Edited Details

by
ILurvTrixie

Danger Beans

There is a rule I live by whenever I read a multi-part story that’s over 10k in length. I call it “the rule of three.”

It’s simple enough: if a story has not caught my attention by the end of the third chapter, I don’t continue reading.

And I’ll say right now, that if it were not my obligation as a reviewer to read this story in its entirety, I would not have kept on reading past the third chapter.

The story begins with “A.K. Yearling” hard at work on the next Daring Doo novel. And this is where I ran headlong into this story’s first problem, namely, the plot.

Edited Details switches between two POVs and two storylines: A.K. Yearling’s and Daring Doo’s, and it got really confusing really fast. At first I thought that Yearling was writing down a chronicle of past events, and Daring’s adventures with Fluttershy had already happened. But as it turned out, Fluttershy and Daring’s escapades were actually being dictated by Yearling, Stranger than Fiction style. This isn’t explained either, at least not until later in the story. And it left me scratching my head trying to figure out just what the heck was going on.

This is compounded by the second problem. During certain parts of the Yearling POV sections the readers are treated to excerpts of “The Book” where the main storyline between Daring and Fluttershy is taking place. The problem is that the excerpts from aforementioned book are in really small text. This made reading on a tablet hard and reading on a phone nigh impossible. These weren’t small little tidbits either—more often than not they were large passages of text. Usually containing important plot points! Making important plot points hard to read and easy to miss is not a good way to keep a reader’s attention. Additionally, this of course begs the question why simple italics wouldn’t have sufficed. But I digress. In the beginning of the story, there’s one such passage, detailing a bunch of griffons and a pile of rocks that are actually some kind of artifact that acts as a teleporter. I had to read the first two chapters three times before I could figure out what was going on.

To Its credit, Edited Details does get better. The story has levity in spades, and hits its stride around the fifth chapter and keeps up the pace nicely. Likewise, the romantic elements don’t feel forced, and there are quite a few laugh-out-loud-slice-of-life moments strewn about.

In summation, the plot is nebulous, and while this story is by no means bad—once you figure out what’s going on it’s quite enjoyable—I can’t give this story my recommendation. This story didn’t actually manage to catch my attention until almost a third of the way through, and because of that, regardless of how good it became in the end, I can’t give a recommendation to a story on the prerequisite that the reader skips a third of it.

Punzil504

Synopsis

The tale begins with A.K. Rowling as Daring Do on a quest to retrieve an artifact. A second Daring Do on the same quest runs into Fluttershy. Wait, how can there be two Daring Dos? The answer is linked to Rowling’s typewriter, which is magically writing a story without any of its owner’s input. The artifact, a pile of stones called a “tor,” appears to be bringing different characters into and out of the story. Fluttershy, her friends, Angel, and even Discord all wind up as unwitting participants in the adventure with a foe who knows everything about them.

Pros:

1. Discord. There is plenty of clever banter between the Lord of Chaos and the other characters. (Spoiler) It was rather refreshing to see him without his powers for a bit. Discord’s apparently still a force to be reckoned with even without magic. Plus, who else would be able to play a casual game of Jumanji like it was Trivial Pursuit?

2. Genre savvy-ness. Ultimately, the only way to defeat a villain who can read you like a book is to think outside of the box. (spoiler) The use of Rarity’s kung fu, Derpy’s piano, and Fluttercruel were done brilliantly.

3. Edward the Undying. The name is a bit cheesy, even with the reveal of its true meaning, but underneath the name lays an abomination that wasn’t to be trifled with. Edward is a chessmaster on the level of King Sombra at least. Not only has he engineered a way to live up to his “Undying” title, but he can control reality itself with A.K. Rowling’s typewriter.

Cons:

1. The Romance. I was very conflicted with how it was handled, finally deciding on “Hey, that’s almost exactly how it happens in the Indiana Jones movies.” Despite some attempt at a buildup during Fluttershy’s coming out scene with Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy falls for Daring fairly quickly and awkwardly. It’s tied together with the whole “hey, I’m an action hero” idea, plus the concept that A.K. Rowling’s one attempt at writing a romance wasn’t very good. It worked, but it really shouldn’t have.

2. The two Darings together. In stories featuring a doppelganger, there has to be some way to deal with the fact that two characters are going to answer to the same name. Having the occasional “two Darings” descriptor would have been fine, but I felt it would have flowed a lot better if “Author Daring” had remained A.K. Rowling while “Book Daring” kept the Daring Do name during the scenes they were together.

3. It did take a bit too long to introduce the villain. I was all but convinced that A.K. Rowling was going to be the antagonist until Edward showed up in chapter eleven. Normally that would be a good example of misdirection, but a villain as awesome as Edward deserves more than the Sombra treatment.

Overall… well, I had my doubts early on, but the story grew on me as I kept going. The action scenes were splendid, and the heroes have to pull out all of the stops to defeat the villain. I’d recommend it more as an Adventure story than a Romance, but that’s what you’d normally expect from a Daring Do story anyway, right?