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A pony makes a sacrifice to protect another… Sounds good enough. The cover photo has an alicorn looking at the moon, so perhaps it’s about Luna, reflecting on a choice she made in the past.

A pony that is unnamed and has a little depth, that’s revealed throughout the story, sacrifices herself to save Applejack from three sociopathic ponies with intent to kill, because no reason. I will refer to the story teller as Unnamed Protagonist, since they don’t have a name.

Grammar/Formatting—
Some grammatical mistakes, but less than five that I noticed with spelling, so nothing too bad. A glaringly misspelled word did catch my eye, but I don’t feel like finding it. The story was readable once, and cowardliness is a weird word to me. I know it’s a word and it works here, but having Unnamed Protagonist say “I’m a coward” would feel more effective, given the age and nature of Unnamed Protagonist.

Unnamed Protagonist also has an issue with pausing at odd times, referencing in a redundant way, and becomes bland near the end as Unnamed Protagonist is trying to make us feel for their experience.

Dialogue/Narration/POV—
First person reflection of past events. It worked, for the most part.
‘I made a choice, I did good, I’m suddenly an alicorn so I’m immortal, and I can’t escape from the punishment I’ve been subjected to over x years in Ponyville, but it was worth it.’

The prose is welcome to me, being not often that I see a sacrifice made in short stories, but the character wasn’t implied to be anything but an earth pony through the story until she made her choice to save teenage Applejack. Then she had a horn she was hiding for some reason.

At the end it’s revealed she’s an alicorn… So she was a pegasus at the start, but it wasn’t said. Or was she hiding her wings with magic?

Worldbuilding—
I feel kind of lost, as to where I am in the story. It’s short and makes that known, but it doesn’t feel right. This pony is walking at night greeting ponies, or maybe it’s just AJ, and suddenly three unicorns appear from nowhere and stalk AJ with knives, but there’s not another pony anywhere? All this mare has to do is shout and ponies would look out their windows, ruining the bad guys’ plan.

And, where are these bad guys from, why are they abducting ponies without reason, and how could they break an alicorn so easily? Magic is their forte, all Unnamed Protagonist had to do was cast a spell lifting them into the air and teleport them all away, maybe even to a dungeon, possibly in Canterlot…

I’m not saying the choice Unnamed Protagonist had made was wrong, but watching a filly AJ be stalked by three ill intentioned ponies would have been enough time to formulate a plan, especially if you’re over eighty and have any world experience.

Pacing—
Jumped from the introductions to the night of the event really quick and didn’t provide and depth to Unnamed Protagonist, but as the story went along I felt like I knew a little more about Unnamed Protagonist.

I didn’t get to imagine what Unnamed Protagonist looked like, or what they wore, if anything, or even have a deep feeling for the pain they’ve gone through for unknown years of routine and horrible torture that’s broken an immortal body and mind.

Impression—
It was a solid premise and idea that tripped over itself and fell.

Reviewer’s note:
While this story was admittedly quickly written and posted, it still missed the point of itself and I didn’t feel for Unnamed Protagonist, or their choices. Sure, AJ was saved, but there was nothing lost by us losing Unnamed Protagonist. Perhaps Unnamed Protagonist’s name was Shadow of Dusk? An alicorn of dusk time?

There’s no backstory to Unnamed Protagonist, and that’d be nice to have, and the cover photo showed a silouette of an alicorn, but it didn’t grab my attention so I didn’t make the alicorn reference until the end, what with the sacrifice sounding extreme (which it was) and the punishment being upon an alicorn. It just confused me.

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5908175

Thank you so much for reviewing A Shadow of the Dusk. I really appreciate it. Time to get to work rewriting. Thanks for pointing out everything wrong with it. Let's see if I can improve it now.

5908268 I enjoyed the read, and I don't think you should edit it, just expand it with more details and a side story where Unnamed Protagonist is given a backstory.

You could have a great Alicorn OC on your hands, if you make them right.