You write really well, in that your sentence structure flows and your vocabulary is well-developed, and yet the story was a disaster. For starters, why use original characters if they end up unrecognisable to the core?

I got to chapter forty-something before I skipped ahead to the last few chapters, and… figures this ends the way it does. I believe I saw in an author’s note from you halfway through that you hadn’t yet come up with an end to the work, and well, it showed. What’s the point of the story? Darkness for dark’s sake? The problem with that, is it gets boring after a while.

If the point was to have Tom corrupt his followers, there really wasn’t enough of an explanation for how and why he got away with Neville, Luna, etc. It just didn’t add up, which made all the interactions past the duels and secret meets at school so unrealistic that it was painful to follow. There was never an official inquiry into the missing students, for example? Where was the tension of discovery?

There also wasn’t much of an arc for the two main characters after book one. Talk about peaking in school! Don’t get me wrong, I loved the dynamic between Tom and Hermione at the start. But the tension you created early on, not to mention the wonderful bdsm scenes, they went kind of stale after about a third of the way in. After that, we were inundated over and over about how cool and risqué they are through the eyes of others, but when their characters stopped developing and experiencing emotional growth or changes firsthand, all we had left was kinky sex and reverence on repeat from everyone else.

Then there were the poorly developed locales. Belize, Montenegro, Iceland, and a hideaway near the Mayan ruins would have been so cool if they did interesting things there. You kind of set the reader up with an expectation that we would be discovering something very interesting and creative, but all those separate storylines fell flat, even with the forced but casual insert of child cannibalism. Great.

Well, this is clearly a really popular story, and I do get that. The majority of your 6k reviewers rave this, but I was left stuck between feeling bored and put off.

Amazing storyline

I really enjoyed your story.

I love love love this plot point. It's not something I've really encountered with this ship or most ships before, but it's absolutely realistic and especially important with all the implications of magic. It slightly disrupts the image of perfect Dark Tomione or whatever but I don't mind at all because I can always respect this kind of realism, and it's absolutely a way to understand these characters who are really still young and have no formal sex ed much less BDSM etiquette knowledge.

THIS FIC IS SO GOOD! Like stay up all night giggling and kicking my feet! AAAAAAAA

Ive had my eye om this fic for a WHILE! Ive ran out of fics on ao3 so here i am. I love ur tom, he knows exactly what to say and i cant wait for him to really grip the controls

A very interesting fic. Ive always thought that a dark!hermione is basically a female Tom Riddle. Really appreciated that you made them two halves of a whole which complemented each other. Thank you for taking the time to write and share this monster, very juch enjoyed reading it

That felt that foreshadowing

I just have to say, I love the way you write him

I am ravenously hopeful that you are still planning on putting out the tom/hermione/abraxas fic.

I just realized that with my comment on chapter 56 saying the story was better the second time around it sounded like I didn’t like it the first time…I actually loved your story both times…lol! Absolutely fabulous

I just did a re-read. I can’t believe I forgot Ginny destroyed Hermione’s horocrux. This story was better the second time around.

ron is right. oh how right he is but tom is such a charmer even harry cant resist it seems. love this fic

This group did a lot of horrible things but killing this vampire who welcomed them into his home, shared his secrets and gave them genuine advice is just stupid. How petty can Tom be? Pathetic

Interesting