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PaulAsaran


Technical Writer from the U.S.A.'s Deep South. Writes horsewords and reviews. New reviews posted every other Thursday! Writing Motto: "Go Big or Go Home!"

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May
25th
2017

Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXIV · 10:11pm May 25th, 2017

Dead in the middle of Bibliophile week, and it's... a lot more productive than I expected, actually. I've been getting around 1,500 - 2,000 words in like clockwork since Sunday (except yesterday, but that was a busy day for real life junk-stuff-things). Which is great, because I'm almost done with Chapter 2 of Bulletproof Heart. My next step will be to put my schedule aside and finish Derp, partially to give Pascoite something to butcher (and it will be butchered, trust me on that). It'll also finally let me get a new story into its editing stages so that you guys can see concrete evidence I am, in fact, doing something other than playing video games all day long.

Anyway, this Bibliophile week marks the beginning of several weeks of intense reading for my reviews. I've got a lot of long stories coming up all at once and I've decided to forgo my maximum reading limits until I can push past them. No telling what this will do to my time for writing, but if I can do so well this week I don't think it'll be too big of a deal. Just have to stay focused! Fortunately I've got a vacation week coming soon to take the strain off.

Stories for This Week:

Chompers by SpaceCommie
Elektrichka by Samey90
Bantam Tales by Chris
The Worth of His Shield by Jay-The-Brony
Stormsinger by Airstream
Total Word Count: 205,103

Rating System

Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 0
Pretty Good: 3
Worth It: 1
Needs Work: 1
None: 0


Chompers

1,407 Words
By SpaceCommie

I laughed. I laughed somethin’ good.

Granny Smith has concluded that Applejack is overdue for a dentist appointment. Applejack knows better; dentists are nothing but devilspawn performing unholy acts of cruelty upon perfectly fine, innocent pony teeth for no reason but their own sadistic pleasure and maybe a financial scam. Too bad she can’t say “no” to Granny, right?

Honestly, I have no idea why people are scared of dentists. I’ve not once had an issue with it, so the concept mystifies me. That doesn’t make this story any less entertaining, however. The constant barrage of over-the-top accusations and witty descriptions kept me smiling from beginning to end. Indeed, the creative narrative is the primary selling point with this one. I did get the feeling that AJ was being painted as something of a backwards hick, which annoyed me a little, but I’m willing to go easy on that since I think it was only her blatant desire to be anywhere but in the dentist's chair taking over her vocal chords.

Read it for a laugh. I imagine some people out there can relate.

Bookshelf: Pretty Good


Elektrichka

1,786 Words
By Samey90

That was… curious. I can’t help but think I’ve seen this story before. Maybe in a Writeoff?

There’s no real reason to this story. As one commenter declares, it’s about everything and nothing. It is a stream-of-consciousness tale that simply relates one pony’s trip home on the Manehattan subway at night. It’s dark, moody, and downright strange. As such, I imagine each reader will take something different out of it.

For being different, I liked it. For having no discernible purpose or intent, I didn’t. This one is nothing short of quirky, with a protagonist who doesn’t think in normal thoughts, which makes the whole thing feel otherworldly. It also loses points for frequent grammatical slips, especially in verb tenses.

I want to provide something concrete and stable in my opinion of this story, but it’s hard to come up with anything given the content. I think the best I can really do is suggest people try it for themselves and see what they think. I’m sure those looking for ‘odd’ stories will enjoy it.

Bookshelf: Worth It


Bantam Tales

11,679 Words
By Chris
Recommended by Super Trampoline

I must have missplaced a note or something, because when I scheduled this story my records showed less than 2,000 words, but it’s a lot bigger than that. My guess is that Super Trampoline meant for me to review just one story in this collection of shorts and I neglected to write myself a reminder to that effect. But I’ll tell you what: I don’t mind. Not at all.

Bantam Tales is nothing more or less than a spot for Chris to dump micro-stories as he comes up with them. The stories are not related to one another and can be read in any order with no drawbacks. As such, it’s impossible for me to give a review for this as a whole. Had I realized what I was getting into earlier I may have devised a means of reviewing each piece on its own.

Let this not trouble you! For while I can’t rate each story individually, and can say that this collection is a great sampling of Chris’s talent as a writer. It ranges from the silly to the poetic, but tends to lean more silly most of the time. Highlights include Twilight learning that “we have to cast it in order to know what’s in it” is a terrible excuse for pretty much anything, non-magical ponies trying to play card games, dragons not thinking their 1,000-year-old domination strategies through, and Scootaloo entering a drinking contest.

Then there’s the poetry, which I’m gonna bow out of judging because – let’s face it – I’m a poor judge of that stuff. But I will note that Chris’s poetic style seems a mite more advanced than I’m accustomed to. Whether that’s a great thing or not, I’ll have to let others judge.

If you feeling like blowing a little time on some fun little stories, by all means give this a go.

Bookshelf: Pretty Good


The Worth of His Shield

2,471 Words
Jay-The-Brony failed to provide cover art.
Requested by Harry_Jones

The concept is as simple as it is blatantly obvious: Shining Armor feels like a failure of a captain and a prince, and his depression is affecting his job. Cadance decides to nip this in the bud by giving him a pep talk, which largely amounts to: “You’re incompetent, but at least you’re brave.” And of course, it cheers him right up.

Sorry, Jay, but this one did nothing for me. I get it, Shining’s definitely had a pretty crummy run as a guardian figure in the show, failing in pretty much every way he has an opportunity to. And of course that would affect his morale in any real world situation. But Cadance’s method of encouragement just didn’t jive to me. If Shining’s going to get better at his job and prove his worth, he needs to start focusing on why he keeps failing rather than be encouraged to keep doing things the same way.

But the thing that really bugged me about this story is how it leans on Tell like a cripple on a cane. We start the story with a rehash of everything we already know about the defeat of Tirek - thus, a pointless dump of information. And then, as Shining recounts his failures, Jay deems it suitable of explain the details of those events which, again, the readers already know perfectly well. The story is rife with lengthy explanations of things that are either obvious or extraneous to the situation at hand, to the point that I just started skimming everything that wasn’t dialogue by about halfway through.

An obvious premise combined with an overly wordy writing style and a resolution that feels hamfisted at best. I’ve certainly read better stories by this author.

Bookshelf: Needs Work


Alternative title: The Introduction to the Sequel of the Prequel, Part I of L.

And so I return to the epic series begun with the story Lines and Webs. Set 400 years after the events of Dusk’s Dangerous Game, the story stars Cobblestone, a thief from the single most disreputable city in Twilight’s kingdom, and Serale, daughter of Twilight. When Cobblestone decides to try stealing from the daughter of a demigoddess, she is unfortunate enough to do so at the same time a secretive group attempts Serale’s assassination. Now caught in the midst of intrigue that involves beings beyond gods, Cobblestone finds herself struggling to keep up with only Serale’s kindness keeping her alive… for now.

On the one hand, it was nice to see some worldbuilding of what the world is like centuries after Twilight becomes a demigoddess and rules her own Everfree Kingdom. This story was rife with interesting characters, attempts at deep political intrigue, and no small amounts of riveting action. Serale and Cobblestone both make for interesting lead characters, and the side character Vino is no slouch himself. The story is also brutal, making it clear early on that being named and seeming to have an important role does not mean a character will survive the story.

I wasn’t crazy about Airstream’s regular switching to scenes from the perspective of characters who are not the central ones, especially the villains. I’ll acknowledge that this move did enhance the ominous nature of, for example, Lady Hedera and Nightshade. I can even approve of how the awareness of Lady Hedera’s – let’s call it ‘network’ for the sake of avoiding spoilers – only makes certain moments in the story seem all the more worrisome. And yet I can’t shake the idea that the story might have been served better if we hadn’t seen their perspectives at all.

Indeed, the reader doesn’t really learn anything from these perspectives in the large scale of things that couldn’t be lost. It’s not like we learn who the real villain is, or what their ultimate plan may be, or what their true motives are. We just see their servants going about their business, sometimes for little more than the sake of extra blood and a literary statement of “oh, look at how badass this villain is!”

But again, these demonstrations still served a purpose, i.e. making the reader acutely aware of how terrible things can/could be. How, then, can this same message be delivered? Ironically, Airstream provides a method in-story with the mystery of Radiant Zenith: we never know anything about what happened in this instance, and we don’t need to. Just the awareness of who Radiant Zenith is combined with the mystery surrounding her is enough to unnerve the reader. That scene in particular worried me as much as knowing about Hedera’s ‘network’, perhaps even more so.

Another thing that makes this story odd: there’s no ending. Oh, sure, the chapter titles claim the arena is the climax, but a climax of what? Is it just a climax because there was a big fight? Nothing got solved, and while a villain is (presumably) dead, that death was anticlimactic when compared to the big picture, which… hasn’t been affected much. Then there are lessons learned and things taught to the reader that our two main characters aren’t privvy to in any way. Heck, the main characters don’t even regain consciousness from the climax onwards. If this is supposed to be a story about Serale and Cobblestone – and the majority sure makes it seem to be – why does the conclusion barely even feature them?

And then we get to the gleaming, sun-raising elephant in the room that is Celestia, also known as She-Who-Should-Have-Died-Horribly-In-The-Last-Story-But-Was-Somehow-Forgiven-And-Allowed-to-Maintain-Her-Tyranny. And I do mean tyranny; citizens of Twilight’s kingdom actually speak in hushed tones about ponies being burned alive for attempting to leave Equestria, and even refer to Celestia’s lands as Tartarus on Equus. In short, Celestia’s clearly not improved any.

But the real kicker is when Celestia gets angry at Twilight. To quote: “I will not sit idly by and allow you to ruin a young mare’s life to achieve your goals!”

Excuse me? Did I read that right? This coming from the mare who had Twilight bred for the express purpose of dying, who brainwashed her into falling in love with some asshole stallion, who intended to have her raped repeatedly in the caves beneath Canterlot (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg), who waged a war involving hundreds of thousands for the sake of controlling Twilight's womb, is lecturing her on the importance of not ruining lives for personal goals? And to make matters worse, Twilight fails to call her out on it.

I don’t care if there’s some hinting at the end that she might regret her past actions. Celestia is a glaring hole in this entire franchise that I seriously don’t think the author will ever be able to fill up or cover. Her continued survival past Dusk’s Dangerous Game, and her new role as Twilight’s peer and advisor, is untenable and keeps the whole thing under a ceaseless pall.

Ignoring those flaws, however, the story is still pretty good. It’s actiony, intriguing, complex, dark, and all generally good. If anything, I’m even more invested now than I was before. Watching Serale and Cobblestone grow as individuals is the big treat of the story, and trying to unravel the mysteries (none of which are resolved by the story's end) is a great hook to keep things interesting. I love the old characters and seeing how they’ve developed over the centuries, and I enjoy the new characters and seeing their determined efforts to survive. And while I don’t agree with every decision Airstream made in the presentation, I can’t argue their usefulness in the end. Granted, one cannot read this without first reading those that came before (otherwise you’ll be totally lost), but it’s definitely been worth my time.

Now if Airstream can just finish the next story.

Bookshelf: Pretty Good


Liked these reviews? Check out some others:

Paul's "Wait! It's Not Thursday!" Reviews
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXX
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXI
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXIII
You Are Here
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXV
Paul's thursday Reviews LXXVI
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXVII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXVIII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXIX

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Comments ( 4 )
PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

Thank you: you inadvertently reminded me that I read a story today and didn't actually write the review for it! >.<

What's so scary about dentists? It depends on how many cavities and other work you've had to have done, and how well you handle the discomfort and/or pain. It's worth distinguishing the two because the drugs do indeed affect people to varying degrees.

Thank you very much for the review! In one of those funny coincidences, I'm literally at this moment putting the finishing touches on two more short pieces to add to that collection, so the reminder that it's a thing is well-timed.

I don't think the first few "chapters" represent my best writing--they were some of my earliest pieces, and written on very strict deadlines, after all--but collectively, I think the stories give a pretty good overview of what I'm like as a writer, and (hopefully!) of how far I've come. Oh, and no worries on the poetry; I don't know that I'd call it advanced, but the two styles that I use in that collection (alliterative epic and lục bát) are pretty uncommon in modern writing.

Thanks again for the review, and I'm glad you liked it!

4549214

(alliterative epic and lục bát)

And just like that, you've proven your superior knowledge of poetry compared to me.

My only real regret is that I didn't pay more attention when the story was recommended to me, otherwise I'd have given a more in-depth review of each story. And only now do I realize that I failed to send out notices to all the authors informing them that this blog exists. ...and I didn't update my Author Scoring spreadsheet with this blog either!

Jeez, Paul, really dropping the ball this week.

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