Equestria: The Dark World Chronicles - Praying for the Broken

by Maniacomplex

Okay so.

The story situates in post-apocalyptic Equestria where Twilight, the lone survivor, strives to survive in the ruins of Ponyville, haunted by nightmares escaped from Tartarus. "Okay, what's the plot then?" you might ask. "Well, so far that's it," would be my answer. At the moment I'm writing this, the fic has only has one chapter with a couple thousand words in it. To be frank, I chose it mostly because of the length: after a few month's pause of reviewing I wanted to start out small.

The funny thing was, after skimming through the existing chapter, I actually felt forced to read it again, and so I did. The results were positively suprising: the text appealed to me more on the second go. There were all these details in the narrative that had escaped my attention the first time, and spotting them proved to be an enjoyable experience. The mood turned out to be very immersive when I actually bothered to focus on the choice of words and the shades they contributed to the overall atmosphere of opressiveness. At the end of the second reading my judgement was clear: the fic pulls you in right from the start and lets go only to make you come back for more.

A lot of the fic's allure stems from its language: the author succesfully avoids excessively purple language in a favour of short, structurally simple sentences. The smooth narrative puts the scenery and the emotions of the character on the front of the stage, and rewards the reader for actually toning down the music and paying attention. Even as the number of scenes currently remains limited, the existing ones show that some thought has been put into them: the transitions are easy and fluid, adding to the already emphasised immersive effect.

In this review I focused mostly on the positive sensations that reading the fic aroused in me, and left all kinds of techical stuff aside. That's because, first of all, there isn't that much "technical" stuff to discuss: the author clearly knows what they're doing, has an original style and knows how to spell "grammar". The biggest fault I can see in this time and place is that the fic needs continuation, and keeping and eye on that I hope this review can help make that happen. The story has the makings of excellency in it – all it needs is more words.