favorite chapters, I was grinning evilly while reading it! And it was while reading it that I decided that I really liked Tarnash that much. =)

Don't get me wrong - I liked how you portrayed her, and she sure was a Grade A villain, but I just absolutely hated her personality.=)

Will you be writing a sequel?=) I'm sorry if I'm asking the question you already answered somewhere, but due to my inability to find the forum I never got to know.

Thanks for this story, anyway, it's a fantastic read)

ah, Sinvyl's dead. Finally!
How I was waiting for that glorious moment, really.

I liked the Tarnash-Illiam argument a lot, especially because since all the Shi'van parts were dark, it was a nice change. =)
Tarnash's amazing, I think I like him best of all. Well, him and Kimmuriel.

Oh, by the way, somewhere in the end - are we going to see the meeting of Deekin and Jarlaxle? It'd be absolutely hilarious.

update!)

Another fantastic chapter. Sinvyl's death took me by surprise, somewhat; obviously it took Shi'van by surprise as well.

I'm very interested to see where you go from here - I always liked the planescape setting, and I have a feeling you'd do it justice if you decided to take the story there ;)

This is a good chapter. I have several favourite scenes throughout -- the part where Shi'van and Sinvyl discuss Nathyrra's betrayal over an almost homely setting involving food. The ..bath encounter between Tarnash and Illiam which reveals the sexual tension between them in an almost (almost!) inconspicuous way, half-way between being Tarnash's fancy for mischief and being annoying and actually interested in Illiam. The way the mood very abruptly turns from light-hearted to dark and gruesomely violent as Shi'van turns against Sinvyl and kills her in a way that, although horrible, is somehow fitting. Shi'van's escape, packed with tension; I liked how the extraordinariness of the shadowdancing ability comes forth -- it really should -- and the way you show her detachment from her own self. And then there is Vhaeraun, creepy and gentle and at once alien and familiar. Yes, I think that on the whole, you did very well here. :)