Hey, guys. Radio here, coming at you with a review of Cerulean Voice’s Essenza di Amore. Let’s get right into it, yeah?

This story is an expanded re-telling of a passage from G. M. Berrow’s Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell, which is one of those books that centers around a certain pony and an experience of theirs. Cadance tells how she was found by an earth pony village and was brought in, despite her being a pegasus. She tells of how she fought and defeated an evil sorceress called Prismia, causing Celestia to recognize her as a real princess and give her the title.

While this story does quite a bit to expand on this passage of lore, and even inserts some of its own bits, that’s all it really is. It’s an expanded re-telling. While I personally can’t fault it too much for this, some other people that I’ve talked to found it unoriginal, citing the framework that had already been put in place by Berrow as their reasoning.

Also tying into that general feeling of unoriginality was this story’s unabashed and certainly unhidden inspirations from Nightwish’s sixth studio album release, Dark Passion Play. Essenza di Amore definitely takes cues from this album, including themes, chapter names, and even some character names. While it’s perfectly fine to write stories with music as an inspiration, this level of taking things from an album can also come off as unoriginal.

The prose itself is pretty good. Descriptions are pulled off well, the prose is clean and not overly complex, and is pretty solid. There’s not a lot to say about it, honestly, except that it’s usually pretty tight.

This doesn’t mean it’s perfect, however. While this story seemed to have had a plethora of editors work on it, there’s still a few stray errors here and there:

The sparkling Snowflow river ran down from the permanently snow-capped tip of the Smokey Mountain. (Chapter 1)

Since “river” is part of a proper noun, what with being connected to “Snowflow”, it should be capitalized in the same fashion as “Smokey Mountain”.

Kavi “You… you f-followed us?” Taking a step back, she caught the tip of her drooping wing underhoof and yelped as new pain shot through her body. (Chapter 4)

That “Kavi” at the beginning of the sentence isn’t connected to anything. I’m not sure if it was supposed to go into the dialogue after it, or if it’s supposed to be part of its own sentence or what, but it doesn’t have any purpose where it is now.

There’s also times where the phrasing can get pretty awkward. For example:

Kavi sighed. “Did he really have to leave again so soon?” She exhaled and shook her head. “I wish we would see him more often. I also wish I hadn’t gone to the river today.” (Chapter 1)

Having “I wish” and “I also wish” placed like that reads awkwardly, sort of like a robot is saying it. You could connect these two sentences into one easily enough, and it’d read a lot better as a result.

They hoarded their food and refused to share with others, and they even began to accuse each other of taking more than their fair share of the food. (Chapter 5)

That “of the food” at the end there is redundant. It’s already been established that they’re being stingy with their food, so you could scrap it entirely and remove some of that repetitiveness, while still retaining the original meaning of the sentence.

Then, there’s this:

A tall pony stood above her with a radiant smile. Her pure white coat made everything else around her seem dull and colourless. Her sky-blue eyes shone with the light of the sun. Her perfectly straight, short-cropped red mane and tail, deeper red than a rose, hung about her face and rear legs.

The immaculate mare lowered her head and smiled as a blue aura surrounded her incredibly long horn. The aura split apart, shooting off in multiple directions before burrowing into the ground around them.

Hold on just a second.

Is that…

Is that Fausticorn?

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a Fausticorn, all right.

While I can’t speak for everyone, in my experience, most don’t consider Fausticorn to be worth putting in a serious story. While it’s good for a silly reference here or there, in this context, it’s basically being used as a deus ex machina to make Cadance’s predecessor feel like she did something. It feels almost cheap when used here, and removes some of the impact from what would otherwise be a pretty meaningful scene.

Another problem this story can suffer from is pacing. It starts out pretty slow, but it steps on the gas as soon as Eva steps into the scene. Pretty much directly after the confrontation with Prismia, another villain pokes their heads in and appears for about five minutes, and then Celestia comes and makes Cadance a princess. It moves pretty fast, and I feel like it could have been spaced out and handled much more effectively if there was some more time for reflection and to make it feel like all these life-changing events that Cadance is experiencing had actual impact.

Another problem I had here was the confrontation with Prismia. Cadance’s “battle” with Prismia was her shouting morals at her. It was actually pretty boring, and I found myself skimming quickly after through pretty much the rest of the story. Prismia was a blank slate, and I feel like you could have made her final stand against Cadance feel much more desperate, powerful, and visceral.

While this story does have a plethora of problems, none of them really broke how I enjoyed the prose itself. When you get down to it, it’s a decent job of expanding Cadance’s origin story, and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for something like that.

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Coolies. I was waiting for this.
First, thanks for reading and giving such a thorough review. Those errors you pointed out have now been corrected, and I might even do another sweep later for similar instances. I'm glad that my prose was right on how it needed to be (most of the time) to make the read as easy and enjoyable as possible.

It’s an expanded re-telling.

Well, of course. That's all it was ever supposed to be.

some other people that I’ve talked to found it unoriginal, citing the framework that had already been put in place by Berrow as their reasoning.

If that is the case, then every single story ever that attempts to work inside and around the boundaries of canon is also unoriginal. I'd like to think that my story is in fact quite original. I'd also say that this really shouldn't be a detriment to one's reading experience.

While it’s perfectly fine to write stories with music as an inspiration, this level of taking things from an album can also come off as unoriginal.

I honestly thought I kept it toned down rather well. Not a single one of my prereaders or editors told me, "You're putting too much of your inspiration into this, ease off a bit." Maybe the story is too much of a love letter to Nightwish for your tastes, but I wouldn't change a single thing about it in that regard.

While I can’t speak for everyone, in my experience, most don’t consider Fausticorn to be worth putting in a serious story. While it’s good for a silly reference here or there, in this context, it’s basically being used as a deus ex machina to make Cadance’s predecessor feel like she did something. It feels almost cheap when used here, and removes some of the impact from what would otherwise be a pretty meaningful scene.

I think this might well be the single most subjective part of the review. I see absolutely nothing wrong with including her in the story (or any story for that matter), especially when she is put in a goddess-like, creator-type role (which I've actually done before to great effect—at least as great an effect as is needed to help the story get featured on EqD). That said, I anticipated that some people wouldn't like me referencing her, which is precisely why I didn't give her a name at all. I actually got more than one PM asking who she was.
You say you feel it removed some of the impact from the scene; I ask what you think would have been a better solution or outcome. What would you have had me do differently?
I genuinely think this is an issue of personal bias getting in the way of one's enjoyment.

Edit:

most don’t consider Fausticorn to be worth putting in a serious story.

The author of this story and his legions of fans would heartily disagree.

It starts out pretty slow

Interesting. Here's a comment saying exactly the opposite.

#85 · Prologue: Cadence of Her Last Breath ·
Okay, thumbs-up for that chapter. Hot damn but it picked up the pace and didn't slow down, there.

Guess I'll leave that up to personal perception of "fast" and "slow" between readers.

The rest of what you said about the pacing is definitely true. When composing the story in my head, I wanted it to feel like an episode of FiM at first, but then I realised that 20k words would not be enough to tell the story I truly wanted to. Yet I didn't want to drag it out for too long either. At 37k words, I think it feels more like a double-episode of FiM, with the halfway point being found approximately just after the end of chapter two. Which was more or less my intention as well, when I realised what my approximate word length would be. A Canterlot Wedding is pretty fast-paced after the villain is revealed, too that being the same villain, incidentally, and yet it still remains my favourite episode(s) of the series. Perhaps I emulated its structure a little too well?

Another problem I had here was the confrontation with Prismia. Cadance’s “battle” with Prismia was her shouting morals at her. It was actually pretty boring

Interestingly enough, the first draft of this conflict did feature a "battle" of sorts, where Cadance's sheer will and purity of heart overcame Prismia's will to steal her love. There was explosions, screaming, rallying cries, the whole shebang. Guess what got shot down as feeling completely inauthentic by multiple editors? Yup, the entire chapter.
The issue here, and the reason I have the confrontation play out like that instead of a "battle" was because of canon. Let me quote you a line straight out of the book itself.

Luckily, the enchantress’s powerful necklace also amplified the power of Cadance’s love, and she soon defeated Prismia with her incredible gift of compassion.

she soon defeated Prismia with her incredible gift of compassion.

Defeated by "compassion." Not force, not overcoming the other, just compassion.
Also, think about what it might mean if the "battle" had gone any other way. Cadance wasn't just preaching; she was coming to the realisation of how powerful real love is and can be herself, at the same time as she lectured Prismia. This was what really earned her her ascension. She needed to learn that lesson in such a powerful way. Becoming an alicorn is something stated to have never happened in history before. If it was easy, how many others would there be? What would they represent?

I found myself skimming quickly after through pretty much the rest of the story.

Well no wonder you found it too fast-paced.

While this story does have a plethora of problems, none of them really broke how I enjoyed the prose itself. When you get down to it, it’s a decent job of expanding Cadance’s origin story, and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for something like that.

Well, in the end, I'm glad you can see past everything that annoyed you (whether I understand why it did or not) to recommend it. A recommendation is definitely better than saying it needs work, so I'll take it. I'm open to any further discussion.