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Apr
13th
2017

Review #87 - The Mystery of The Stars · 4:58am Apr 13th, 2017

Writing a quick review to make up for Monday. But first, a little announcement:

I have now completed The Games We Play, but will not be even thinking about reviewing it until I can get time and a dedicated blog.
Oh, and I should be a good little editor and bring attention to Sol Point, the latest from CoffeeBean.


The Mystery of The Stars by Violet Rose in The Dark
(Mystery)
Nightmare Moon was defeated and Princess Luna has been redeemed. The Two Sisters are reunited and Equestria now has not one, but two Princesses. In the depths of her new home called the Golden Oaks Library, Twilight reflects on the mystery of the Night Sky Stars and why they choose to help Nightmare Moon escape from her prison.

Review
This one is not so much a mystery as it is a thoughtful slice of life fic. Twilight in this one is, to put it shortly, a philosopher who possesses no will power. She starts by wondering what the book actually means when it says stuff and then works through it sentence by sentence finding possible answers as she goes along, so I would say she's thorough, obsessed, thoughtful, and smart-(icle). However, this does make her less engaging and somewhat boring. And Luna. Luna just wonders about the stars' motives when they released her, and she effectively confirms most of Twilight's wondering. K, those are the characters. So, I think it's safe to go and mention how this story, at a long 7.5k words, probably should have been no more than 5k. First off, Twi Twi gets a letter from her parents that contributes literally nothing to the story. Second, it really should have stuck to ponderings about the stars and not delve into other things. Third, Luna's part really should have been cut. And fourth, while it's good the story provided conclusions to the questions, they probably should have been left more open than they are. And then, I cannot completely agree with some of the ideas Tspark thinks of, but I'm too lazy to quote them. I hardly ever complain about such things, but in this one there are some grammatical mistakes that throw the reader off a bit.

Anyway, this one's greatest weakness would be how extremely long it is. This is due mostly to how often Sparklepants gets off topic, and partly because of how many paragraphs it takes to come up with a single point. Coming in second is something I never mention due to it being subjective, and that would be how telly it feels. You may disagree, but it's just a bit too telly for this topic and my liking.

Recommendation: Intermediate. (You may be wondering about this, especially considering all the things I mentioned above. But, underneath all the filler, this story alludes to, but never reaches, a proper ending. Also, it is quite boring in all but two places... places that would require sorting through the entire fic to find).


And so concludes my review. But, before I publish this, I want to know... were I to do an author interview, what type of questions should I ask? I would prefer ones related to the story, though I am open to ideas.

Comments ( 5 )

The Games We Play, huh? Now that takes me back. Be interesting to see what you make of it, when you have the time for that dedicated blog.

I love that you referred to Twilight as different names..... my favorite is Sparklepants :rainbowlaugh:

4494750
Yuss finally more fans of that story that I can talk to! I know its super old but I found it after just joining the fandom a few years ago so I missed all the fun discussion and debate about the mystery!

I've actually been trying to comission more secret admirer fics where the writer doesnt actually tell me who the admirer is just so that ill be able to scratch that mystery/romance itch!

Sol point sounds like my kind of story though: gonna check that out later!

4495027
Sol Point does become quite the story.

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