Ghost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #127 · 6:00pm October 28th
Got a surprise today, though not a Halloween-themed one. In Monday Musings’ first review of a novel-length fic since going unscheduled, we also have not only the first Author Spotlight since then, but the first time period those two have been combined. And much like Rune Soldier Dan some time back, it’s that (charmingly) awkward position of being someone who’s also a regular reader and commenter of this space. Folks, I give you iisaw.
This guy doesn’t need an introduction, right? He’s dabbled in a lot of fields in his time, not least animation and game development, and is very well-read, especially when it comes to history, fiction and historical fiction. Above all else, he’s a straight shooter, has no patience for toxic behaviour and thus avoids engaging with it cold turkey, and is quite easy to like. All traits we should aspire to! 
He responds well to enthusiasm and talent, and has reached that point where he’s candid about what he likes to read and write, and can value those nichés above something that may technically be “better”. But in a manner that’s mellowed and respectable, even when the characters within that material aren’t (in the sense of their morality).
He’s also a very tricky author to do a spotlight on, owing to how little he writes, with only 16 fics to his name across 11 years (not counting a few removed fics). Five are novels in the 70-106K range, but it’s also further complicated by a few crossovers, one short novel-length fic, and a few side stories in the Verse those five novels share. More than anything, the impression is of someone who only writes when inspiration/the right idea strikes and refuses to let go, though also with a willingness to try out different things that can be done within what he likes (many novels in said Verse have a unique gimmick or technique to them). Which hey, I can relate to that big time.
But it raises the question, what fics to pick? It’s impractical to cover more than one novel, but that leaves either just side-stories for the rest (basically turning the author spotlight into an Alicorn Adventures spotlight), or picking most of his minor n’ short one-shots that aren’t in the mode he’s known for. Ultimately, I settled on a mix of both, but really, this is an author who is known almost exclusively for his one Verse. Though the first fic there, The Celestia Code (covered in Monday Musings #104), is rather removed from the rest in both content, approach and tone. Such that, even years ago, I always tended to think of them as “Code, oh and I guess its sequels”. Code has so many more views even accounting for peak fandom dropoff, so I’m far from alone there.
I read nearly all of iisaw’s fics in my early Fimfic days, but I won’t deny that, for the most part, I haven’t enjoyed them as much in my recent rereads. But they are nothing if not complex: for a series where the pitch is always in the wheelhouse of pulp action-adventures, the kind of fiction that gave us thrills as teens and such, they are dense with incident, utterly committed to the perspective of an able and capable Twilight getting more assured (just in the kind of register where she almost never wavers even internally), full with social and psychological commentary that is clearly a chief authorial attraction to writing them in the first place, and utterly fearless in everything from the sprinkling in of weird fantasy inspirations to the almost complete absence of self-reflection or slowing down, even where the story’s parameters would dictate such moments.
So, even as I find them a little self-indulgent at the cost of some integrity (for instance, even most of the series’ fans don’t tend to vibe strongly with this depiction of TwiLuna, yet it is a constant mostly because iisaw loves the pairing), there are few better places for that than Ponyfic. And it is, more than not, tasteful indulgence, easy to get swept up in and overlook the flaws along the way.
So, while this doesn’t fully represent iisaw because no five fics can unless they’re mostly Alicorn Adventures novels, it does a solid enough job. Plus, to my knowledge, it’s the first major review anywhere of the latest fic in that Verse, published this year seven years after the last one. That certainly ups the excitement! As does the inclusion of said novel bumping this Monday Musings to 129K words covered – a personal record by over 20K. 
That prior record was also largely fueled by an Alicorn Adventures novel, so we’re really coming full circle here.
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
On the Rocks by iisaw
Apple Cider Caramels by iisaw
The Quest by iisaw
Lunch with Fluttershy by iisaw
The Cadenza Prophecies by iisaw
Weekly Word Count: 129,372 Words
On the Rocks by iisaw
Genre: Slice of Life
Twilight, Rarity, OC
8,789 Words
September 2019Reread
Midquel to The Twilight Enigma – Reviewed here
While clearing the skies of pirate scum under the alias of Captain Blackmane is a job that never sleeps until the Eastern Lands are no longer a wretched hive, even some relaxation is needed from time-to-time. Thus, as they dock in Zanzebra to refuel and repair from their latest excursion, Twilight grants them shore leave for a few days. What that entails for her, well, even this by-now familiar town can hold some surprises…
I lead with my bias in the sense of intellectual honesty: as someghost who found the most successful elements of The Twilight Enigma by far to be when it just attended to its pulp adventure scenario with exclusively the bells and whistles that fit that, the notion of a short spin-off set during that story’s last “past chapter” in the timeskip covering nearly a year where Twilight and co. are forcefully purging the Eastern Lands of pirates could not be more tailor-made for me. Well, while remaining truthful to this depiction of Twilight at this point in time, anyway. Though this is E-rated: no dark elements get a mention, the only element of Twilight’s arc relevant here is a buried-but-still-present belief in the humanity of even these evil creatures (a “one last chance, but after that, it’s the guillotine” kind, but I’ll be fair, anything else wouldn’t be true to this depiction of her), and while the physical danger of piracy and concealed weapons are mentioned and threatened, none of it’s in this one.
Now it is, on the other hand, hard to make a disconnected one-off trio of vignettes like these be more than merely an amusing diversion, given their pasting on top of a complete narrative. And indeed, the first shorter chapter, perhaps owing to publishing three years after the main fic (and two after the last in this series), very much feels like a fic based on an “established” story, with some of the creaky bones in the context setup you’d expect. But if one enjoys simply spending time with this Twilight when she’s not so heated-up (myself, less than most, but still somewhat), and getting some of the Exotic Foreign Locales Sightseeing the main fic paid lip service to, this already delivers.
The two chapters that form the bulk of the fic pick this up nicely to provide different flavours of diversion beyond revisiting this point in the series. The second centres around Twilight happening upon an archaeological discovery that permits iisaw to do another of his ponifications of something from real-world travelling/science/history (tick as appropriate). This being an ancient board game, based on the Royal Game of Ur (which turns out to be amazingly fun to play, simple to grasp, possible for beginners to excel at and win, but with great depth and mastery to pickup for something that uses dice rolls: give it a go here). The chapter never goes over the rules or gameplay either, just letting Twi’s discovery and the lighter aspects add some different wrinkles, and coupled with her wry side observations (and those footnotes: as ever their frequency and formatting remains… a choice), there’s some nice lore as side dishes delivered in the right way and with appropriate timing too.
Wrapping that up with the third chapter that attends to Twi’s buried-but-not-destroyed basic faith in others (of course, with none of the inner wavering most would write: being an iisaw fic, even a drunk Twilight is resolute and sturdy as an impenetrable fortress, for better or for ill), the fic gets a little more solemn without being overly gloomy (small roles for Rarity and the changeling Ket help there), in a manner I found quite well balanced.
The fic does slot mostly into “well, that was a nice reunion” territory, so while I prefer it to Engima, I can imagine folks who don’t share my quibbles with that won’t. But it’s inventive enough within those parameters that, if one enjoys the brighter, adventuresome side of the series (and really, who doesn’t?), this fic more than justifies the short investment.
Rating: Pretty Good
Apple Cider Caramels by iisaw
Genre: Slice of Life
Applejack, Apple Bloom, Granny Smith
1,540 Words
January 2016Reread
Turns out there’s more than one way to use cider apples. Applejack figures it’s high-time she showed her little sister one of the lesser known recipes in the Apple family.
This is a very uncharacteristic fic for iisaw, and not for being the only one in this spotlight not written in first-person. Though that’s part of it. It’s enough that, without the stated intent in the Author’s Notes, I’d never have guessed he wrote it if I came to it blind. Honestly, that may be by design: this was written for the precursor to Jinglemas, at a time when entries were posted anonymously in a compilation fic and only later did the authors upload them personally. So possibly it was a conscious “don’t write what people typically expect” sort of thing.
Anyway, it’s very plain in tone, with Applejack being very warm and affable as she directs Apple Bloom on how to use this different cider press. The closest thing to his usual approach to dialogue comes from a few statements from a nearby Granny Smith, and even then the barbs there could 100% be done in the show. Just about the only way this feels of this author is when the lack of any moral at the end reveals that depicting the making of the titular caramels in exacting detail was the main goal of the fic, and while a food recipe isn’t sailing technique or the history of a foreign culture, this does lend it some personality.
The end result is a bit anonymous, with the goal being more subtle and probably not to better effect, and while the character interactions are pleasant, past the dialogue, they are mostly skipped by with the pace. But I liked it enough while reading it, even if, unless one intends to go off and make these caramels themselves, there’s nothing here that will stick for even a few hours.
Rating: Decent
In many ways, Equestria and the wider world has advanced a lot. But it is more divided than ever, and one stallion with a lifetime of experience in espionage, Steel Line, sets himself to the task of breaching the deadly forest from which no one has ever come back from, finding the princess, and getting her to reunite and fix the world. He’s well-prepared, has all the cover needed to get there discreetly, all the artefacts to get through the forest, and all the backups to evade the dragon and breach the tower. But what awaits him in the tower is something nopony could have prepared for.
This one is technically in the same Verse as the Alicorn Adventures (kinda), but only very mildly: what we’re shown here come into play again in the penultimate chapter of Enigma, but not in a way that necessitates reading this, and likewise, one could read and enjoy this the same regardless of it they’ve read any of those (though having done so does invalidate one rather upsetting potential read of this fic’s end, knowing with relief that this Twilight isn’t that protagonist Twi, and it’s a different universe/timeline). So, it’s the best kind of spin-off.
And honestly, I found myself really invigorated by it. The length is put to good use in the early going, giving us enough context and side details about this world and this stallion in a way that feels organic and natural, but not overbearing. Perhaps because he’s an OC and basically a window rather than a fully fleshed-out character (though the handful of smug asides related to his skill flow remarkably well), he makes for a solid guide through the technological innovations (which are kept modest, nothing too sci-fi here), and providing enough clues about what’s different in this world to make for a tantalising mystery.
That setup, and a mockery about the tale being “rescuing a princess from a dragon” wisely used once and then dropped, only take up a quarter of the way into the fic, before it reveals its sleight of hand, pivoting instead towards a deconstruction of a rather grounded and non-mythical reality. This didn’t bother me in the slightest: perhaps by now I know to never expect swashbuckling adventure from an iisaw fic, but I think this effectively communicates that won’t be the direction anyway, so the hard genre pivot is surprising but, crucially, not unfair. The following material uses some side characters to ease up on the exposition being overbearing, and while the dark tag is justifiably there, it uses some lighter surface interactions well so that it’s not unpleasant when reading it.
The depiction of Twilight, and the meditation on utopia, that society needs struggle and conflict, and the oddball approach of how this future is improved from the past in ways the living here can’t fathom, certainly aren’t as fresh nine years on (how many fics have the world moulded according to the whims of an alicorn in her quest for the “perfect” utopia, yet the subjects don’t know that and still search for it?), and I think that takes a little oomph out of this. But otherwise, I’ve got nary a word to say against it. Somehow, every iisaw writing tic still present here that I found a problem in Enigma is modulated into a strength or at least a neutral element; the first-person perspective being not so tight and barely given over to aggravating asides is a part of that (honestly, it is basically third-person, and proves to me that The Alicorn Adventures could be first-person, just not the brand of first-person it’s chosen). As is the fic clearly not endorsing this way of thinking: put all that at just a little remove, and I’m right back in my usual “a given fic’s moral leanings rarely get under my skin no matter how wrong they are” approach to fiction.
But honestly, I think a (long-ish) one-shot with a lot to meditate on is just a much, much better fit for the layers of societal structure and this brand of character approach that when it’s awkwardly glued onto a traditional adventure narrative. Honestly, I really wish iisaw would do more fics like this, for it also aligns with that maxim that many sci-fi and fantasy series do their best work telling short stories, almost closer to extended anecdotes, more about vibes and different ways of being in their given world (see The Animatrix, or Star Wars Visions). That’s enough, despite this being a little tamer after so many years of fics approaching Twilight like this, to leave me quite impressed.
Rating: Really Good
Lunch with Fluttershy by iisaw
Genre: Slice of Life
Twilight, Fluttershy
1,604 Words
December 2019Reread
Being a princess isn’t easy, they say. A gross oversimplification, but more true than not. Thus, Twilight values the times when she can just get away from her duties for a few hours and hang out with her friends, just like old times. Today, she’s having a nice lunch with Fluttershy.
In many ways, this is an even gentler fic than Apple Cider Caramels; the presence of Applejack and Granny Smith still got in some good-natured ribs there. While Twilight is of course capable of barbs, in this context, she’s as calm and sweet as Fluttershy, and the closest thing to a moment with “edge” is a partial retelling over food of (presumably) Prince Blueblood’s son embarrassing himself in court. It’s all so tender as to give Paddington a run for his money.
Perhaps because of that, it crosses all the way back around to being enrapturing rather than the nice-but-drowsy experience I just painted. Once the opening few paragraphs of Twilight recollecting on shrinking herself down to enjoy this like the old times are out of the way (a nice gesture, but one that only underscores how the fic would fare better set sometime between Seasons 4-9, as getting away from her duties could still work there), and an uncomfy reminder of “The Last Problem” via Fluttershy’s old design is past, basically nothing goes wrong, and it something like the platonic ideal of “Fluttershy and Twi have a nice picnic”. There’s two extra bonuses in a visit to some unusual creatures (and the choice of creature feels like it was nearly perfectly chosen for me), and a slight deflation when Twilight finishes and leaves, modulated to not upset the fic’s overall mood.
I don’t know if I can call it delightful, but it is really pleasant, and while iisaw undeniably does better writing material with more substance (yes, even though I haven’t agreed with some choices made in bringing out said substance), there’s subtle but strong writing work in this mode.
Rating: Pretty Good
The Cadenza Prophecies by iisaw
Genre: Adventure (Alternate Universe, w/Violence)
Twilight, Mane 6, Tempest Shadow, OC
105,861 Words
March-August 2024Sequel to The Twilight Enigma – Reviewed here
To say Twilight’s good at taking out evil by now would be an understatement. Not just a Princess of Equestria, she’s stifled an ancient tribal supremacist machine, triumphed over the lingering Nightmare while forever locking away the original megalomaniac with domineering aspirations, and even conquered her own demons while purging the Eastern Skies of pirate scum as undercover pirates privateers. Oh, and she unwillingly became the Queen of a previously-hidden society. So when the International Friendship Festival bringing together all of Equestria’s nations and allies in a show of unity is interrupted by a broken-horned unicorn after the alicorn magic, it doesn’t go well for her at all.
For most, that would be enough. Not Twilight: upon learning more about this “Storm King” the army is working for, she immediately makes plans to stop his crusade in the south gathering all the magical power he can. In short order, Captain Blackmane and her crew have set off. And while publicly this is just a mission of prevention, in private quarters, her paper-thin patience with warlords makes no secret of her more… fatal intentions.
Unlike not just the prior two novels in iisaw’s Alicorn Adventures I’ve covered (having skipped a reread of The Luna Cypher), but basically every prior longfic on Monday Musings, this is actually quite new, having finished publication not even three months ago. Certainly, no one else has reviewed it yet to my knowledge. Coupled with being a long-awaited return to this pulp adventure series seven years since the last one (with only a few short story compilations in the interim), I will try and be a little cagier with open spoilers. But some may slip out if you want to go in totally blind; many of my notes are specific enough, at least in structure, that I can only be so vague.
Anyway, here we are, jumping seven years in writing time in three months of reading time. That made me quite curious going in. What will have changed in the writing style and approach? With the show having long since ended, will the fic (unwisely) try as Enigma did to reconcile its rather AU path with the show’s canon at the margins, or not bother anymore? Will the narrative be played straight in a way that plays to the series’ strengths, or keep diverting to shakier aspects again? And most importantly, with me finding this Twilight more and more unpleasant, will this continue that linearly, or will the approach be different?
Honestly, the answer to all of these isn’t straightforward. In many ways, this instalment finds iisaw going full Wes Anderson, doubling down on the tics, choices and idiosyncrasies that mark the series and his style out, both the good, the taste-dependent and the bad. Kind of a “I am the audience, and if any others like it, that’s a nice bonus” direction. Yet in other ways, it’s exactly the course-correction I’d wanted from Enigma. The intensified Twilight-perspective writing tics did sadly prove to be rather a constant thorn, but I’ve recognised by now that I differ from most readers on this. They’re not mere taste issues, and do remain problems, but I will only raise them when they are actively compromising the fic’s intended goals or have changed enough to be worth a mention; if you’ve read prior instalments, you know what they are. Just picture them magnified (though, thankfully, with less unpleasant dark elements) and you’re there already.
One question some might have is, how does this fic address bringing characters and elements from the 2017 movie into a universe where Twilight is this relentless, powerful and the polar opposite of passive? Very well: the middle ground previously straddled of trying to remain lightly compatible with canon is thrown out the window. There’s no attempt to bring in all the movie’s locales and characters, going purely with what will be useful and ignoring the rest. Because of how AU this is by now (enough to finally openly justify the tag!), it registers not as “canon events as they might happen in this AU” but “a new story plucking canon material it can make use of”. And on top of that, the fic wisely devotes minimal energy to addressing the characters’ normal lives outside of this adventure. There’s no attempt to justify the Mane 5 joining Twilight on this journey, for instance, they’re just there. And while there isn’t no instances of iisaw incorporating canon elements he clearly doesn’t want, just because of some “obligation” to address them, ones that would be better off absent and uncommented (Discord makes two small appearances, and you can feel the loathing radiate off the page), we’re getting there.
The story also starts off very strong: on top of wasting no time getting going (we’re not even 600 words in when the Storm Armada is first spotted), while Twilight and co. do squash Tempest, effort has been put into making Tempest and the yetis at least capable of inflicting damage and with enough defences of their own that Twilight can’t just OHKO everything. The story knows its goals and is very focused right out of the gate, and this continues into the next chapter, with wise use made of chapter/scene breaks to slip over movie exposition that we know to have been learnt, avoiding regurgitation. And Twilight’s snarky commentary on everything she doesn’t respect or has issues with is better-chosen, feeling less like authorial imprint as it often did before: even Grubber, while here out of obligation, is given something resembling being begrudgingly put up with without complaint.
I can pinpoint the exact moment where something slips up: where one of Twilight’s allies who got petrified, the main fallout from the battle, despite prisoner Tempest lacking the means to undo it with her airships downed, is undone by Twilight and the princesses before the second chapter is over. As squandering gift-wrapped character motivation goes, in saving a friend being the driving force of Twilight’s mission and her source of growing anger and losing control over the fic, it’s a small one, the kind that triggers an idle, “well, that seems strange to have not used such obvious yet perfect character motivation”, but nothing more, and which one would forget about in a few chapters. And I can’t imagine I’d be telling you about it, if it wasn’t the beginning of many similar sidesteps of ready-made and better choices all story.
Truthfully, that’s a bit unfair, and in actuality, there’s only one major gripe with the story’s first half: it’s too long, taking what is functionally the story’s first act (normally a quarter in length, as a starting benchmark, often less with novels especially as they get longer) and making it as long as the rest of the story (slightly less in length). Yes, the chief pleasure of these stories is never the plot, but the curious thing about this fic is how straightforward and played straight the story is, relative to prior entries. To the point that, were I tasked with converting it into a feature film screenplay, in terms of what material to cut, it would be much easier than with Enigma, even without the timeline-hopping, despite being 16K longer.
The juxtaposition is thus that this story has a clear goal it's pursuing with deliberate, visceral energy and drive from page one, without bothering for superfluous pit-stops. And it’s not that such a simply-plotted adventure story (which, to be clear, was 100% the right call) can’t earn a length inching over 100K (the series longest entry by a few hundred words if one counts the glossary). But the first half doesn’t really fill it up with much of anything, at least that has a purpose. After Twilight has her plan of action by the end of Chapter 2, it’s another four chapters before the quest actually begins, and a following eight before the first encounter with the enemy. And while plenty “happens” in all that, the only real advancement is making a final stop in Twilight Town to prepare for the mission, finding the aftermath of a Storm Armada attack, and then their first group of airships.
Clearly, the intent here is for Twilight’s daily interactions with the crew, peppering in details about how life/bits of lore have changed since the last instalment with no hand-holding whatsoever (mostly for the better), and the nerdgasms for nautical engineering and airship travel that are much more omnipresent than in Enigma, to all hold our interest. And they do, at first. But the writing ends up only having a few basic situations it cycles between, and outside of the scenes with Tempest*, which are about her character arc and Twilight’s view on how the world works (and even these start repeating without variation, just not as soon), very little of it feels actually needed, despite many plot and character threads technically peppered throughout. And this, coupled with the necessary emptiness of the setting that comes with airship travel when not docked, leads to the story being slow and draggy when it needs to be tight and tense, and which that opening promised to the reader it would be.
* Also, inevitably, the TwiLuna. As before, it’s a slog if one isn’t into the pairing and their characterisation here, but vexingly, it’s very organically integrated, too much to ignore. Though given we’re with Twilight, that does makes sense.
Thus, possibly the real problem is miscommunicated goals: this wouldn’t feel so circular if it wasn’t coming off such a throttle of an opener that had a screenplay’s level of lasered focus on keeping its story moving. This travelogue flips the script and wants its pleasure elsewhere, and I get that (longer stories have sustained themselves on getting even nerdier about their subject matter, just look at Moby Dick), but even here, the plot and quest remains in Twilight’s head too much for the story’s unapologetic fascination with the practicalities of airship travel to be its equivalent of Victor Hugo’s interest in architecture within The Hunchback of Notre Dame (a story nearly twice as long as this). It has several things in mind, and can’t decide which matters most, in a subtler way than such juxtapositions usually go, but one no less felt.
Then, at the halfway mark, the story finally hits the ground running. It even moves off the airship for a while to a locale that enables a storytelling mode very similar to that in The Celestia Code, positioning Twilight as not knowing all the answers and having to use her wits about the foreign, exotic, pulp adventure place and situation she’s in, and it is, if anything, even better than there (don’t forget, that story was mostly in an empty ruin with at most five characters, slowly puzzling things out, and while it worked very well, it did still run out of steam a little). From here, the story never lets up on its goals, so while it still takes weird diversions and has a strange hesitation to just cut out most travelling from A to B, insisting on showing at least a hefty chunk of it, it is mostly focused. And considering the first half is still competent, and many of the diversions are indeed entertaining despite their superfluousness, this was shaping up to be a solid leap from the mixed-leaning-good Enigma.
Unfortunately, the story’s biggest problem is all tangled up in the last third, meaning I can’t say anything specific about it. But in essence, Twilight’s character arc is straight-up dropped. Not even replaced by something else, just dropped. I may have disliked where the arc at the end of Enigma went, but I fully concede its intent: you don’t come up with and follow through one like that if you don’t believe in it. Here, Twilight’s building murderous aspirations against the Storm King, and other offshoot aspects, don’t build throughout in the way I’d have chosen, but they were building towards something. Until… they weren’t. It’s worse than a direction I don’t agree with, it’s a direction where I haven’t a clue what the end result or goal was, or even what the point was. The kind that either makes the reader feel like they didn’t get it, or that the fic misled them and wasted their time. And nothing punctures reader enthusiasm like making them feel dumb, or that they’ve been had.
That’s followed by an overextended breather before the final storm, then a penultimate action scene intended to intensify Twilight’s resolve by causing actual damage (that should have happened at the end of Act II) rather than cutting through some travelling. Then there’s a final battle where the video game logic approach to the action throughout really should have been rethought (in every action scene, more or less, Twilight realises her plan(s) won’t work, puzzles out the specifics of their defences, hits upon a fatal flaw, uses it and wins – this works great early on, but has diminishing returns when the enemy is always faceless from Twilight’s perspective as they are here). Though there has been enough public dissatisfaction with the final battle that iisaw is considering rewriting it. And, like with Enigma, this has a denouement that, despite being 5K long, can’t address every point or character throughout, and indeed the fic had so many that we get single-paragraph scenes giving lip service to many.
I honestly have no idea how much the story’s final third will disappoint others, even though the above seems pretty gaping. After all, considering how intensified Twilight’s perspective tics and ego are here, at the further cost for me of much of any character warmth being felt and coming off as genuine (her moments with Spike work really well, and are present throughout, but they’re only a fraction of the whole), possibly the third act and resolution will satisfy folks who are able to find something in her, enough that they won’t care about the above. But for this ghost, it was enough to turn a story a decent bit above Enigma into one just barely ahead. Such is the importance of the final stretch.
I do want to reiterate that the simpler story, more lasered and clear focus (like, this story honestly has barely more number of locales than the movie, and that’s a good thing), lack of pretension in its goals and a much better balance of how to use show lore for what this story needs are big things. I’m fairly certain that anyone who liked Enigma will like this one more, excepting big personal tastes against smaller-scale plots. Me, a marginal improvement, and if the first half was focused the way the rest of the fic was, and the last act didn’t feel like it misled me as a cruel joke for no reason (obviously not the intent, but that’s part of the problem: no intent can be figured out at all), it’d be a Pretty Good for sure.
Rating: Decent
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
- Plenty of OCs pop up, primarily members of Twilight’s crew. There’s Blender models of the cast in a few Author’s Notes, so we’re talking a crew of 20-odd named ponies. The engineering dog Ralf is an absolute delight, I loved every second with him, (and a later different representative of his species, the second-in-command of the dog empire the story’s middle stops at for a few chapters, is very intriguing in that pulp adventure exotic hidden kingdom sort of way. A unicorn with the gift and curse of good luck for herself doesn’t really go anywhere, sans maybe an undernourished C-plot with Rainbow Dash, but she brings a different enough vibe. Nearly everyone else is basically a prop, though that wouldn’t matter except when some, like an all-black griffon at Twilight Town, keep popping up and getting details and exposition about them, to minimal real effect.
- Twilight’s emotionally aloof way of running her ship, while a logical choice for the purported goal of reenacting pre-20th century sailing ways, isn’t a very entertaining one and is certainly not a reader-involving one. Despite all the onpage evidence, they never come close to feeling like an ad hoc family the way they’re clearly supposed to. And if they’re not meant to feel like that, well, it’s another case of the intent, whatever it was, not registering, off too many facsimile moments of warmth intended to stir something in the reader.
- For those worried that little enough happens, that isn’t true. iisaw’s approach to scene pacing and not dwelling on much of any moment, regardless of narrative importance, is as fast as ever. In essence, this is a story with a feature film’s worth of plot shored up to 101K by window dressing. It’s invigorating window dressing, and I can see many a reader finding it captivating enough that even that first half never drags. Still, where story integrity and quality is concerned, there’s a stronger 60-70K novel in here.
- Being far enough into the series that it isn’t comparable to canon anymore benefits the fic immensely in another key aspect: it becomes much easier to just roll with whatever choices are tossed out regarding established characters (also lore and plot). Not all, but most. This is a story where Twilight is casually nonchalant about intended (if indirect) forced social conditioning of Twilight Town’s people into the way of friendship, for one. If a lot of this stuff was attempted in Enigma (where Twilight started off trying to appease the Equestrian government calmly and peacefully, don’t forget), it would be base-breaking. As it is, here it allows me to complete a 360 and accept this as A depiction of A Twilight. Not MY depiction, but I can read her at a remove, and that dilutes the innumerable moments that still feel off about her. A big win, make no mistake.
- Tempest’s arc mostly works. It doesn’t play a standard thawing and reforming game, and only falls short of its potential by Twilight’s first-person perspective forcing many moments, in this tonal and prose approach, to either be offpage, or not present period. But one can see the arc’s skeleton. Though I have no idea what the point was of Grubber getting cold feet and trying to flee, given he still finishes the story working with Tempest anyway. If he was an undesired vestigial lump, the story is civil about having to include him, relative to the likes of Discord, so even discounting why they didn’t have him go with Tempest and Twilight under false lock to the Storm King – another “why wouldn’t you do that?” writing moment – it’s just strange.
- The signature footnotes are more present than they’ve ever been. Most are explaining bits of naval/airship terminology that could have been done in context or left unexplained: enough isn’t explained such that the fic still expects a reader who must know what everything means to check the glossary anyway. Possibly it all relates to a weird thing of Twilight’s thoughts sometimes alluding to past series events becoming (censored) books in universe by her quill, and even this one being something we’re reading back. It’s not brought up enough to feel purposeful, I found, so it’s just kinda… a choice. In any case, I stopped resisting the footnotes this time around, planted my tail at a solid remove, and begrudgingly let iisaw have his indulgence.
- The story does rather have a case of stating things once offhand that turn out to be pivotal, and expecting them to be remembered. Not a new issue for this series, but in Enigma I recognised basically all callbacks, they just often generated no reaction due to how barely-there the setup was. Here, several straight-up left me befuddled, and if a story has a spirit this attentive in his reading miss the plants for your payoffs… well, that’s a clear sign of info not going from head to page. Another reason why less window dressing might help; with this much proportional to plot incident, it gets rather muddled what actually matters and needs to be retained. Though possibly some of this is unavoidable when writing by pantsing.
- The titular prophecies are vexing. Not for barely being there: this is a pulp adventure, referring to lore or MacGuffins in the title to heighten the exotic regardless of how pivotal a role they play is par the course for this genre, and I welcome it. Nor for Twilight’s scepticism. Yep, you guessed it, it’s for how the finale uses it. I am not kidding when I say the denouement does not mention it once. Not Twilight apologising to Cadance for doubting it, not her remarking that she still thinks divination is a bunch of hooey, not that she should have brushed up more on historical horned figures. Nothing. While obviously not so, if one told me the prophecy(ies) was reverse-engineered into the story after the fact to allow a title in this series with the last princess not yet used for one, I wouldn’t doubt it (like, you could take the prophecy out, and the story wouldn’t be any different – Twi was already setting out to kill the Storm King, and she’d divert to the Empire off Cadance’s message, prophecy or not). On top of how not-there any setup or hints regarding Grogar were (which itself reads as plucking series lore because the story wrote itself into a corner), it leaves me, again, unable to figure out what the goal or point was.
- It’s far from my main issue with the final third, but I don’t even know what to say about the Storm King. It tries to present him and his armada as a threat, at least enough that Twilight has to think carefully, and actually succeeds. Thus, when he’s dispatched in a minute (without even a single line of his mood-swings humour) and quickly revealed to have been a red herring in the titular prophecy… it’s like the writing couldn’t make up its mind how to build up to and use him, tried to go for both threat and joke, and face-splattered on both fronts. Given how much extra magical protection/skills this fic gave the Yetis and Tempest, the Storm King could have easily been given the same and made a proper big bad, it wasn’t like he had to be kept as a magic-less pushover. Or vice-versa, fully embrace him being a joke. You might say I don’t have a monkeys what the intent was.
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 0
Really Good: 1
Pretty Good: 2
Decent: 2
Passable: 0
Weak: 0
Bad: 0
Only one of these I read was the caramels one, and yeah, that's pretty much the same reaction I had to it.
The first story gets my attention - maybe a good bite-sized way to dip toe into their flagship universe without having to commit to a novel.
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Celestia Code, the first, is short enough at 70K that it’s riskless enough, and The Quest here is standalone enough that I’d suggest it too. But even if On the Rocks isn’t standalone, and might leave you a little lost context-wise, I would second it being a good testing ground in terms of getting a feel for the vibes, style and narrative voice of the Alicorn Adventures.
Just, you know, an E-rated testing ground from a series that can go up to a strong T.
I've read On the Rocks, The Quest and Lunch with Fluttershy, and very much enjoyed each. But it's no secret that I get on very well with iisaw's writing (bar a few details, notably some of theTwiLuna) so that's not going to be any surprise. As you'd imagine I heavily skimmed the review of The Cadenza Prophecies, but I'll certainly be reading it through in detail once I've read the fic myself. (Not a certainty, but it may turn out to be my Hearth's Warming/New Year Spotlight review.) I will be surprised if I don't like that one a bit more than you, too. We shall see!
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Indeed, and I'm still vexed in part as to why a lot of it isn't clicking like it did before. Celestia Code and The Quest show it can still enrapture me very well. Especially because, as noted, normally characters' morals and all that barely affects how I perceive a book.
But there's just… something about the way this Twilight is written that's actively compromising the material. It's not "just" a taste issue, that I'm sure of, but obviously this doesn't apply for everyone. I do hope it's not turning me off to the charms the material does undeniably have, though in keeping this review focused purely on merits and deficits that directly relate to the fic's goals, I don't think it did this time.
Ooh, I'll look forward to that then!
As said, I think most people will like Cadenza about the same as Enigma, maybe slightly ahead. So, yes, you probably will like it that bit more than me, though not as much as you think: this is about as high a Decent as can be.
Hey there! Sorry I'm late to the party but the usual Monday Emergencies extended clear through Tuesday.
Thanks very much for the feature! I am absolutely stunned at the time and effort you put into your reviews, even if I find myself wishing you'd reviewed most of these after the first reading. But times change and so do our mental filters, and we all just have to muddle along as best we can.
If On the Rocks or Tales From Twilight Town still appeal after the general downturn, you may (or may not) be happy to know that my next planned outing will be very similar in tone to those two:
i.ibb.co/gz3BYgL/Cover-01.jpg
Be warned: At least one of the stories will be insanely heavy on the nautical jargon, and I will explain exactly none of it. You are quite correct in that I write entirely to please myself!
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That's actually quite literally impossible, bud.
When I first read your fics, that was pre-pandemic, maybe in 2020 at the latest. I wasn't even book shelving fics then, and certainly wasn't rating them. Even if I wasn't lurking then, the most any comment would have said would be "fic gud" (across a few short paragraphs, of course: I wasn't that different). Add to that the nearly-three years everything of yours bar Code was delisted, and yeah, literally impossible.
Also, assuming that wish is referring to my differing take on aspects of The Alicorn Adventures then compared to now, I would say of the seven fics of yours I've reviewed, Enigma is the only one that had a notable downward shift. Code, The Quest, On the Rocks and Lunch With Fluttershy are, at worst slightly diluted from my first impression some years back, some are slightly improved, and none have given down a rating from what I would have given them then (Lunch actually went up from Decent to Pretty Good). Meanwhile, Caramels and Cadenza were new reads. And yep, it's entirely fair to say I probably would have liked Cadenza more had I read it alongside the rest the first time through, but, well… it didn't exactly exist then, did it?
Oh, let me be clear: the story being heavy on nautical terminology without explanation was never a problem. I did praise the lack of hand-holding, after all. When reading such things, I either take the time to check what the words I don't know mean (myself or via a provided glossary
), or I just trust the author knows what he's talking about and attend to the story (not a risk whatsoever with yourself 
). Did I not, after all, praise Enigma for achieving the goal of making the author's obsessions our own? It wasn't even the oversaturation of such here that was an issue either.
It comes largely from the story pivoting hard from a sharp, film-level of focus and pacing to nearly half of the story being slow and relaxed in such a manner that one can only assume the nautical fanservice is now the primary goal, yet on top of the poorly-modulated pivot, the plot and urgency remain too foregrounded for that to fly. There are ways that both could have been achieved without diluting either, but that didn't happen, and thus, they became tangents. Entertaining tangents for a fair while, but tangents nonetheless, and the increasing frequency of the footnotes, irrespective of one's personal take on them, only foregrounds that they're tangents.
Hence my feeling that the story should have either kept to its original level of focus (my personal preference) or gone to full minutia-of-every-working-day levels, where the plot and characters are just a pretext (not my choice, but one I absolutely would have admired and respected if done well). But Cadenza is still far too into the plot and characters for that. So as it stands, it's a "jack of both trades, master of neither" situation.
But, an anthology is a perfect mode for this, as what the focus is can change from chapter to chapter. When I say that I feel your style is better suited to one-shots and anthologies, that is 100% a sincere compliment. And as one can't review an anthology until it's done, and they generally aren't until they are, it's one I'll probably read like anyone else, chapters as they drop.
Besides which, the potential for such a series to jump around perspective characters and different points in the timeline, with all the characters, locales and concepts that barely pop up and are moved on from lickety-split, is endless. That's not meant in a "squandered potential" way, but a "this well won't run dry easily" sort of way. Go for it!
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I just thought I would add one little comment on your TCP review here, despite my phobia of Arguing with the Critic. I don't dislike Discord, particularly my version who has learned some general empathy. It's just that I couldn't bring myself to take the coward's way out by ignoring him so the movie could happen. He's only a bad character in that he's in constant need of nerfing so that there can be problems other than him.