This story already got reviewed months ago and I never noticed, but by the time I did I had already finished with the story and had been sitting on it for a few months. I decided to review it anyway because, well, my hands are pretty much tied at this point. Let this be a lesson: pay closer attention to group updates and remove the story from the team folder when its review is posted.

Go read Aeluna's review, she has some things to say about it too!

But plz read mine first, I'm desperate for attention.

(joke, haha... plz)

Once upon a time in the magical land of Equestria...

That's how these stories usually start, but in a world where heroes of legend fell to corruption that once great nation is no more, and now only lingering divided remnants exist in its stead.

Enter Adagio Dazzle, a young and ambitious noble eager to prove herself and what better way to do so then by hosting the annual memorial festival. Unfortunately this year's commemoration is to be held in Ponyville where she must contend with an overzealous political extremist, an insane chef, a belligerent team of forest rangers, and an uncooperative weather patrol.

To make matters worst within the nearby untamed wilds of the Everfree Forest a storm is brewing. Not just any storm, but a herald of ancient evils soon to return.

For as the old saying goes, when it rains....it pours.

This.

I like this.

It’s not a masterpiece—that’s for sure—but it’s a great story that definitely deserves some attention.

When starting this story, my first impression was that it was alright. By the third chapter, it started growing on me. By the fifth chapter I was actually invested with the world and interested in seeing how the author would use it. This is by far the best worldbuilding fic I’ve read in awhile, because the author here not only does everything by the book, but does it so well that you actually feel compelled to learn more about the world the characters are in.

When writing a story where the main focus is the worldbuilding, the average writer will only think of the stuff that makes world sound fancy (i.e. “Okay, it’s the future. Why not make it futuristic?”). This is hardly the prologue of making a world. A dedicated author should put massive effort into describing simple things and putting them together with a description of other simple things, to depict a large sum of imagery, imagery so compelling that the author manages to get the reader to see the world almost exactly how the she envisioned it. The focus isn’t the story, but the world that tells the story. Take a look at the first few paragraphs of chapter one for example:

Adagio Dazzle’s rose colored eyes glared at the numbers on the page before her with all the venom she could muster as if her raw disdain for the sums would somehow make them jump hundreds of bits higher in fear. Yet despite her best efforts, the amber coated unicorn’s wrath failed to move the collection of ink scribbles one bit. The sums remained what they were and what they were was far too low for her liking. Horn sparkling with crimson light from between the ginger curls of her mane, she lazily reached out with her magic, plucking a hawk feather quill from its resting place in the nearby ink well. Another flick of her magic brought a fresh page of paper over and with a few dabs, Adagio set to her figures.

To any pony that walked in on her now the study that Adagio worked in would have seemed the picture of high class luxury. The walls were paneled with timber hauled from Whitetail Wood, stained and polished to a near mirror shine, from which hung tapestries of colorful geometric patterns and family portraits alike. A plush red carpet covered the stone floor and the furniture- from Adagio’s desk, to the book shelves and cabinets that filled the remaining wall space- was made out of a dark wood that surely came from somewhere beyond the borders.

But upon a second look, that same pony would notice the cracks in the facade. The tapestries were worn and in a few cases threadbare. The paintings, while showing tender family moments, wore cracks and flakes in the paint and even chips in some of the frames. Even Adagio’s desk wasn’t perfect, having a slight rock in it thanks to one leg being slightly shorter than the others. This was the office of a noble family that wasn’t quite the power that it used to be.

It’s made clear in the first paragraph that Adagio is having financial trouble, but the author chose to add an additional two paragraphs on top of that to actually give in detail how deep in debt she really is. Without the worldbuilding this fic would feel generic and uninteresting. I wouldn’t care about Adagio’s financial troubles as much, and I can’t say I would be as interested into finding out where the story goes next.

Adagio didn’t break the bow, but did roll her gaze upwards to look at the mural that told the story. The fallen alicorns were all clearly displayed, their silhouettes falling into a cloud of shadow that rose from Scorpan’s mouth like the tendrils of some monstrous squid. They emerged from the choking cloud warped and changed into mockeries of themselves. Chroma, the bringer of endless storms. Echinda, the mother of monsters. Bitterroot, reshaper of the land. Harlequin, the dark jester. Luster, princess of avarice. And Midnight, mistress of dark witchcraft.

I can go on and on about how great the worldbuilding is, but that would take up the majority of the review, so I’ll just  move on to another thing I liked: the characters. Now going into this, I didn’t expect certain characters to appear. Matter of fact, if I knew they were appearing I would have deftly prefered that said characters didn’t appear in the story at all in favor of some more original ones. But when they appeared, I was pleasantly surprised by how well-thought-out each one was.

Fun fact! Spitfire in this chapter was originally some random OC before it was suggested to me that Spitfire would be a better choice. Her appearance took some ques from Rainbow Dash's whole dark future look from the Cutie-Remark. Especially the whole jagged ear and face scar aspect.

Sonata was a little tricky. Making her a chef in this universe came naturally from her whole "Taco Tuesday" moment in Rainbow Rocks, but as this universe is kind a post Roman Empire fall kinda setting I had come to a decision that the Equestrian successor states hadn't even discovered Pony-Mexico yet. So, Sonata's culinary obsession became more Mediterranean/North African flavored, with me looking up a lot of spices and dishes from that area, with "tacos" being something she invented, cause Sonata will always be somewhat cookoo.

The Shadowbolt Five from the Friendship Games all work for Sonata at her restaurant, with Sugarcoat as her current apprentice.

3. The Chef and the Rangers
Author's Notes

Now this was just the author giving a simple description of the process she went through when choosing and placing the characters. Normally I find Author's Notes ignorable because it's usually just the author saying, "Bet you can't wait for the next chapter!" (something similar I'll touch on later in this review) But I found it kind of fun reaching the end and finding out where the author got her ideas from. I would have never realized that Spitfire's design was based off Rainbow Dash's war-look from the Cutie-Remark without the author explaining where it was from, or that Sonata was a cook because of her whole Taco Tuesday moment from Rainbow Rocks.

The only character I had any real problems with was Spitfire. I would have been fine if she only had few to almost no appearances in the story, but she kept showing up every few chapters, and every time she felt poorly written. It could be because the author chose to use Spitfire in place of an OC at the last minute that she felt not as interesting as the other characters were, but nonetheless, I can’t really say I cared she was in the story at all.

This being a fic where the roles of the heros and villians are switched, it made sense why Spitfire wasn't as good compared to her actual character, but she was just dull. There were a few characters in the story that had very minor roles, such as Applebloom, but when they showed up that actually added to the worldbuilding experience.

It helps to understand that this is an AU and that every character is only written to somewhat resemble their cannon counterparts. But the most I can say about Spitfire’s counterparts is that they’re both hardasses and only one is a badass. And not this one.

That’s it. That’s the only way they’re similar. I mean, I’m fine that the author chose to make her an asshole in this fic, but the least she could have done is make her a prideful asshole. Here… nothing she did felt redeemable.

She was just boring.

Characters light Starlight Glimmer were interesting in the story becuase the author managed to write her so close to her cannon counterpart, and yet she still feels like the author's own creation. Spitfire just felt like... an OC.

I can go on and on about the characters, but there's one important flaw I really need to touch on: the writing.

From my understanding, this story had three pre-readers/editors, so there should be no reason why it was so difficult to read. I warn you now, if you are reading this review and actually plan giving the story a shot, I highly encourage you to do so, but do not read the story if you’re tired or it will take a lot of brain work. There were so many errors in this story that at certain points I would be reading and automatically lose my place because of a misplaced word, or because the author used a sentence that could be shortened to sound simpler.

Don’t get me wrong, the details are great. Like I said, the details themselves provide the imagery, but there are times when the author got caught up in sounding so good that the sentences got too long and too wordy, sometimes even repeating details (you might have noticed it in the first three paragraphs at shared at the beginning of the review). If you have the attention span of a fishing line, it will be very difficult for you to read this story.

Another common error that occured was with the punctuation. There were, like, a whole lot of punctuation errors. One of the most common being a weird thing the author kept doing with the em dashes.

A plush red carpet covered the stone floor and the furniture- from Adagio’s desk, to the book shelves and cabinets that filled the remaining wall space- was made out of a dark wood that surely came from somewhere beyond the borders.

These dashes appear throughout the story and it's unclear why the author went with said dashes. I mean, Gdocs does have a special keys option that lets you select a dash━that’s where I got them for this review━and I even would have accepted a basic double hyphen (--). It could be that she was going for an en dash, but that could be easily fixed by simply putting a space before it. This error happened so consistently, it was a wonder why the author didn't fix it in the first place, and the author clearly knew about said error because it appears that she did fix it a couple of times.

“....I’m here to take control of my barony and—”

There were several moments, most notably toward the end, when the author used ellipsis ("...") and would put a comma at the end of each ellipsis ("...,") as if they needed a comma. There were a couple of areas where the words needed spaces after the ellipsis. There were several moments when the author would use the wrong word or misplace a word. There were even a few places in the story where the words were obvious editing errors.

There was even a moment in the story where the author accidentally revealed a character before the character was supposed to be revealed.

Adagio let the spell end. Spitfire's wings flared in challenge, her face twisting into a furious scowl.

“Threatening me? Because you better be absolutely sure you want this political fight on your hooves, baroness.”

“You’re the one who threw tribest insults at my bodyguard. Very unbecoming of somepony who's supposed to be in a place of power in The Heartlands. So, I’d suggest that you bite your tongue."

The lodge leader glared back across the table. “Fine, m’lady. What can I do for you?”

“I am here to speak with you about the festival Miss..?”

“Spitfire. Baroness, I am not sending my ponies into that forest to clear a damn road right now. We’ll let the monster activity die down some, then we’ll do it.”

The story was chalkful of errors, to say the least. With the right kind of editor, all these can be fixed easily.

My only other concern came down to personal preference. I understand that personal preferences are my own views of how the story should be, but most of the preferences I had were actually directed towards the Author’s Notes. Not that the author’s notes were bad or annoying, but there were several moments where I would finish a chapter just to have the author explain to me what literally just happened. Part of the fun of storytelling is figuring out for yourself what happened. Telling your readers what happens kind of makes them out to be unintillectual.

Despite the flukes with the Author’s Notes, I did enjoy reading them when they explained where the author got her ideas for her worldbuilding. It was a fun step into the creative process, and I hope to see more of it in the sequel. Yes, it has a sequel. Believe it or not, this is suppose to be a series. I'm very confident future stories in the series will be extremely well-done so long as the author pays attention to everything that was wrong with the original and focuses more on what made the original so great.

In conclusion to the review, I enjoyed this story very much and I highly recommend you go check it out. It’s a story with exceptional quality. If you don’t mind putting in a little effort to read the story, and if you’re looking for something interesting to pick up on, this is definitely something worthwhile. You might struggle to read it for a bit, but if you can ignore that part, it's a satisfying read to say the least.

“Hello?” Adagio called again. “Please! Is anypony out there?”

Her hooves carried her through the silent halls of Canterlot Castle, each step echoing eerily against the stone walls and distressingly empty halls. It was as if death itself had descended upon the castle and stolen its residents away. Aside from her own increasingly frantic calls, the castle was silent as the grave. No matter where she looked- from servants quarters to the throne room- she could find hide nor hair of anypony. She stopped in the Great Halls, angrily stomping a hoof in sheer frustration.

“Scorpan’s twisted tail, what is going on here?” she raged. Just two days ago, these halls had been full to near bursting with ponies celebrating her ennoblement, where-

The deep, gut shaking boom of thunder assaulted her ears. Dark clouds were right behind it. They seemed to flow from the stones themselves, collecting in the vaulted ceilings of the chamber. Adagio recoiled as another round of thunder pealed forth and a downpour began to cascade over her.

Adagio sputtered and shook her head in a futile gesture as the rain continued to fall. An icy chill quickly swallowed her pasterns and crept ever higher at a frightening pace, rising past fetlocks then cannons, then her knees, until the water was lapping past her belly and towards her withers.

She shrieked as she found herself forced to paddle frantically to keep her head above water. It was a process that was more difficult than it should have been. The almost supernatural chill of the black, brackish liquid drained warmth from her body and made her limbs sluggish and hard to control.

No! She thought. I won’t go out like this! If I can just get to the windows.

Kicking as powerfully as she could, Adagio paddled for the impressive stained glass windows on the far side of the chamber. She huffed and puffed as she swam, her limbs aching in protest but onwards she pushed, driven on by sheer will and survival instinct. As she drew close to them, she opened her mouth and channeled her magic. One raw scream of power would do it and then she’d be free-

Another roar of thunder and crack of lightning made Adagio scream for different reasons, her magic snuffing out as she lost control of the spell.

Ponies floated beyond the window.

In the moment the lightning cut through the room, it illuminated the nearly black ocean beyond the brightly colored scenes of The Heartland’s past. An unending expanse of dark water that had obviously swallowed the whole world. The bodies of ponies floated in that expanse. Cold and unmoving.

Dead.

Something brushed past her leg. She looked down and splashed away in horror. Suri’s waterlogged corpse bobbed just below the surface. Her mane, having come loose from its bun, sprawled out in all directions, the hairs threatening to coil around Adagio’s leg like the tendrils of a macabre jellyfish. Her vacant stare was somehow accusatory. This was all Adagio’s fault somehow.

She kept paddling away, only to bump into something else. Another body, this one of Starlight Glimmer. She twisted around again, only to face Sonata Dusk. Again to see Aria Blaze. Once more and there was Lightning Dust.

They boxed her in, somehow floating just to block her path no matter where she tried to swim as the water rose ever higher. They were beginning to reach the high ceilings of the chamber and the storm clouds that hovered there at which point she’d run out of air and be joining the ponies- her ponies- that she had failed to protect. The ones she had insulted and taken for granted.

“Stay away from me!” she shouted, lashing out with a hoof.

Sonata’s mane caught her wild strike and Adagio quickly found herself tangled. She screamed again, thrashing and lashing out to try and get away from the chef, only to feel a tug on her tail.

The weight dragged her under the surface immediately, which made her thrash all the harder and kick up a flurry of bubbles. She twisted her head around to look at what else had grabbed her, only to wish she hadn’t. Iron Will was hanging onto her tail in a vice like death grip. His posture was slumped, almost resigned as he sunk towards the yawning abyss that was once the Great Hall’s floor.

A desperate panic beginning to set in, Adagio thrashed all the harder, kicking at her former bodyguard to try and make him release her. But his grip remained. As did the net that was Sonata’s mane. And now Suri’s mane. And Aria’s. All their bodies were beginning to cling to her now, dragging her ever downwards.

As she was swallowed by the darkness of the water, her limbs grew stiffer and stiffer. Her lungs burned, almost screaming for air. The light of the surface above faded dimmer and dimmer. She knew that she was dying.

Adagio.

Thanks for the review Muggonny!

I'm really glad that you enjoyed it. I also fully admit that your criticisms are valid as well. Despite the amount of improvement I've felt that I've made on a personal level since I started writing, it's clear that I still need some work and practice. ....And/or a dedicated editor.

Still, I am glad that the world building stood out for you. That's one of my favorite things to do when creating a world/setting!

6573977
Not a bad review, Mahogany. It's interesting seeing two perspectives on this story considering its length. Can't wait for the third!

6574268
Editing your story is easy to learn on your own. Just pay really close attention to a book's structure while you're reading. That's pretty much how I learned to edit most of my stuff.

6574930

Not a bad review, Mahogany.