Reviewer's Café is a group dedicated to finding and forging the best stories possible. With this in mind, we try to achieve the same level of quality with every story we read. We look at a multitude of factors while reviewing from grammar to characterization to even the front page. We keep track of reviews based on a 1-10 numeric grade:

A score of 0-6 will result in a denial for entry
A score of 7 requires the story to be reviewed by another member of the team; if the score is a 0-7 it is denied, if it is 8-10 it is accepted.
A score of 8-10 is automatic acceptance and entered for a chance to be featured.

My story was denied, what do I do? Don't worry, every story has three attempts to enter the group, all you need to do is fix the issues and resubmit in the next submission period. Feedback will be given upon review of your story, all one needs to do is correct the mistakes and resubmit. Should a story fail three times, it will be considered barred from entry and will be turned away upon receiving. It sounds more daunting than it is.

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This thread is for posting reviews, not for recreational comments. Comments that are not reviews will be removed.

Title: But It's So Generic! by FamousLastWords
Amount Read: All
Verdict: Reject (6/10)
Reason:

That’s pretty much the long and short of it: it’s a vent fic about the popularity of certain fanfictions over others, framed around Twilight trying to write Power Ponies fanfic and quickly learning that only certain types get any attention. It’s amusing and hits a lot of the frustrations many authors have about this site (and, I imagine, fanfic in general), but just very quickly moves through it to get the frustration out. I think satire is a very interesting genre if done well, but it needs subtlety that this story doesn’t have. There needs to be a little more fleshing out of the scenes, because otherwise, this goes from a clever concept that hits home for a lot of people who try to write to a simple vent fic that just rushes through everything very quickly. So, for just happening really quickly and being rather up front about what it’s trying to say, I am rejecting this fic.

Title: Luna's Guide to Pleasing Your Master
Author: Serphem

Amount Read: All
Rating:
Plot/Theme: 14/20
Technical/Structure: 8/10
Characters: 8/10
Subjective: 5/10
Total: 35/50
Verdict: 7/10 - Recommend Rejection (Second Opinion: Lome)

The world building in this story is phenomenal, and out of all the clop settings I've read thus far, the Clockwork Society has always piqued my interest the most. From the concept to the narrative's flourish, this story has a lot going for it. I imagine many a person could delve into this so long as they like the long winded stylization that it provides. It kind of reminds me of Tolkien in part, and I wonder if the stylization was in part inspired by him.

Unfortunately, this story felt dry. It read off more like a manuscript than a story to me, and while it pains me to detract points here, for this can easily happen with this type of stylization, because I would very much like to see this style maintained for the story the author wanted to tell. However, there were times where it was difficult to stay engaged, a few passages that were a little hard to parse without context from other pieces of literature, and focal plot points that felt mechanical in execution. I think at one point, the same thing was said in several different ways even.

I believe one way to keep a reader engaged through this type of stylization comes in the form of the conceptualization of its subject matter, using contrasts, subtexts, lines of thought, and/or vivid imagery through loaded description in its execution. Not to say this piece was totally lacking in these departments, but perhaps it wasn't sufficient or didn't jive well enough with the thematic concept for me to recommend acceptance within this group at this time.

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Story: Chasing Rainbows
Author: TK-JAY

Amount Read: All
Rating:
Plot/Theme: 12/20
Technical/Structure: 7/10
Characters: 5/10
Subjective: 4/10
Total: 28/50
Verdict: 5.5/10 - Recommend Rejection

This narrative opens up rather predictably, Introducing a character who's a jock practicing for a big game, and disclosed in fairly short order that Rainbow Dash is his rival. The build up towards the final game of the season is alright, though the characterization of the narrative's cast could use some fleshing out to give them any meaningful features the reader could associate them with. Even after reading the story, all I can really tell you about the main character is that he's a jock and he that he likes Rainbow Dash.

This does make it easy to justify a lot of his actions, even if they can become unlikable at times. His characterization felt more like an archetype than an actual character, and in conjunction with the sensation that the narrative was jerking me forward through its plot points and not allowing everyone's character develop naturally, this didn't create a particularly engaging read for me in the first section of this story.

Their confession in the second part of the narrative felt a bit rushed, possibly as a resultant of an issue with pacing. I like that the confession was sudden, but I didn't get enough of a contrast -- enough of a build up -- in their interactions to lend this reveal a satisfying resolution.

There are a few technical issues, a few typographical errors, such as 'my' instead of 'myself', punctuation and formatting issues, but it's nothing major, and can easily be remedied with a quick edit.

One thing I did note, however, was that some descriptions were a bit brief, like 'ball bag'. The kind of punctuation to the thoughts that these kinds of descriptions leaves little to the imagination. In other areas, the description is rather vague. This is quite possibly by design, as with the example provided below:

With my nose and some of my face caked with dried blood, I looked her in the eye. Oh man. The look in her eye. I knew the answer already. Even so, deep down, I felt like I knew it all along.

If the reader already knows what's happening, then the description of 'the look in her eye' is useless. If the reader doesn't know, then the description only serves to mystify the reader. Is it a bashful look, something that would be in stark contrast to her usual demeanor? Is it a look of determination? I have no idea!

This story is by no means bad. I found most of it to be run of the mill, so to speak, and to not entirely turn me off from being able to read the clop portion of the narrative, and one should consider this to be an achievement considering a typically really dislike clop. I actually found it to quite enjoyable in comparison to the rest of the narrative, and Rainbow Dash was portrayed quite well in it.

Ultimately my rejection, as painful as I am to make it, boils down to the narrative's setup. From Longshot's characterization, stemmed from him feeling like an archetype, to not enough preceding text to show contrast to Rainbow's and Longshot's relationship before and after the confession. At least, I didn't feel the one game they had beforehand was enough.

Story: On Tandem Wings
Author: OkemosBrony

Amount Read: All
Rating:
Plot/Theme: 17/20
Technical/Structure: 7/10
Characters: 8/10
Subjective: 8/10
Total: 28/50
Verdict: 8/10 - Recommend Acceptance

There are a number of reasons I enjoyed this story. It had a particularly noteworthy exchange between Vapor Trail's parents and her relationship with Sky Stinger. It does an effective job of portraying their complete and utter ignorance to the reality of relationships, opting to 'pair' their daughter up with other stallions of equal or greater standing than the life partner she chose. In this way, they provide adequate means of conflict within this story.

The message the conclusion delivers from it is heartfelt, executed in a meaningful way as opposed to the typical bit you'd expect from this narrative archetype. I find this genuinely impactful to me, and I believe the duality between the conflict -- the struggle Sky has over his failings -- and the resolution -- epiphany that those failings are exactly what make him who he is, and thus the pony that Vapor loves -- is entirely the reason I enjoyed this story.

I believe the main detractor for this story comes in the form the parents. While their line of thinking can be justified intrinsically by their wishes for their daughter's well being, as seen by their eagerness to support her financially, I can't help but feel that the set up of their stance is a little hamstrung to drive home the message.

As a result that feels a little inorganic from that perspective, but that is quite possibly hard to pull off differently given the length of the story. We are only given a snippet of their life, and to try to extend the story out to flesh out their stance, I feel, would keep from emboldening the message the author intends to portray in this narrative in other ways.

Regardless, the message still made it's mark in a satisfying and endearing way, and I fully welcome this story into the fold.

Title: Fallout Equestria: Every Lie by Vaatidj
Amount Read: All currently published (through Chatper 3 - Enjoy Your Stay)
Verdict: Reject (5.5/10)
Reason:

As with the last time I reviewed a story by this author, I thought there were some good things done in it. However, there are some issues too.

As always, I start with the issues. The first one is simple: the writing. There’s an editor for this story, and unfortunately, you can tell that. There’s a pretty evident break in chapter 2 in terms of the cleanliness of the writing, and while while it’s improved from his last story I read (Descendent of the Night: Beginnings), it still needs a bit of improving. It doesn’t make the story unreadable, but it’s a lot of simple errors that need to be fixed.

Next, the story itself. I don’t think it’s bad, but it’s incredibly jarring. I can get it, we’re supposed to be confused because Lucky doesn’t know what’s going on either, but it’s just sometimes hard to really follow. The Shadow Corporation, MentaBucks, Rece, and what exactly happened with Stable 71 are all kind of thrown at you all at once without really that much explanation. While it’s not something that really turned me off of it, it definitely is maybe a little too frontloaded especially considering it’s only really presented in the last half of the story. Maybe that’s just a side effect of the story (presumably) still having a long ways to go, but as of right now, it’s a lot in not a lot of time.

Finally, Lucky. To be blunt, she’s much more naïve than any almost-ten-year-old I’ve met. While her frustrations about adults and cutie marks are understandable, they seem almost too generalized and childish. Additionally, when the sirens are going off and her parents are trying to get her to the Stable, she doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on around her. While maybe she wouldn’t know all the details, even children half her age are good at judging how others around them are feeling and would be able to pick up on something’s wrong as opposed to just thinking they’re all there to see the Stable like she still believes she is. And lastly, her views on death. She seems almost surprised that the stallion she stabs starts bleeding, and when she walks outside and sees bones littering the ground, just believes they’re sleeping and starts asking them where her parents are. Writing kids can be hard because it’s easy to make them either too mature or too immature, and this falls solidly into too immature.

Now, onto what I liked. For all of what I wrote about Lucky, I think her role in the world has the potential to be interesting. She’s a seemingly sheltered pre-war filly who’s at times blindingly bubbly and has now had to cope with her parents dying and the realization that the world she’s in is a shell of what it used to be, which does appear to be starting to take its toll on her. Her immaturity also becomes a double-edged sword because of this; while I dislike it as a whole, when put in the context of FoE, it makes for an interesting internal conflict to go along with whatever external one is occuring. She’s not just sheltered and naïve, she doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with a lot of what she has to deal with.

So, I think this story has something here, but there are a few issues holding it back. Luckily, the story still seems to be in its genesis, so a lot of them are still easily rectifiable. However, that doesn’t diminish the fact that the issues are still there as of now, and for the aforementioned reasons, I am rejecting this fic.

Title: Night of the Hunt by TK-JAY
Amount Read: All currently published (through Chapter 6 - Honing the Mind, Body, and Spirit)
Verdict: Reject (6/10)
Reason:

Did I just sit down and read 60,000 words of My Little Pony fanfiction on a single Tuesday night because I’ve got nothing better to do with my life? You bet your ass I did.

To start, the first thing I have to go after is the cleanliness of the writing. It’s not unreadable, but it needs a bit of fixing. Some sentence fragments, very liberal capitalization (I get there’s a lot of specifics, but you don’t need to make absolutely everything related to the Hunters be capitalized), a few misspelled words, and so on. Having written a story with very long chapters myself, I can understand some slip-us, but going through and editing with a fine-toothed comb should get rid of most of those issues. Even if you don’t go to someone else, careful reading should get you a lot done on your own.

Next up comes the pacing. You’re taking your time, that’s clear, but when sitting down and reading everything you have out right now, if feels backloaded. The first few chapters comprise about half of the story, and it just feels like you’re constantly putting everything off to get to it in the later chapters. This fact isn’t helped by Noctus, whose answer to literally everything is “I’ll tell you later”. At a certain point, to the reader, it evolves from requiring patience out of them to just dismissing the questions we’re obviously forming. You don’t have to answer every single question and don’t have to go into extreme detail, but providing a surface-level explanation for a few questions would be enough to placate readers and not have them become as frustrated as Willow is similarly becoming. Even with things that aren’t overall that important but Willow asks anyways, it just evolves into a cliché. Whenever she asks something that could potentially be important, you know she’s not going to get an answer.

Another thing I felt bogged the story down was the exposition. It’s pretty straightforward especially in the action scenes, and that just makes the exposition-heavy parts of the story really tough to read, and I frequently found my attention waning when reading and even more so when there was a fight scene. There’s not a lot of life breathed into the descriptions of actions, and when the story requires a lot of it, it becomes a definite weak point.

Finally, my last big criticism is all the Council members. There’s eight of them, all introduced fairly quickly, and they pop in and out without giving us much time to really get a firm grasp on who’s who. I got Minela and Sanguinaire, but none of the others have enough of a role to really imprint on you, and many of them are reintroduced tens of thousands of words after their initial introduction. As such, keeping a ton of side characters straight gets pretty difficult because there are so many of them and they’re not given ample time for us to learn them.

For the good parts, the first thing I enjoyed is both a point of praise and one of criticism: the imagery. The world around Willow and the Hunters is described quite well, with detailed and beautiful language but not too detailed or too grandiose. There’s an air of macabre beauty in the scenery, but my criticism is that it’s just not very present after the few chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 are full of it, but after that, it drops off and just gets into the less-great description of action that was covered early.

To wrap this all up, the worldbuilding. I’m a sucker for worldbuilding, and I was pleased. There’s a sufficient enough amount of it throughout the story, and it’s given in good enough increments where you’re not starved for it but it also doesn’t serve as a loredump. Content-wise, it’s also quite well done. Gothic horror and dark fantasy are very interesting genres, and they’re developed quite well here to create an interesting story in a horrifically beautiful world with main characters that you can invest in.

As I said, however, this story is a reject. In terms of purely subjective aspects, this story was pretty strong. However, ultimately, it’s its more technical aspects and execution that hold it back. So, for that, I am rejecting this fic.

Title: Truthfully
Author: Ice Star
Amount Read: All
Verdict: 7/10 Reject seconded by SparkyBrony

The idea, it was stunning. I loved this adorable little romance with such an interesting premise on a relationship and the whole idea of missing an opportunity in your life. I feel like the romantic aspect of Rarity’s relationship maybe could have been more greatly exaggerated to convey the point because right now it sounds more like a curious friendship rather than anything else. The pacing of the actual writing is good and the prose is fantastic. A really sweet ending and a good message for Rarity about open-mindedness and love.

But, where this fic fails is it jumps around a lot. We have all of these time/narrative jumps that aren’t really given clear direction or meaning to start with. Making it very confusing and difficult to keep track of. Thankfully it is a very easy fix. I would recommend you go along your work, find all your time jumps or flows into different styles of storytelling, and possibly rewording to make it far clearer what is happening and why we have jumped to this time. It all kind of comes together at the end but reading/writing is about the journey that got you there! That needs to be just as fun.

Just because this has been rejected doesn’t mean that it was not a fantastic story, in fact, I loved it. I would highly recommend you make an attempt at resubmitting with a bit more refinement and editing through the suggestions above. With that, I feel like you would have a good chance at making it into the cafe next time.

Title: Recurring Dreams by Lunatone
Amount Read: All
Verdict: Reject (5.5/10)
Reason:

I like an open-ended story. To me, it just sticks with you more because it leaves you thinking and doesn’t just wrap everything up and move on.

This story, however, leaves everything a little too open-ended. It’s just telling us that Luna is having a recurring dream, and not giving us any real information beyond that. There needs to be some little bit of closure you get, because otherwise, it can’t stick with you. A very big question is posed by this story, but nothing ever comes of it. Sure you’re left wondering, but in a complete void, there’s no logical paths of thought you can go down. So, for not mentally giving you enough to work with, I am rejecting this story.

Title: The Candy Maker by Winston
Amount Read: All
Verdict: Accept (9/10)
Reason:

It’s difficult to get a story into the Café, and I can say that this one deserves its acceptance.

Ultimately, what made me accept this story was the characterization of Candy Cane and all the buildup throughout the story leading to the conclusion. So many tiny little things dropped throughout the story — her not initially being good at making candy, the oddity of her name, dyeing her mane — are inserted so well that they seem like just little worldbuilding details at the time but are subtle cues as to the true nature of the story.

Additionally, Candy Cane is a very interesting character to read, and she’s portrayed very well. As with the buildup, the ending ties the story together very nicely and shows us truly who she is: a broken mare, one who’s running from her problems and trying to deny they ever existed. She repeatedly insists that she is just Candy Cane and all she does is make candy, and when confronted by her past, only doubles down and is deeply saddened by what she’s gone through. It’s a very emotional story, featuring a character actively denying her own past and shutting it out, but obviously still harmed by whatever it was she’s gone through.

In short, this is a very solid story, and definitely worth a read. It tells a powerful story and is masterfully executed, and for that, it is being accepted.

Title: Forever Mare by Ice Star
Amount Read: All
Verdict: Rejected (7/10, second opinion by Orbiting Kettle)
Reason:

I like historical stories and worldbuilding, and I think it’s just such a rich area of opportunity for fanfiction. I was pleased that this story was set then and it did have some good aspects, but ultimately, it wasn’t enough to go above and beyond for me and fell short of acceptance.

The first thing is both a good and a bad thing, I’d say: the writing itself. Seeing a longer story come out of this author was something I was very pleased about because a lot of the stories of hers I’ve reviewed were rather short and choppy, and this one takes its time to build something up and let it sit with you. That being said, however, it goes a little too far in that direction. There’s a decent amount of this story that could be cut, and the story itself would be spared.

The next main criticism comes from the direction of the story, because it’s not terribly clear. There are three characters (Celestia, Sorrel, and Luna) who all seem to have things of their own going on, and they get in the way of each other. Sorrel is mostly an accessory to Celestia and acts as a mirror for her to reflect on what’s happened with Discord, but she takes up most of the story with the explanation of her problems. Similarly, Celestia is the main character, but we only get bits of her pensiveness between Sorrel explaining her predicament. Luna also is just off to the side, acting as Celestia’s counterpart and the own discord in her life whenever Sorrel isn’t there, but the transitions between her and Sorrel are rocky and sudden. All three characters have something to add to the story, but they’re all underdeveloped and can get in the way of each other.

However, I did think this story had some good aspects to it. What we do get from all three characters is interesting, and at least Celestia and Sorrel have a lot of parallels that make their inclusions very strong. Putting a face to what Discord did during his reign and giving her a well thought out backstory adds to the emotionality to the piece, and in just one story, we get a very good look into Sorrel’s life. Her backstory also holds potential and strength, allowing us to see a mare who has been fundamentally changed and now struggles with losing the essence of what made her her.

I thought this story did some things well, but it had some issues that held it back. While Sorrel’s backstory was good and fit in well with the tone and setting, a lot of the story didn’t seem extremely tied to the main idea and as such, we get three partly-developed aspects of the story that seem to step on each other’s toes. For those reasons, I am rejecting this fic.