Right, so for this review I read chapters 44 – 46 (iirc I left off at SE II last time). Disclaimer again that it’s been a long while since I read Fledglings last, and I might not remember as much of previous/what I had to say last time. Since I started from a new episode, I’ll be mostly reviewing the first half of it as a self-contained thing. Apologies in advance from future me for what turned out to be pretty negative, but I think I needed to say it before going further in.

I guess instead of waffling off meaningless positive things I’ll just be honest: I didn’t really enjoy these three chapters, in a way that puts me off the rest of the fic. They felt like a slog, and it was, paradoxically, both hard to carve through these massive chapters and to find enough to review at the end. I’ll explain why below.

Chapters 44, 45, and 36 together come to about 29,000 words? That’s nearly half a smaller novel. There’s a lot that can happen in 29,000 words, which makes sense bc it takes a while to read and write 29,000 words. But in all those words… it feels like nothing really *has* happened. Team Traveller, the ostensible main characters of the fic, made their way to another location, bickered a bit, had a run-in with pirates, got a room, and have been in Exposition Mode ever since.

In fact, our main characters only have a little over a third of the entire wordcount devoted to them (13.2K out of 29.2K), because they’re sharing runtime with: Ellesberg/Zorn plot, Lyn and his brother, the Iron FleetPirate Council, and the Siglow Swellow. And… I’m not sure why? Why are we splitting the plot five ways like this? What do all these other scenes bring to the table? Frankly, the only non-team traveller scenes that felt absolutely essential to me were the one at the beginning with Ellesberg and Zorn, and the one at the end of the second chapter with Lyn and his brother. Both of these add something new – there’s a plot to stop Lyn from getting his promotion, and Lyn is involving his brother who cut ties with the Company in his efforts to get Pleo. They’re also, consequently, the shortest and least intrusive of them all. Everything else could either be cut, or reworked in a more environmental fashion into the story.

It feels a lot to me like this fic is trying to mash two stories into one – it wants to be a silly, one piece/airbender type story about a band of plucky kids going from island to island, and at the same time a head-hopping political saga revolving around the people tracking them. And the second story, while compelling on its own, doesn’t work here, because all those other plots are secondary to Team Traveller. The Siglo Swellow is failing to catch up, the Company Administrators are squabbling over Lyn and want Pleo, Lyn is an abusive asshole who needs anger management therapy, the Iron Fleet is incompetent and gets their ass handed to them. None of these past their introductions are relevant or add anything new – it would be like framing One Piece as 1/4th Luffy Adventures and 3/4ths background Marine politics, Buggy escapades, and Koby/Garp dicking around.

I’m aware I’m basically approaching this at chapter 46 of what’s a 100 chapter fanfic, and idk what good criticising it here would really do at this point, or if things will change later on. So I guess what I’ll say is this: at some point, a group to follow needs to be chosen, and they need to have something to say. And I think the only group here that does is Team Traveller, the group connecting everything and carrying Pleo. They’re the only ones who can change, or can drag the story forward. Nearly everything else, when given a significant portion of screentime, ends up redundant or irrelevant. That doesn’t mean they should disappear, but it *does* mean they should appear only when they have something new to add to the direct narrative. If we want to keep Siglo Swellow around, for instance, maybe they should be off on their own little adventure, instead of tagging along for the most boring parts of Team Traveller’s.

I’m convinced these chapters would be a lot snappier and go by a lot easier if we just focused on Team Traveller/*some* background stuff. Then there could be a lot more emphasis on the things that are interesting – for instance, Elty seems to be reaching a reckoning point with his loyalties to either Team Traveller or his pirate crew. Why not focus on that, instead of on what his former captain is doing? As a reader I want to see him reckon with that, but so far he’s only had a few chances. How does Guardia feel about being left defenceless without her bone? How do Team Traveller feel about Pleo picking up Elty’s bad habits? What about their situation as a whole? If they’re being pursued by the Company, then going home to a Company-controlled island is going to seem less and less realistic after a while. How does Nida feel about that? (this might have been covered a bit in the last episode)

idk these are just the things that as a reader, I think are interesting. And it’s hard to keep reading when it feels like they’re the things we barely see any of, in favour of a slew of background things I have no attachment to. I don’t care about all these other things as much as I care about what happens to Team Traveller, and if they want to be the/a major focus than maybe they should have a story that isn’t centred directly around what happens in this one.

This wound up being kinda negative by the end, so another sorry, but I hope some of it helped – I don’t think this is a bad story, and the *writing* is consistently good. I just think it needs a bit of a priority reassessment in what it chooses to show and focus on. Hope this helped somewhat, and good luck with the rest of your writing!

~SparklingEspeon

Fledges. Lings. Fledgelings. Review.

Read chapters 12 through 14 this time around, wanted to make the most of things while seeing how the story progressed from the holding pattern it was in last time I reviewed it. Got off to a rough beginning, with chapter 12 originally reading like filler (it's more like context for the chapter right after looking back), but chapter 13 then comes rolling.

So, at long last, here's the main antagonist of the fic - at least, given how often he's come up, I assume he's the antagonist. Lyn, Samurott Pirate and all around intimidating scumbag. Right from the opening, he's established as someone who you don't want to be on the wrong side of, let alone mess with, unless you enjoy getting a sword in your gut. He's been at this piracy thing for a while and has got it down to effectively a routine, given how casually he talks about subduing a living god like it's any ordinary thieving job he's probably done before. Cutting up substitutes at the same time, it's a solid introduction. One of the highpoints in Fledglings so far, in fact.

Chapter 13 was solid. Got nothing to really complain about there. My issue here is with 12 and 14, however. 12 had the aforementioned problem of feeling sort of fillery, which in hindsight isn't far since it's clearly relevant to Lyn's introduction. My main issue was that it wasn't a good chapter to pick up after some time away from the fic. It was a little confusing figuring out who the characters involved are, or what they're discussing past the surface level business of the aftermath of that pirate's raid.

Chapter 14, on the other hand, preeeetty much was filler. Which fair, chapter 13 being what it is makes that acceptable, but I'm kind of left wanting more. It's similar silliness to some earlier chapters, which felt jarring to read immediately after Lyn's introduction, IMO.

And with that, we're at the end yet again. 14 chapters in, and things are picking up. This was a mostly enjoyable read so far - still curious to see how things'll progress in the nearby future. Thanks again for the chapters!

Chapter 94 this time around, and it looks like the pirates are finally going to make their move now that they got word of the "retaliation." I wonder what the latency is with that, though. With snail mail being their closest means of correspondence, even with fliers, they'd have a good day at minimum to escape before they'd be truly cornered, right? Unless the islands are less than a quarter day from each other, I can't see how it'd be possible otherwise. I guess as pirates they couldn't station themselves too close without risking being caught...

Post-read, I was more or less correct in that they'd need at least a full day to arrive. Being held in a cell will definitely help things there.

That being said, though, I need to be blunt-I'm just really frustrated with this plot of mistaking a crew by their colors instead of obvious telltale signs like... species. I feel like that'd be a standard report in these things in a world like this one. I already ranted about this in my last review but I'm going to grumble about it again since it's still going and prominently.

Wait. They think it's them because the impersonators were literally shouting their backstories? That they were from tromba, like some kind of "I'm shouting it so it's identity theft" methodology? And they bought that? why though

"A clear sign the Administrator was displeased with the turn of events."
-This entire sentence is unnecessary. Otherwise, interesting scheming by admin, though I don't know how much of that was necessary to have onscreen for so long.

I almost had some hope for the trial when Ander brought up basically all of my core grievances. And it SEEMED like they were kinda convinced at first? Well, some, at least a few. But then...

"Get these pokemon back to their cells"
Because the pirates we thought they were... are now attacking us—okay, no, I'm actually genuinely baffled at how these characters are thinking. Why this? This whole impersonation arc. Ander literally outlined the logical fallacies to an established judge and public, and it's just brushed aside like an afterthought. Actual physical evidence is right in front of them, and they even said the pirates kidnapped Pleo... when Pleo is right there saying the opposite. This case in any remotely logical court of reason would have been tossed before a trial even started. One look at Pleo, an interrogation which would be standard in something like this-so many things had to be overlooked for this to be contrived.

With how the pirates showed up to cause a ruckus anyway, I think this would have been a much more streamlined ordeal narratively speaking if the events were quicker. For example, they were attacked by the villagers, their boat was damaged, but just as they were apprehended, they would realize that these Pokemon don't match the species at all. Maybe not even their accent/native language. The ACTUAL pirates were trailing them closer, so by the time they get to talk and sort things out, they're attacking and we're at where this chapter more or less ended. As it stands, though, this was a very glaring arc for me.

I'm hoping that once this gets resolved, and its lasting effects are hopefully not too detrimental over something so frustrating, the remainder of the chapters work out better.

It's always awesome to read more of this AWESOME story!
updates seem to be longer then it used too, but it's understandable.
hope to see more soon! xd

Review tag-

Read a bit more than usual this time around. If Fledglings really was a saturday morning cartoon, then these last few chapters would probably fall into the filler category. We don't learn a whole lot new about the plot after the pirates attack - the pirates repay their dues to society while Pleo gets trained and goes on adventures through Mystery Dungeons. That's not necessarily bad, provided these segments don't go on for too long, but there's always the risk of things overstaying their welcome. I'm not pressing the alarm yet, though I do wonder when the next big plot moment's going to come around.

Aside from that, I enjoyed these chapters a fair amount. You get a variety of different wholesome moments, then some funny moments, then some more serious moments where characters contemplate their roles in life / the way things are, and so on. All of it is pretty appealing, and while there are times when there's a little tonal whiplash (sudden harks from serious to silly, especially), overall these chapters read pretty well.

In a lot of ways, Fledglings is a comfort story. Something you pick up to read when you just want a feel good kind of narrative without extra bells and whistles attached. That's got its role for sure, not everything needs to be this epic expansive story after all.

Thanks again for the chapters, and good luck with the rest of the fic-

Heya, time for another review.

Only read one chapter this time, as I'm unfortunately a little pressed for time, and this one chapter's got enough to talk about in my eyes.

So this chapter deals with the aftermath of the pirate attack, logically, as that's where the story left off last time. What's interesting here is that through all the cartoony vibes and dialogue from the villagers, as well as Pleo coming up with his own solution which then immediately gets picked, there's a really nice take on mob justice written out here. Until Pleo brings up community justice, the villagers all wanted them sent into a wasteland, and were about one step removed from asking for the death penalty. Even getting prompted on whether they really want to hand out that brutal of a punishment doesn't convince them all that much. It reminds me of the Avatar Day episode in ATLA, in a way.

So yeah, this is my favorite chapter so far. Haven't got any negatives that I didn't already cover in the previous reviews. Thanks for the chapter, and good luck-

Chapter 93 time! It's been a while, but the events are still clear to me overall. And as usual, our travelers are struggling every step of the way...

The moment this random storm hits, I'm very confident in what this is going to be. It makes sense for there to be a storm at sea, and finally, it's just in time for Pleo's affinity for the sea to flower. I bet he's just going to say "No, bad!" to the storm and it goes away. If it was my power scaling for a baby god, at least. Though that's actually one point where even the low power of Fledglings sometimes leans on for protectors, so let's see...

Wow, I was actually right. That one was meant to be an overestimate. Pleo is definitely showing the true power behind being a protector now. If he can dispel storms, I wonder if that also means he can cause them, perhaps protecting an entire island under a stormveil... or something along those lines.

This alliance between Hess and Lyn is very interesting. The desperations Lyn is able to carefully conduct while still looking dignified against the otherwise rowdy pirates certainly shows how much he can command his presence. I wonder how that's ultimately going to develop...

Now that I've finished the chapter, there's actually something I might have brought up before, but it's very much front and center now. You know, it's typically a war crime or other huge offense to impersonate sails, and for such a naval-centered setting, I'm surprised at how this just never comes up in a more severe way. Or the fact that since it doesn't come up, the fact that everyone is stupid enough to fall for it every time, especially pirates of unexpected designs. Like, wouldn't they take note of the crew species or something with good-sighted pokemon?

I dunno, I think I'm just annoyed at the fact that the villains are hyper competent and lucky with all their plans while the protagonists are just along for the ride to endure. All the civilians suffer from collective brainrot when it comes to getting deceived by them sometimes. I know the old saying of, "If something can go wrong, make it go wrong" to make the story interesting, but it's getting extreme!

Still, invested in seeing where this goes for Pleo and the gang, to an extent. But, getting closer to what I think is meant to be the end of the story, every setback feels more like a roadblock from than an advancement toward the end.

it surely has been a while. but I'm SOO happy and excited to see an update! xd

Annd time to get back to Fledglings. It's actually been like 7 months since the last time, huh.

Read three chapters this time around, which I'm guessing is some 30k words given you're at 1.1 million and 108 chapters. Also went back over my first review to figure out where I left off, and will continue from there.

So the saturday morning cartoon vibe's definitely not a fluke, because I've gotten that impression from all of these chapters on their own. It's fun, and makes me feel like I'm eight years old watching Cartoon Network again. You can split each chapter into it's own narrative and it works pretty well... although that framing does make it a little easier to spot the filler, like how chapters 5 and 6 are essentially just training and interacting with the locals.

Last time I didn't have any significant negatives to point out, but I do want to talk about the chapter length here. No problem with writing long chapters, of course, that's all personal preference, but the chapters have a habit of meandering for too long. Not much happens in chapters 5 and 6. True, the set up of the story makes this hard to avoid, but there's a lot of fluff while they're exploring the village. Chapter 7 picks up the pace in a major way though, which I appreciated.

Overall, I liked these chapters a fair amount for what they were. Keep up the good work, and good luck-

yay another AWESOME chapter! xd

This is a review of Picking Up the Pieces, chapter 92!

This seems to be another despair event horizon for the team, I've sort of lost count of how many times it's happened. However, Kline appearing and his assurances was a bit of a ray of hope and it was just barely enough morale to get the team to keep looking for ways forward.

The planning phase that happened afterward felt like it could have been summarized. The debate went on for many paragraphs and I don't really know if that kind of thing needs to be shown on screen so much.

The scene with Lyn and the Company was more interesting. However, I feel that this was another moment where you could have started the scene many paragraphs later, perhaps summarizing with Inler saying something to the extent of "And so, based on what we've been told. . ." and so on. Then, opening with Lyn making his request, because that felt like the most substantial part of the scene where it could not so easily be skipped or summarized. Everything else sort of retreaded old ground. Darzin is incompetent or has bad luck and is seen as incompetent, Lyn is nervous because he's on a tightrope, so on so forth. Nothing changed.

You know, this whole ledger thing is still a little confusing to me. I'm not entirely sure what it's actually recording anymore, and they have two of them, or at least their information, all in their possession at this point. But like, a ledger is just a bunch of financial accounts, right? Follow the money? But now this ledger seems to be talking about some historical events, so I'm not totally sure what's going on anymore. Its contents are so abstract that I'd hope for a more solid idea of it soon.

And the story of the Prince of a Thousand Enemies comes back once again, which I suspect is finally going to get more relevance going forward as we see more and more parallels between the various factions. Perhaps there were multiple princes, and there were actually a thousand Princes all enemies of each other. Overall this was one long transitional chapter, as the title leaned on. After all the action, it's appreciated to have a reprieve, despite my criticism of it going longer than necessary. Still, with so much of the information they have already on hand, I'm genuinely surprised that so little is being answered even now. Answer some questions already! Holding your cards for too long will strain the payoff!

All that being said, I liked the cooldown chapter. My biggest desire is answers, not necessarily action that we've seen much of. Hoping to see more in the coming chapters.

I am so late with this review tag, I don’t even know what to say… I will just mention that I’m very critical and don’t take all the criticism too much to heart.

Prologue:
A very subtle beginning to the story. I know that it was what you were aiming for and I really like it, it’s just weird as I’ve never read a fanfic before that doesn’t immediately start with action or some kind of description that suggests that smth bad is about to happen. It’s unique and I think every unique thing in a story is good so good on that front.

An involved narrator with the story. I’m not against it and I have to say it’s way better executed than in any other story in which this was the case. It’s often that the writers go too far with the comments of the narrator or they make it inappropriate for their type of narrative. Here, I think it fits good enough that I can’t find any complaints about it.

Spanish words. It’s an interesting addition and I don’t think the viewer even needs to exactly understand what they mean. It just somehow adds to the flow of the text, like it seems even nicer to read... and I guess it’s of course unique. I like it!

This a very good way to introduce essential story points with this bedtime story. You are already setting up the foundations that you will be using and you are still sustaining that very subtle storytelling type that you chose. It doesn’t seem lame and I think your fic is one of the best ones that actually managed to get that much information through so little text while not making it seem as a lore dump.

Chapter 1:
Oh, the time jump. I noticed that they are often put between the prologue and the first chapter, but it’s nice that it doesn’t seem so sudden or out of place. You also put just enough context which is an often issue.

The kecleon is an interesting character. He wants to be nice to Nida, but still preserves most of his greedy personality. I also like that you gave him this kind of way of speaking that really fits him.

Towards the end, you changed the scene multiple times to put in many descriptions. Those do not seem necessary to the story, but I think you put them so the transition in time back to where Nida is doesn’t feel so sudden. A very interesting way to use descriptions like this and I think I really like it!

Chapter 2:
I like how you incorporated the storm from last night and actually acknowledged that it could have made some Pokemon worried and some buildings damaged. It’s not often that weather is taken into this much account and so I guess it’s cool.

Okay, maybe I don’t like one Spanish word how you used so far. Anima is just a word that doesn’t really suggest what the character means by that while in other words like Papi or Cazadragones, the reader can come up with what they mean as you read and it actually feels like a nice addition.

This protector… is actually a really nice story point. I like how you are reminding of him to the reader through the shrine created by him. It’s like I want to read more just to find out who is really that protector and if is he really that important.

The dungeon part was I think one of the best written I have ever seen. It feels that it makes sense in comparison to the games of PMD and it doesn’t seem to be thrown in so much just to be there as an annoyance. The team went there to grab apples and it’s really interesting how the dungeon seemed different with each floor. Though, I think you could have put a little more description on how movement between the floors. I saw many creative ideas that tried to replace stairs or maybe joke about their weirdness, but you just tried to steer clear of their illogical nature. Maybe there was smth you could put more about them?

The fight with Krabby. It’s weird that you are not allowing any of the Pokemon to use their moves. Do you want to make them less of mystical creatures with abilities and have to resort to items or just because the team is so inexperienced that they don’t know how to use them? I think it’s the latter since Krabby was able to successfully use a bubble beam against them. Anyway, the fight in general was great. Maybe it’s more sort of a quick confrontation rather than a full-blown battle, but it was entertaining and it didn’t seem as just a simple back and forth.

Okay, the last sentence could have been a little better. I think this was your attempt at the cliffhanger, but I think you could have made it create a little more tension. It feels really too simple and out of place in comparison to the rest of your story.

General comments:
Just gonna quickly say this. I didn’t find any problems with character consistency or any kind of editing issues. I have to say that I’m really surprised. I don’t often see fics that have edited so well to the point that there are none of those issues and you even managed to keep the character consistency (though that is most of the time broken when the story gets deeper).

I really liked Kiran. She seemed older than the rest of the team and even though she had the leadership of the team and could force it to do anything, she listened to her teammates and trusted them in many cases. She was also concerned about their opinions and just wanted the best for them. I’m really curious about where you will take this character as I think her development could be very interesting.

I like how each character speaks differently. Maybe this is more apparent with Kecleon, but I like that there is a way to differentiate characters by just reading the dialogue and not necessarily following the dialogue tags.

The descriptions are perfect. Like, they had everything that the reader could ever ask for and you are still giving him enough space so he can have his own interpretation of how the world looks.

The story seems to flow so well… You can see from my previous comments that your text somehow feels a lot nicer to read than many other stories. I don’t know the exact reason, but I guess I may just like this writing style. You did it so well that it’s somehow one of the reasons why I want to continue reading this.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story. It’s rare for me to find stories that are very hard to latch on to literally anything. The story also feels slow as you are taking time for every single event to make sense, which I think works great for the type of story that you want to create.

This'll be a review of both parts of At Great Cost! In retrospect, it was basically two phases of a giant escape sequence of trying to get out of dodge as fast as possible with the Ledger and then trying to figure out what to do from there. It's sort of hopeful but also hopeless and aimless in trying to recklessly get something done, and I'm still not really sure how to feel about that in terms of narrative direction. Still, despite the mixed bag of the chapter set, I did think it ended on a high note. Some thoughts as I went through it follow from here:

I still don't get how Ketu is just constantly this invincible villain that one-shots everyone and seems to also, particularly during that sudden raid he had, totally blast through Pokemon he happened to have a type advantage against most of the time. And then he casually walks out of there like it's no problem and barely anything seems to substantially go wrong for him. Did he always demonstrate this kind of strength, and if so why does he always get underestimated by all of his peers? How did he train to this strength unnoticed? And so on. That's sort of dawning on me with this otherwise mundane Weavile, unless, as I might have theorized earlier, he's some kind of Yveltal avatar at this rate.

Finished the first half of "at great cost" and my feelings on Ketu are the same if not more pronounced. However, I will remark in particular that the battle was a good back and forth, even if it does feel like stars of the last episode are jobbing hard this episode with little explanation beyond the fact that combat has to go in this way for the story to continue. That's the strongest for Ketu, of course, who seems to constantly get everything right. It's getting to the point where I'm genuinely worried that it won't feel satisfying when, or even if, Team Traveler finally beat him somehow. He's too smart and too strong that if he falls, it would have to be through some new contrivance because the narrative is constantly in his favor every time he tries something. I'm just confused what this angle is trying to accomplish for doing this for so long.

Idle thought but what are the pirates doing anyway? Been a while since I've spotted anything of note from them.

But with the party split and Kline probably captured save another miracle, they leave with the Ledger.

Pleo's "Did he know we were coming?!" during the sea phase is the arc summary of this episode really. It's no wonder the team only does half an effort at stealth when everyone knows what they're doing anyway. Next episode I bet they're just going to be like "Screw it, blitz! Blitz! With the power of god and Saturday morning cartoons on our side!"

Oh wow, and now even Zorn appears. This really is a gauntlet boss rush of everyone's everyone as far as the Company is concerned. Can we expect a boss rush from the Imperials next? Or maybe pirates. Curious if they'll be completing the set... Comment post reading: It does indeed look like we're going to be dealing with Imperials next.

Regarding combat pacing: There's a lot of time in these classes where people are gloating and planning on deck when I think, based on how the narration was going, there was no time in a frantic clash to actually do that kind of talking. I guess rule of cool, "talking is a free action" and all that, but it does clash a little between talking and how frantic it's supposedly actually happening.

Being able to do Heart Swap at will has some interesting implications in the heat of battle seeing as how readily it debilitated the Electabuzz and Tauros. Imagine swapping Lyn and Zorn, whose body types are so hopelessly different that they might mutually flop about while everyone else gets the moment to flee without the Company's respective commanders to be able to give proper orders to either of their sides. There's a lot of potential to toy with this and very little fic left to do it, but I hope we can see a thing or two with that being toyed around.

Another long struggle of a battle. At some point it does seem like all of the action blends in with each other and the result is leaving behind who they can while salvaging everyone else. A lot of characters are all zeroing in on this clash and it's certainly a struggle to remember them all! It's sort of odd to see the way some gameplay aspects are translating to a raid style match as well, since the Lightning rod twist makes me wonder what kind of range it would have in a proper fight, among other things. It's the whole field in a regulated battle, but what's a "whole field" for a raid without it getting silly? Not really something to explore here, but it does make me wonder in a proper wartime fight how many different kinds of Pokemon are all present just to counter each other for an evening out of offense and defense, and after that, what's all left.

That being said, this was an impressive take on a large scale battle. Despite some of it's awkward pacing issues and how absolutely LONG it was, I did think this battle was hashed out in a much more satisfying way than the prior Ketu fight on the ground. I wouldn't do this more than, like... once or twice more, in my opinion, since they ARE a bit of a slog to get through pacing wise. I was much more tuned-in during the aftermath and post-battle dialogue and such.

Eyes shrinking to pins is kind of an awkward phrase to use in a world as diverse as Pokemon, no? I'm pretty sure a few times it was even used for Pokemon that don't have round pupils...

And so the chapter ends with Kiran and various others in Lyn's custody but keeping solid on not giving Pleo or the others away. At this point it's clear that we're setting up for some sort of endgame as characters are picked off or otherwise settled into places they can't do much until a finale and they certainly can't afford to go back for another rescue operation, so barring a hostage situation, their westward movements suggest Imperial waters next. And maybe pirates because the key word was dropped.

With that arc coming to a close, though, the Ledgers' mystery feels just a bit closer to being solved... Good work on getting through that massive clash.

Fledglings Review.

Hello Fobbie I'm here for 24 plastic forks, spoons, and knives er V-Wheel. Oh and a two for one deal as this doubles as United Review Tag.

Prologue: A Bedtime Story and Chapter 1 The Calm Before The Storm.

So we start with Nida, a little Nidoran crawling out of her burrow to see the stars. Not just any stars but folklore stars, of ancient tales about a Nidoran or bunny on the moon. Also a constellation with a Nidoran referred to as the Traveler. There was quite a bit of description and a real feeling for each intended action, but it wasn't always a helpful picture. Throughout these two chapters lengthy use of epithets to refer to all Pokemon and slightly wonky wording dampened my reading enjoyment.

But nevertheless the first chapter shows us Nida was a restless and curious young Nidoran. The legends about the world were exciting to read but didn't really set off too much in my mind. A little forgettable when all of them are introduced at once. Of course this is a story with a slower pace so I'll have to be extremely patient.

Tales about the branded Pokemon and the island's protector sleeping are the main draw so we'll definitely see them in full starting Chapter 3 or so.

Then we have a time skip and Nida is working with Rescue Teams at her local Guild. Well she's really just getting ready for a future mission. Now the world building of the physical land, there all sorts of Mystery Dungeons and shops for Pokemon stock up before they head out.

Now the issue for me personally is that there are too many characters. This leads to some confusion about all the various cast members and organizations Nida interacts with.

Though only some were named and mentioned by name Nita interacts with quite a bit of Guild pokemon. I lost track of what was happening at one point. It seems like they don't believe her as she looks to increase her status as a rescue team member. There are some good bits of personality from her mentor Kiran the Swellow. Nida's interactions with Crom the Druddigon and his family were fun.

Then of course the mysterious rumbling, and storm that blankets the Island for a bit has some Legendary consequences in store for Nida.

I'm looking forward to reading more of Fledglings and understanding the world a bit better.

Wheel has been spun and I now offer my humble thoughts.

I like how the prologue immediately grabs your attention by flat out telling you about the role humans played in this universe which I find quite fascinating indeed. Also not only establishing a post apocalyptic world but so quickly but leaving little room to extrapolate alternative explanations is an interesting choice. I'm sure there's room for secrets down the line, but the fact remains we have an open track to common folklore which I always appreciate. Maybe it's not too relevant a detail, but I appreciate showcasing and utilizing such culture so early.

Speaking of culture, I knew Fledglings takes inspiration from real life culture and I instantly not only see how it is possible, I can clearly make the connection with the opening chapter, but it is utilized immediately through language. I like it; even without the translations I can infer the meanings through context. Though you have to forgive me for not remembering Leavanny's French name from the top of my head. It doesn't make reading the fic or piecing together anything more difficult, it simply ads a unique and flavorful touch and I enjoy seeing those.

So far I'm liking the cast dynamic and the prose keeps me invested. There's a liveliness to Nida, Crom, and Kiran's group interactions that I adore. The implementation of mystery dungeons seems mostly standard but on a conceptual level there's still a level of intrigue since I have to wonder how they are related to the old gods, which they totally are. Not much else to say aside from how I think this is a very solid opener and paints a nice picture for what is to come. Keep up the good work and I'll trudge at this, bit by bit.