 Aevylonya 2007-10-02 . chapter 8Ok, third review from me, and this one will probably be a little more extensive.
The first thing I want to say is thank you so much for being aware of English grammar and having a vocabulary of more than three words..! I read so many fanfics where the author has absolutely no taste at all for the English language, and I find it so tiresome! So good job on that. In most reviews I start out by telling the author that he or she should get a beta-reader, but I can assume that either you've already got one, or you're just actually good at writing. It's refreshing! You have a couple of grammatical errors here and there, but your spelling and punctuation is excellent, and on the whole, you write very professionally - and, believe me, this is very high praise coming from me. ;)
Also, many times I think a writer has a pretty good idea, but then I lose interest very quickly. You have managed to keep me interested, which is also very high praise coming from me.
Another thing I think you've done well is the characters. A lot of writers seem to forget that different characters have different ways of speaking and behaving, but you seem to have remembered this, and I commend you for it.
You do rush your story just a little bit, but you don't do it in an obviously "rushy" way, so it works. These last two chapters could, in my opinion, have been one chapter, because they were very short, something you commented on yourself.
Right now, I think the whole thing with the Speaker is kind of weird, but I am, naturally, fully expecting to have that explained by the end of the story... If not, I might just go crazy.
I thought the bit about Hermione's not being able to do magic due to fatigue was unlikely - it reminded me of some kind of computer game as opposed to a Harry Potter fanfic... Besides, you had her planning to attack people afterwards, and if she was too tired to produce a portkey, I very much doubt that she would have been able to fight. Little things like that bring your fic down just a teeny tiny bit (not a lot - it's still good). To the reader (meaning, in this instance, me) it seems that you have taken the "easy way out", so to speak. I'm working on a fic myself at the moment, and there have been many times when I've been sorely tempted to just make up some little, slightly unlikely, detail that will make it easier for me to finish a chapter, but if you just spend a little more time on situations like that, better solutions will, very often, come to you.
So that was just a little critique - I felt I had to add some, as I mostly had praise to give. I think this is my most positive review in several years, so you should be happy..! Sorry for the length of it, by the way, I know it's horribly long.
Anyway, please keep writing - your story is intriguing and exciting, and I can't wait to find out who this somewhat strange, mysterious Speaker is...
Good luck! |