...Why?

That's what I'm asking, and I'm sure it's what the author is, too. More on that later.

Linkedy Link: A Game of Kings and *phew* Very Long Titles by Lost_Marbles

*NOTE: As of now, I have read to chapter five of the fic. I believe that's enough for me to make my decision on this.

*NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: The fic's pic has been changed, issues addressing the fic's pic in this review may as well be non-existent

So, before we get into the review-proper.

I admit, there's a reason I took this fic up in particular for my first review here. It's because, well... the guy's been promoting himself so much!

As I'm sure at least a couple of you have noticed, many many threads have been devoted to the author's promotional cartoons, adverts to his chapters on shameless-self-promotion, and, well, I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. He clearly puts a lot of work into his promotions, doing not only drawings but animations, too, and that's gotta count for something, right?

Let's check it out.

First Impressions

The Synopsis:

Rodents of unusual size have made their home in the Castle of the Two Sisters and have caused panic in Ponyville. Should Twilight call an exterminator?

Follow Hauteclaire, the Mouse King's bard and punching bag, as he puts up with his bizarre, sadistic, and diminutive King; Porthos, a drunk the size of a carriage; Marcus, his know-it-all and hack poet brother; Godiva, a violent pony-fanatic; Knebryter, a pony head on a stick; nosy ponies, friendship, bad jokes, and pretty much everything else that pisses him off.

This is how the fic sells itself, and... well, it's a bit split, isn't it?

One paragraph makes me assume that we're following Twilight in whether she should exterminate these 'rodents of unusual size', and the other talks about this Hauteclaire bloke. You should really go one way or the other in my opinion, so as not to lead the reader astray.
I can tell you this, though; the fic certainly goes down the 'follow Hauteclaire route' as soon as we get through the prologue. Twilight... doesn't seem to have much of a say in things.

So, tags. Are they applicable? Of course they're applicable! Well, I believe they are at this point. I haven't seen any reason for the 'sex' tag as of yet aside from some rather crude (but funny 'cuz crude) conversations, and honestly, that might just be it.

The 'teen' tag here is actually very applicable in this fic. The author clearly wanted to portray a middling between extremes of PC and outright mature themes, and they seem to have hit that metaphorical nail on the head. There's nothing that really stands out as 'ew, that seems really strange for this tag-system' in the fic so far as I've seen, and I'm liking that.

So, before I wander off into 'fic mechanics' territory... I want to address this prologue-bit. That's part of the 'first impressions', after all.

The prologue... is not my favourite bit. And I can explain why.

So, in order to be as un-spoilery as possible... the majority of the fic is in Hauteclaire, one of the rodent's POV, while the prologue is in the pony's POV.
The prologue appears to be the most weakest point in this story, with weaker sentence formatting (a distinct lack of commas in some places), some weird conclusions made by the ponies, and... it's overall much more boring than the rest of the fic. Which is such a damn shame!

Pinkie stared off into space before chortling. “Hehe! That is funny!”

^I mean, c'mon, bae, you've gotta accent her a bit!

There's also some very long non-English parts, which, well... we won't go into them anymore.

The major thing, the most important reason making the rest of the story much more interesting by comparison, is that the main character Hauteclaire is essentially narrating the story, or at least his thoughts are, in the rest of the fic. This doesn't happen in the prologue, and thus it suffers heavily as a result.

But as the prologue is the only thing we're given at the start... it sets the fic off to a bad impression for me.

Mechanics

Moving on, because I'd hate to talk about the fic's cons primarily in this review.

Grammar: Good throughout. Not great, mind... there's a few hiccups here and there:

No. It’s something we must do if we are EVER go back.”

And they are capable of teleportation, too. Did Godiva lie about their magical powers,too?

But it's mostly pretty solid. The issues are very minor, and they're negated by the rest of it being of good quality.

Dialogue: At the start of the fic, this is the strongest point. Sure, no pony with an accent is accented (and this continues pretty much throughout the fic, with a bit of an exception for AJ on the occasion), and some of the prologue stuff in general is a bit... weird, to say the least.

But we don't care about the prologue anymore. We care about the mice, who constantly rattle off each other and argue and bicker and YES! Oh, yeah. The main characters in the fic, the ones who count, have great conversations. I love 'em.

Going into that, we have to talk about characterisation. This is the fic's entire strong point. We've got some mice, who are all very different from one another in distinct ways. Personally, I found them all likeable in their strange, argumentative ways, and how they all seem to work together despite them.

Worldbuilding: The world we're given, that being Ponyville and a floating castle, is done well. The world we're not shown is also pretty interesting. At the start, this 'game' business that the story talks about for far too long gets a bit irritating (in the 'Stop talking about something I have no idea about!' sort of way), but thankfully it's a short piece. The world where the rodents come from is given to us respectfully piecemeal, and it's a pleasure knowing a bit about it every now and then after we've known the characters we (or at least, I'm) so fond of.

Pacing: Never too fast, but slow at times. I found a couple instances of conversations which I wasn't interested in the slightest, but they really only happened with the support characters. The main characters, on the other hand, are very interesting, and the pacing does well to make sure they're given just enough time to fill out their antics before moving onto the next scene.

Point of View: As said before, it's told in one of the rodent's POV's for the most part, and by God is it done well. The POV is of the most sarcastic rat you'd ever known, and everything he says (aside from his singing. It's K (sorry!)) is great. I loved reading his slant on everything, it really adds the depth you need.

The Show/Tell law is upheld and hasn't been a problem for me since... well, since the prologue. In fact, I believe in one of the later chapters I noted that a tell-version of the prologue, as it is shown, is much better than that whole prologue to begin with. It would add another layer of mystique by asking the question, "What really did happen to those characters at the point before this story starts?", in my opinion.

Character Development

So, while there hasn't been too much character development so far as I've gotten, and I'm sure there's going to be, well... there's one thing that irks me in this department.

It's to do with the characters. I'll put it in spoilers.

Throughout the fic, the rodents appear to be able to use magic. Some very strong magic. They can warp things out of dust, teleport things out of nowhere... so why do they need to be friends with the ponies at all, nor steal from them, either? Maybe it's a part of 'the game', but... it just irks me the wrong way. They just seem too powerful, being able to solve pretty much everything with magic, if they needed to.

And yes, that coming from the person who watched MLP wherein magic is used frequently and rather overpowered-ly... but to be honest, I don't like that either. I like some restraints to keep my characters interesting. Hell, if these rodents didn't find it in their hearts to help anyone... this'd probably be a pretty dull story. They could overpower them easy, and at the start, that appeared to be what they were going to do.

Originality

When's the last time you heard about magic rodents, riding a levitating castle into Ponyville?

Okay, so that's a bit oversighted of me. Sure, there's been fics where original characters, not of pony-kind, go into Ponyville and help with some grand plot.

But as far as I can tell... these rodents aren't part of some 'grand plot', not yet. In fact, most of the problems caused are by themselves, and the interesting divides in personality between the rodents are what keeps the story going strong.

I like it. I think nothing is inherently 'original', but if there was a scale between original or not, this'd be pretty high up.

Impact

As I've said with the prologue, the first impression is weak. After that, it's all way more interesting, and it's why I wish the prologue wasn't there in the first place.

The fic asks questions, almost all revolving around the rodents. Admittedly I don't care about the mane 6 at this point... I care a lot more about these new visitors, how they got here, why they got here, and what they're going to do. I want to know more about them, because I'm damned sure there's a lot more to flesh out.

The fic makes me want to read the rest of it, if only to see if it keeps up in quality. Once you get past the beginning, I'd give it a high-ish score.

Conclusion

So, here's what I think about it. Would I recommend it? Yes. It's bursting with character. The ongoing plot could go anywhere, and I don't like that usually... but it really appears here that the author has put some solid work into it. It looks like it's going in a direction that the author knows. There's a few things that bother me, sure, but the overall feel is one of positivity. There's an air of professionalism that you don't often receive.

So... back to the question at the start of this. 'Why? Why does this have so few views, when it's clearly had so much work put into it?'

I've honestly seen far greater view counts for far, far less. I'm kind of surprised that not many people have taken onto it, but that said... maybe it is the first impression? I can't say it's all the reason, but that's what I've come up with.

The synopsis is split in two (There's no reference to Twilight and an exterminator inside the fic, far as I can see). The prologue is... meh. And I don't like to criticise your art, since I love the animations and the fun little characters in every chapter, but... maybe there's a bit too much going on in the cover? Try making it simpler; think Game of Thrones, for instance! Hundreds of thousands of words, and yet, the cover art to the first book is as simple as a few mountains. (Or a bronze-looking dragon.)

The promotions, too. Lay off 'em a bit, as you can't force someone to read what you've got. The only way you can do it is through persuasion, really, and how do you do that...?

...Well, getting positive reviews, for one.

I hope this has helped, and I can assure you that this'll be one of the fics I'll certainly read further in my own time.

Scores:

Plot: Not entirely certain, but nothing comes out as majorly 'wrong'. 13/20.
Mechanics: As I said, I think it's pretty good. Could run through a proofreader or two a couple more times for earlier passages. 16/20.
Characterisation: It's hard to make a new group of characters funny. You've done great at it. 20/20.
Originality: I'm learning new things as I go along. It's pretty out there. 16/20.
Impact: Some problematic early issues that really stifle the introduction, to this otherwise pretty humorous story. Skip the prologue! 12/20.

Final score: 77/100

*Recommended*

(*P.S: This is my first review, so I'm still working out the point system. That said, when I read this, I was thinking 'High seventies', and that's what it turned out as. Yey me, I guess? )

Thanks. I'll give it a look and try to puzzle something out of it.

4700264 You're sooo good at reviewing. Top notch . . . Top notch.

4700264
After a very very long day it was more than wonderful to see this in my notifications. I've already read it, what, three times? Best birthday gift I got this year. (No, seriously. My birthday was two days ago.)

Thank you very much for the review.

4700264
Haven't had time to really look at this review, and I gotta say, it's quite stunning.

I like that hook especially. :P

4704651 As long as I'm not doing it on video, it's all about the hook, bae.