Review #62 - The Sun Burns Brightly, The Moon Flows Gently, A Million Things to Do

Ok, so that mishap yesterday happened... but that just mean there will be a review over the weekend. Promotion time:
Royal Canterlot Library
Mr Allan's Collection
MLPmatthewl419's Collection

Now for the review:

The Sun Burns Brightly by Eakin
The Moon Glows Gently by Eakin
A Million Things to Do by AbsoluteAnonymous

As always, I will put down my recommendations, but I truly hope that you to make the choice on whether to read a fic or not yourself.

The Sun Burns Brightly by Eakin
This is a sequel to The Moon Glows Gently
(Slice of Life)
When you're the immortal ruler of an entire kingdom, the most important quality to possess is self-control. No princess can rule her nation if her emotions rule her. Celestia knows this better than anypony and mastered them long ago. So long ago, she may have forgotten that a little bit of passion can come in handy now and again.

Review
This one, in all of its Slice of Life, also has quite a bit of comedy. Not the laugh out loud kind, but the smile kind. Let's talk about Luna first, shall we? Luna is such a troll, I love it. She is very close to my version of her, which is a smart prankster/ troll. Celestia seems like an actual character in this one, which means that she has an actual pony-like reaction to the idiocy of an 80-year grudge against her. Celestia's power level in this one is also quite accurate to what I believe, which is can conjure up a beam of molten death from the sun. I'm betting you can guess the reaction. The main antagonist, whom I will not name for the sake of spoilers, is a Grade A {Insert preferred, rage-filled insult here}. All-in-all, I quite like to characterization provided in this fic.

I believe the greatest weakness of this one would be how the author chose to set it up. If it were me, I would have had the first chapter be a separate story, and the second get expanded upon as a sequel. However, since this is a somewhat more personal problem, then how quickly the problem gets resolved.

Recommendation: Recommended/ Highly Recommended. ("How does that make sense?" You may be asking... Well, despite the drawbacks I have listed, this is a really good story.)

The Moon Glows Gently by Eakin
This is a sequel to The Sun Burns Brightly
(Slice of Life)
When you're the immortal ruler of an entire kingdom, the most important quality to possess is a passion for your work. No princess can rule her nation if she can't find it in herself to give her best effort every day and night. Luna knows this better than anypony, and puts her whole heart into everything she does. But passion, unless tempered by restraint, has a way of biting one in the flank.

Review
This one is a lot like The Sun Burns brightly, as within these 7k words that make up a slice of life fic, is some smile-comedy. I get to talk about Luna first again! She seems more like the "Luna Eclipsed" Luna than anything else, which means not up to date on customs, slightly impatient, general gone for a thousand years stuff. I guess this is acceptable, but definitely not my favorite. Celestia, Celestia is more the wise older sister who know just what to do type, which I don't think is the best version of her. Book Binder, an important pony in this fic, is amazing. She starts out as somepony who is patient and only wishes to teach Luna, However, after putting up with Luna's immature {Insert word of choice here}, she turns into the perfect slap-sense-into-somepony-by-yelling-at-them device. My absolute favorite line of hers:

“I said get your flank out of that bed you ungrateful little brat!”

Anyway, I was disappointed with Celestia and Luna in this one, as they seem to be opposite versions of the last fic's.

The greatest weakness of this one is how incredibly boring parts of it are, yes, it is supposed to be a slice of life, but still.

Recommendation: Recommended. (I'm not sure if this is due to the order I read them in or not, but Luna and Celestia just disappoint me. That alone is enough to bump in lower than the other, but the professional reason has to do with the weakness.

A Million Things to Do by AbsoluteAnonymous
(Comedy, Slice of Life)
Pinkie Pie comes to Rainbow Dash with shocking news; the world is going to end, and they have a million things to do before it does. Although Rainbow Dash agrees to play along, she obviously doesn't take her seriously... but as the day goes by, the true meaning of Pinkie's warning becomes clear.

Review
This one is more of a slice of life than a comedy, though there is still comedy within. Pinkie Pie in this one is slightly sillier, and less troll than my version, but still very much a random pony... a random pony with vulnerabilities, as we get to see a nice amount of her feelings. You will see if you read it. Rainbow Dash is, from what I can tell, quite a bit like the Season 4/5 Rainbow, and mostly just goes along with Pinkie Pie. Until the end, that is, when the plot reveals itself. I quite like the characters in this story, even though they are not my favorite version of them, they work in tandem with one another better than mine would. Nice, author, nice.

The greatest weakness of this one is that it spends too much time on an activity, and has too few activities to speak of. This is, oddly enough, on purpose, and pretty much makes the ending what it is.

Recommendation: Recommended. (I was originally going to put a Worth Reading on this, but while reviewing it I ended up going deeper into the story, and wow... I can definitely see how it got on EQD. Everything just works together so very well. Also, a "Sweet" tag would work so well on this, too bad it doesn't exist.)

Comments

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I quite enjoyed Sun Burns/Moon Glows as well. They did feel a little fanservicey, but it was fanservice I appreciated.