Main Reviews #17: Reddux the Tyrant (part of the Million Words in June) (spoiler warning) · 5:57pm Jun 24th, 2015

Hooray! Another huge story off my RL, and in only two days as well. I think I'm beginning to get the hang of this "reading" thing.

Who likes dragons? Who likes Celestia? Who likes... Fancy Pants and Fleur in a non-romantic setting? Well, if you answered yes to any one of those questions, have I got a story for you. Prepare for trouble with one of the largest dragons I've seen depicted in this fandom. A recurring character in other universes. A dangerous, formidable, apathetic foe of gargantuan proportions and a chip off his shoulder to match.

Ladies and gentlemen: PaulAsaran's Reddux the Tyrant.

Author: PaulAsaran

Synopsis:

After centuries of peace, the unthinkable has happened: the dragons have invaded Equestria. Celestia knows that her country could never survive a war against these terrible beasts, and so journeys south in hopes of bringing a quick peace. She is not the only one seeking answers: the young assassin Fine Crime has been dispatched by the Archons to determine exactly what has stirred the dragons into action, Fancy Pants has found himself on the front lines with no idea if he'll make any difference, and Fleur Purpurnyj has more enemies than dragons to worry about.
Nothing could prepare any of them for the sheer brutality of the Burning Lands' most fearsome inhabitant: the dreaded Reddux the Tyrant.

Length: 125,197 words over 20 chapters, averaging 6,260 words per chapter

Status: Complete

Review: Having been a huge fan of two of Paul’s other stories—Trixie vs Equestria and Twilight’s Inferno—I was originally approached by him to edit the story back when it began in August 2014. Unfortunately I was busy with other commitments, although I did regret being unable to devote the necessary time to it. Its central draw is the great dragon, the titular Reddux, who is easily three times larger than any dragon already seen in the show. Reddux is a recurring character throughout Paul’s different ’verses: those of his No Heroes and TvE Timeline stories. He’s not the only one either, as many characters share personalities between the two universes while others are almost completely different. He keeps them separate enough though, so it all works out in the end.

Taking place seven years before the events of FiM’s pilot episodes, the story’s opening launches us immediately into conflict as a trio of great and terrifying dragons lay waste to a small, peaceful resort on the ocean. Caught in the merciless and completely unexpected slaughter is the young Lieutenant Fancy Pants of the Equestrian Military. With a combination of luck, training, and a blatant refusal to die, he manages to evade the hellwyrms while also dragging a young filly to safety as well. Everypony else in the village, including two of Fancy’s fellow soldiers and friends, are killed in the attack… and not all by dragons.

Hailed the “Survivors of Sueño,” Fancy and the filly—a younger Fleur nee Purpurnyj—share of their experience in the nearby stronghold of Estéril Penzuñas, a fortress near the northern edge of the Badlands which itself is situated above the dragons' homeland, the Burning Lands. Both traumatised and upset beyond comprehension, they meet with a few of Princess Celestia’s higher-ups… which happen to include Fleur’s uncle: Daring Deeds, aka “The Dragonslayer.” Without giving anything away, this guy will make you want to carve his eyes out with a salad spoon while also making his eat his own nutsack.

The character emotions on display in these first few chapters are well done. Fancy acts just as you might imagine a fairly new soldier to after being one of only two survivors in a village-wide massacre. It doesn’t help that ponies everywhere constantly ask him to share his story and his experience, hailing him as a hero when they do. And surviving the Slaughter of Sueño is but a small portion of the horrors that Feur has lived through… and continues to live through. Seriously, I want to cleave her uncle in half. Slowly. With a butter knife. And no anaesthesia.

The descriptions of Sueño and Estéril Penzuñas are vivid and great. Sueño looks just like an exotic, wooden Caribbean island resort in my mind, while I get an image of something similar to Osgiliath from Lord of the Rings for Estéril Penzuñas (although without the river). It is here that Celestia herself comes to visit and prepare for another attack, and damn if it doesn’t get intense.

Following some costly actions and some character interactions that may leave weaker readers sick to their stomachs, we meet with another enigmatic stallion. Fine Crime is Paul’s most popular OC, appearing in and having significant roles all throughout his No Heroes universe, the TvE Timeline universe, and even a few of his other one-shots. Fine is a character that’s very hard to pick initially, no matter what story you meet him in first, but one thing’s for certain—you never can know 100% what he’s up to. This keeps him interesting; his actions and words continuously surprise the reader as more and more is slowly, slowly learned about him. Will anyone ever know as much about Fine as his creator? Probably not.

Through a series of logical and not at all contrived—I’m actually serious here—events, Fine ends up reluctantly keeping an eye on the boisterous young Fleur, unable to trust anypony else to ensure her safety. It’s these chapters centred on the pair of them that steal the show, because they’re just that damn interesting. While the story switches viewpoints to flit between Fine, Fancy Pants, and even the Tyrant himself, you can’t help but cheer for the enigmatic Archon and his limpet-like cling-on of a charge as their relationship develops. Taking cues from Ellie and Joel in The Last of Us as well as Mathilda and Léon in The Professional, Fine and Fleur have the adventure of a lifetime as they uncover shocking secrets and utilise their skills to survive in hostile territory.

Oh yeah, this while Fancy Pants is caught up in a power struggle between his superiors, and a personal struggle as ponies insist on thrusting the title of “Hero” on him. There’s also the matter of another dragon attack, with Fancy and a few select, very distinct and likable other OCs earning multiple levels of Badass. These action scenes are a joy to experience as Paul brings unorthodox yet effective ideas to the table, perfectly cooked and melting tenderly off the bone.

The characters, the settings, and the action all make this a great read. Other exotic locales like Crater Lake—the site of an ancient “calamity from the skies” ( *cough* Jenova *cough* )—and Guardia del Este—a desert fortress reminiscent of Figaro Castle in Final Fantasy VI—add to the world in detailed ways and feel like lively places even when not a lot of action is going on, which is admittedly rare.

The writing, while of the general quality I would hope for in Paul’s work, still has a fair few kinks in it. Basic ones mostly, that can be smoothed out in a single pass: mostly just wrong punctuation, some superfluous apostrophes, missing the capital letter when calling Fine Crime by name, and calling Princess Celestia “your majesty” instead of “Your Highness.” Very few errors present in that sense, and maybe far fewer since I pointed them out to our dear author during my readthrough.

I did have a few issues with some other things, though. The sentence structure, while not as quickly as in many other stories, eventually started to get quite repetitive. The structure of ( X verbed. “Dialogue.” ) for example, as well as follow-on sentences with implied simultaneous actions when they clearly could not have been possible, or were supposed to be congruent instead. Our dear author seems very fond of the participial modifier too, even though he only uses it correctly about half the time. Apostrophes facing the wrong way at the start of words like ‘cause (instead of ’cause). An abundance of semicolons, while not abused to be sure, still seemed just a touch excessive.

But it’s here I want to share two things about the characters that really bugged me. The first is that Fancy Pants misses some numerous and very obvious cues from Fleur early on in the story, which results in him losing Fleur’s trust for the greater part of it while also enabling a certain scumbag to torture her. This isn’t limited to Fancy Pants either. The writing itself seems to be trying to be subtle about certain things for a while, but it has this subtlety in overabundance. It felt like when someone has a secret and really wants to tell you, but they keep dancing around the issue, beating around the bush, while dropping relentless hints until you finally, finally understand what’s going on… even though you’d already guessed long before this “subtle” approach decided it had dropped enough on you that even the most blind reader could see its hints clear as day. There’s a time and a place to be subtle insofar as to evoke a reaction when the point of the subtlety is revealed, but not when we’ve had 50-odd subtle clues dropped around us and yet guessed what was up by about the 3rd one. It sort of kills any dramatic reveal one might be going for, as the reveal has already been guessed by anyone with half a brain.

The other, larger issue occured to me about halfway through the story, when ponies all around Fancy Pants were trying to get information on how to kill a dragon out of him. When he’d done nothing but survive a single attack. When somepony else actually had a reputation for being an official Dragonslayer. And yet nopony thought to ask Sir Daring Deeds how they might possibly fight their terrifying and seemingly impervious foes. He, a pony who might know, perhaps the only one, how to kill a dragon, was never asked for his advice, nor did he offer it to anyone. As it turns out, this is plot relevant and can largely be excused, however just a little tidbit earlier in the story from him about how not all dragons can be relied on to have identical weak spots would have sufficed. It’s not a humongous elephant in the room, but it is this story’s largest one, and I admit it had me groaning before I soldiered on.

The payoff in the final few chapters makes everything all right again. Or was that “alright?” Paul seems to flit between the two, just like with the name of his elite flying regiment, the Redwings… er, Red Wings… er, RedWings… anyway, moving on, the climax assuages all the reader’s fears and earns all our heroes even more Badass points. You really feel like they’ve overcome impossible odds, and the best thing is you were right there with them as they did. Yes, Paul has finally learned to have a much more Active Voice in his writing. Now if he could work on not having 4+ adjectives or 5+ “the”s in a single sentence as well as impossible simultaneous actions, that would be great.

Reddux the Tyrant is a worthwhile read, particularly if you like alternate takes on background / secondary characters with compelling OCs and high-stakes writing. It’s still rough around the edges, and that point about not asking The Dragonslayer how to kill the attacking dragons at any point really hurt the story for me. Thankfully, most of the other problems are fairly indiscernible to the average reader, and this story really does deserve more attention for the effort that went into it. Not his finest work, but still enjoyable.

7.5/10

Words read so far this June: 724,668

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