Hap Reviews: Contest Entries 4, Fang and Flame · 8:57pm Nov 16th, 2019
Hello again folks. Because the story here is a bit longer than what my tragically stunted reading speed can allow for, I'm only going through the one story today, by Horizon. It's called Fang and Flame, and initially came to my attention when the author pointed out that it was the only other Ember related story. What amused me especially was that it was in the War category.
This story clocks in at 14K words spread over four chapters, though it reads a bit more like one single long one-shot, which is probably what it might have initially been designed as. Let's begin.
Fang and Flame, by Horizon
Something that immediately set this story apart from the others is how it's told. It's quite striking how the story tries to put the reader in an alien perspective that begins to slowly make sense the longer you read. There are little clues regarding what goes on that informed me as to the environment. What took a little while to figure out (like, a paragraph or so) was that the Ember of this story is a wolf.
Typical. I come here for scalies and this is what I get.
This wolf is somewhat stunted and malformed, however. I rather liked this little twisteroo, because OG dragon Ember is, I think, well, a bit physically pathetic for a Dragon. At least, that was the impression I got from her introductory episode... this doesn't seem to be that supported later on, where she seems to brag about beating her competitors through brute strength in Triple Threat. Anyway, her being stunted was both pretty neato-burrito foreshadowing (It turns out she's actually a human, which is a bit inconsistent with the author's internal logic about why they're wolves in the first place, but whatever, fun twist, I dig it). Wolf Ember (who I shall refer to as Wember) gets to the pony world and gets her paws on a nifty magic crown that makes her instincts go plus ultra. With it, she makes the dragons of the pony land follow her and try to beat up Soarin.
Firstly, if you're struggling to beat up Soarin, it doesn't speak well for the future of the dragon conquest. Give him enough time and he'd probably crash anyway. Whatever, Wember's having fun.
Ember turns up tho and then it's a big old fighteroo. It boils down to Ember's intellect versus her instinct, which is a conflict I dig. I love themes of internal conflict in stories and Ember seems to be full of that kind of good stuff.
In the end, Ember wins and Wember goes back to the human world, where she rallies the wolves and presumably makes life miserable for the Equestria Girls. The end.
The story takes itself pretty seriously, which can be jarring. The story also goes in hard and doesn't give you time to stop and take a breather. It just ramps up at a constant rate, which I kinda like. It felt a bit exhausting going through 14K words of that, but it was still good fun. The story also doesn't give you easy info, since it keeps its information filtered through the eyes of what is basically an above-average dog. The story rewards this effort though, I feel, which is nice to see considering I feel I often reduce myself to spoon-feeding info.
There are swears in this story, and spoken by the characters can make them feel a bit weird, but this only happens twice and I get that I'm a bit of an odd-one-out when it comes to finding characters in the show swearing weird. This is probably part of how the story is trying to be pretty serious, but I sometimes find that clashes with how the show itself seems to work.
There's not much else to say here. It's well written, distinctively written so it stands out from other stories, has some cool fantasy concepts, a nice spotlight on an internal conflict shown through two alternate versions of a character coming to blows. After chapter 1 the whole thing is basically a big fight, and it's a good one too, exciting, interesting, and gets more intense and cerebral as time goes on.
Who would enjoy this? Anyone looking for action and who like fantasy should have a jolly good time, I'd think. If you also enjoy seeing a strong example of a story filtering itself through a very colourful, distinctive perspective (first person, of course), this should also be up your alley. It's 14K words long, so not just a simple quick read if it's not to your tastes, but if you get through the first chapter and think 'this is neato', the rest of it is pretty much just going to ramp up from there, so have fun. I'd certainly recommend it.
Bit wordy this time around, so sorry about that. I should be able to get a few more of these done. Hopefully so; there've got to be at least a few that look interesting to check out.
Pretty much all the ones I've read for this contest have been interesting in some manner or another so far. I hope for that trend to continue!
Cheerio,
Hap
Thank you for reviewing "Imposing Sovereigns" stories! It's always great to see what others think of the other entrants. And thank you for the praise for F&F!
Good luck with your own entry as well!
5157592 Because I read so infrequently I like to get into the habit of reviewing and recommending at least a few stories from bigger contests I enter. I did this for the EFNW stuff I entered and it was something I wanted to do for the AppleDash contest I was in but didn't have the time (started my PhD around that time, so my free time evaporated).
It's good fun to read through other contest entries, and I'd recommend the practice of trying to recommend them also! It's always a shame when there are a lot of contest entries and not all of them get read especially much, so on the off-chance a tiny blog serves as a kind of selling point for some of them, that's pretty neat too...