***Light Dark: For scenes dealing with ponies' fears. Nothing gory or overly traumatizing.***
Celestia receives a letter from Shining Armor and Cadence, asking for her help in destroying an artifact of dark power. Luna volunteers to go to the Empire, and takes along a single pony from both the royal and lunar guards. Their task becomes dangerous, as they discover that the artifact has a sinister intelligence directing its actions. The trio, along with a crystal pony, is pulled into a deadly struggle, not only for their lives, but for the fate of the Crystal Empire.
Chapters (2)
Sounds similar the Lord of the Rings. I will read it later if I have the chance.
2187176 Thank you for the comment! I always like getting feedback for my stories.
I appreciate the idea that this reminded you of the Lord of the Rings. I certainly wasn't aiming that high with this story. Sombra seemed like he had potential, and they did so little with him. I wanted give him a little more substance, and put some sort of story behind his fall beyond what was hinted at in the episode. The idea that he could play with ponies' fears also made my imagination run wild. Being able to write Luna into another of my stories, in an active role, also made it fun.
This is great take on King Sombra and of why he became like that. I feel some kind of pity for Luna and Celestia, Thought as well since he was former good friend of theirs.
This review brought to you by the group: Authors Helping Authors.
Fic: Echoes of Sombra
Grammar: 7
Pros: This was a nice concise piece that you managed to pull a whole lot of characterization into.
Your explanation of Sombra's origin as a unicorn king of an earth pony empire was incredibly and refreshingly creative
You showed Luna as being far superior to Sombra in power without making her look OP or making Sombra look like a complete pushover. The balance struck was quite fine.
Cons: Although your pacing was very well managed (congrats, because I see so many good fics that are ruined by improper pacing), the wording itself is choppy. The dialouge especially seems chunky and rather forced. Consider using adverbs in the future to describe how a character says something so the reaction of the next character isn't so 'sudden' so to speak.
Your description is quite simply lacking. What you do have is well done, but there just needs to be more.
You have an excessive love of commas. They are all over the place, most of the time in places they aren't needed.
Well, having had some time away from the group (stupid internet problems), I'm glad to get back in to reviewing with your story. Your Sombra origin was highly unique, and I truly do enjoy it when a fic explains such an apparently small, but significant part of the world.
Hope you enjoy and find useful your review. Please review my story Marks of Harmony. It's a long one, so won't expect you to read it all at once. That would be too much even for me. Quite a few people who review me do so in chapter chunks.
Cheers!
Inky Jay
2244579 Thanks for the review! I have always had trouble in the areas of dialog and comma usage. Dialog is something that has never been very easy for me to write, since I tend to focus on the ideas that I want to get across, rather than the words used to convey them. My problems with commas, on the other hand, I can lay at the feet of one of my high school teachers. She was comma nuts, and it rubbed off on me. I am trying to improve on both fronts, but it's taking some practice.
I will certainly give "Marks of Harmony" a read.
This review brought to you by the group: Authors Helping Authors. In response for reviewing Celestia Kills Luna
Fic: Echoes of Sombra
Grammar: 7 or 8(comma use was sporadic, and word choice could be better)
Pros: A nice little tale explaining the reason why Sombra’s horn looks like a spinoff while every other unicorn looks like a waffle cone. Characters were done well, and you left some building between Sombra’s connection to Luna. The use of not showing the fight going on between Luna kept some suspense up, because otherwise it would have been too unbelievably easy . Also, instead of trying to make melt over Sombra completely at the end, you somewhat justified his actions were good intentions that turned bad, which is better than the piss poor lack of character depth that he had in the show.
Cons: Like I said above, you repeated words on a few occasions when it would have been better if you just used a thesaurus to spice up the wording. Commas were spread out haphazardly, but I do understand what happened, you probably began to write something but changed you mind and didn’t take it out later. It happens to me all the time. To be honest, there was nothing really bad about this, my expectations are low for reading fanfiction on the internet. So this was good enough for me.
Notes:
I must note, when I first read “Lunar Guard” I rolled my eyes and began to gag. I am allergic to the generic Call Of Duty Badass Lunar Guard/ P.A.B. Lunar Guard, but luckily you fell into neither trap. So that was a relief. The creation of Sombra’s horn was interesting and original. In my story I basically ripped off MacBeth to give him any sort of character.
There was a good part in the second chapter when the ponies are experiencing their worst fears, you did hint to the main character guy’s fear of being senseless, but you outright explained it as it was happening! Don’t be afraid to go the extra mile and take the time to expand on longer segments. Witht eh second guy who was afraid that his wife died in labor, don’t tell us that it looked like that happened. Go ahead and describe how they were tiny foals, like they were newborns, and the mare was so big she looked like she was carry more foals in her, trust us, if you make things obvious, we often can put 2 and 2 together.
Lastly, naming a character “Thought” was probably not the best idea, I must add. It through me off every now and then because I thought people were thinking or that you may have repeated a word.
Either way, enjoy your review and thanks again for Reviewing Celestia Kills Luna.
2586158
Thank you so much for the review! It has been wild around here the last couple of days, and I haven't had the opportunity to sit down and properly respond to your thoughts. I agree with you all the way around, your review raised some interesting points that I would never have thought of myself. I had never considered the name of Thought as causing readers problems, but now that l have looked back over the story with that in mind I can see where the name could be confusing.
For some odd reason I had more technical troubles with this story than I have with my writing in a while. I don't know if I slipped back into bad habits, or what was going on. I will have to go back through and really nail such things down. Commas have always given me fits, and it seems that they have reared their problematic heads again with this tale.
I hesitated about getting too detailed about Quill's fear scene due to its nature. I wanted the story to be a light dark, and I felt that giving too many details might push that a little too far. It's hard to judge that sometimes. I will see what I can do to add a bit more to that scene, without going too far and putting off some readers.
I'm glad that you liked the story. I wanted to give Sombra a little more character, and get away from the bad guy doing nasty things simply because he is evil routine. Some of the worst atrocities had occurred at the hands of leaders who meant well.