Shadow War Correspondence: Sun Atoms

I've been following Jordan179 for a while now, mostly to read his excellent world-building blog posts. In his posts, he often comments on how things work in "his" Equestria, the Equestria of the Shadow Wars universe; a universe which depicts the conflict between the ponies we know and love, and malevolent cosmic entites. Since I've been curious about it for so long, I decided to start reading the Shadow Wars 'verse, by order of publication... and since I'm reading them, why not comment as I go? This is a series of my posts on the subject; part-review, part-commentary, and part-whatever I feel like talking about at the time. Enjoy!

We jump back to the time of the Age of Wonders, of Sweetie Finemare and the future Princesses, in a (rather odd) story titled Sun Atoms

Sun Atoms begins a few years after the events of Trinity; while their mother takes them out for ice cream, Sundreamer and Moondreamer -now three years old- have a discussion about astrophysics, maturity and hoof-sucking.

The description pretty much says everything; this isn't a very deep story. It's a charming story; it's funny to listen to the young incarnations of Celestia and Luna give their explanations for how the sun works (sun atoms) and explaining singularities in terms of a beat-'em-up. Their dialogue is fun to read, particularly since we already know the importance the sun will play for these two in the future (as the source of the sunfire engines, and as Celestia's cutie mark). Sweetie also proves to be an enjoyable protagonist- and, really, a rather unique one. A scientist single mother raising two foals puts her in a very different position than pretty much any other protagonist in MLP.

From a meta perspective, this is kind of interesting as well; in his author notes for it, Jordan mentions that this was intended for chapter three of Trinity. It's good that it wasn't in chapter three- the comedy would have been too heavily at odds with Sweetie's grief to be enjoyable... but it does leave me in an awkward position where I don't really have very much to say.

It's a fine piece. It's fun to read; I'd even go so far as to say that Sundreamer's take on astrophysics and her argument with Moondreamer is adorable. Sweete's exasperation will be recognisable to anyone who has ever been around young children.

...But.
I have to concede that there is nothing exemplary about it. Coming off of the romantic drama of A Meeting by Moonlight, it might serve as a nice palette cleanser for readers, but I don't think it is an essential read. I don't want to sound too down on the piece- as I say, it is enjoyable in it's own right!-... but it is, ultimately, simply a single (albeit it funny) scene of a story; not bad, but not particularly necessary to the grander scheme of things either.

Still, if you want a story featuring cuteness, you could do worse than reading this.