Twilight’s Magic
By AprilEve

Reviewed by Rinnaul

So, I’m going to be the laziest reviewer and start doing these stories from shortest to longest. That may mean I do them completely out of order as far as submission dates are concerned, but if we can get everything done in under a month like IceboxFroggie wants, that shouldn’t matter so much.

This in an AU take on the conclusion of Twilight’s battle with Tirek, and it seems to be AprilEve’s first story. I can’t say much on stories this short, but I’ll do what I can.

So, our core premise is that Twilight, being the Element and/or Princess of Magic, is tied more closely to that power than the average pony, even other unicorns or the princesses. As such, when Tirek steals her power, he takes her very life force with it—and possibly absorbs her physical body as well. Unfortunately for him, that much power overwhelmed his body, and he was destroyed. Everypony’s cheer at his defeat was short-lived, however, as Twilight was nowhere to be found.

The next few sections follow different characters—Celestia, Shining Armor, Nightlight & Velvet, Spike, and Discord—as they react to her death and visit her grave. Discord is in hiding, in part out of fear of what will happen to him for betraying everyone, and in part out of shame at his role in her death. However, when he leaves his amulet at the grave site, he doesn’t notice it vanish. We cut to the Tree of Harmony and the puzzle box, which is ready and waiting to be opened once more.

Two major problems mar this story. First, the pacing. Everything happens very quickly, and no time is taken to dwell on these events, nor the emotions that come from them. Second, it can be very blunt and telly. Numerous times, we don’t get to experience a character’s feelings or infer them from action, but are instead simply told outright. Just as often, scenes are conveyed with very blunt language that leaves nothing to the imagination.

That said, the premise is solid and there’s clearly the start of a good story in here. It just needs a bit of reworking to strengthen the pacing and mood. As well, it’s one of the few stories I’ve seen to handle multiple-POV third-person well, though each individual character could do with a stronger voice.

A few grammatical mistakes came up, such as issues with comma usage and one instance of improper capitalization in Discord's line of dialogue, but nothing really major.

Try and devote more time to each scene. As it stands, they just go by too quickly for any real emotion to develop. I’d suggest trying to stretch each one out to about 500 words, minimum, if you intend to keep the multiple points of view. Follow the character longer, and let us get into their heads a bit more. This will not only improve the pacing and sometimes-weak tone, but could also help differentiate your character voices when you switch between the different characters.

Enjoyable. Despite the poor pacing and often-blunt emotions, this story has a very good idea at its core, and could turn into a very nice Sad piece with just a bit of work. I’d expect a rewrite with a focus on drawing out the action and working in the emotions more subtly to get at least a Recommended.