Review #81 - Ghost, Goblin, God: A Day in the Life of Sweetie Belle · 3:13am Apr 4th, 2017
Well, I am now semi-off of vacation. Which means I am off, but I'll be taking it easy for a bit.
Anyway, promotion. BTW, I have yet to read these:
*Seedling Springing in Love
*Thoughtletts
*Fly to Haywaii, Cheap
*Derpy Accidentally a Portal Gun IV: Tetralogy
As always, I will put down my recommendations, but I truly hope that you make the choice on whether to read a fic or not yourself.
Ghost, Goblin, God: A Day in the Life of Sweetie Belle by princeps
(Adventure, Alternate Universe, Crossover, Equestria Girls)
Sweetie Belle is used to seeing strange things. The thing in the sewer that will eat anything offered to it? She calls it Larry. A shadow person that seems to appear around people when they are about to die? Bob just wants to make friends, but he has really bad timing.
Once, she believed it when others told her that she had an overactive imagination. After learning of Sunset Shimmer's other life, she knows better than to listen to those words anymore. Now she has a new acquaintance: A ghost. That is hardly an unusual occurrence for Sweetie Belle in itself, but this ghost claims to be very old. He wants her to listen to his story - something about a lost age and a broken amulet and a war against the ancient gods for dominion over reality. Then he asks for her help to put his amulet back together. She knows already that this is going to be a long day. At least she might get to make some new friends along the way, if they do not eat her first.
Review
Wow, is this long, reaching slightly over 16k words. And in those 16k words is a narration driven adventure story. Quite the adventure story, at that. Let's begin with Sweetie Belle, shall we? I'll just start out with saying that her age is something that confuses me. For you see, she is with child, but it says in the story that she's a teenager. So, I'm assuming around age 17. However, she often acts more mature than age 17, which is where the slight confusion lies. Other than that, I would say she's too trusting. I mean, a ghost just shows up and she decides to help him, even though she has no clue what his true motives are. Same with a cat. Sweetie is also a "nice" person, which really shows through at the end whilst facing the "god". Another character would be the ghost, Mike she dubbed him, who is secretive, cryptic, slightly manipulative, and a surprisingly good-natured ghost. Not really sure how to do him beyond that, for he doesn't have many lines. That's about it for characters, the others are just used as plot devices, conflicts, or supporting characters. This one has a surpirsing amount of world building while stile keeping it vague enough to not bore the reader. Unfortunetely, due to it's length, a lot of the information gets lost after reading it. I read this two days ago, and have already forgotton the beginning and the spaces between major plot points. Heck, I forgot the names of everyone except Sunset and Sweetie. That does not take away from the initial read, but it does subtract from the after-reading pondering. Considering how this one is narrater driven, it actually does a pretty good job with character interactions. Also, the descriptions of events and locations is near perfect.
The greatest weakness would have to do with the plot, and how easily everything comes together. This is mainly in the rising action, however, it makes the rest of it seem slightly less great. My main examples of this are finding the necklace and finding the other half of the necklace.
Recommendation: Recommended/ Highly Recommended. (I'm kinda torn on this, because I really want to give it a good scoring, but that weakness just makes me cringe at times. Now, had the author added just a bit more text with my examples, it would recieve a higher rating).
