EMPIRE by JackAnarchy
Sex Gore Adventure Alternate Universe Dark Human
26,858 words total to date (incomplete)

Technical: 14/20 - The technical aspects — spelling, grammar, punctuation, consistency, tags.
The writing is technically competent for the most part, despite the occasional missing word, tense error, or questionable word choice. These errors are not common, only one or two a chapter that I noticed, and are fairly minor, but a closer eye from the author or proofreaders would have helped eliminate them entirely.

As far as the genre tags, they don't really fit. This is not an Adventure, but rather a Thriller, being about intrigue and manipulation. Alternate Universe is misused here as well, which will be addressed later. The content tags appear to be appropriate (although there really hasn't been notable gore so far), and I have no doubt they will become increasingly so as the story progresses.

Canon Characterization: 10/20 - Handling of canon main and secondary characters, and alternate character interpretations.

Canon characters are few and far between, relegated to secondary or tertiary roles, with one exception. Most of them are minor, secondary figures, with little character development in the show. That said, what development is given them here bears almost no relation to their canon counterparts. Change the names, and nothing about them would elicit any familiarity. The sole exception to that is Princess Luna, who is recognizable; but has so little presence in the story so far as to be essentially a non-entity.

Other Characterization: 10/20 - Handling of OCs, canon background characters, and crossover characters

If the Canon characterization are bad, OC characterization is even worse. The main character, Orion Abrasax, is not coming off as a Marty Stu, but he is treading some fairly shaky ground around that point. Overall, it's hard to even call him a character, or any of the others for that matter, as they're more walking stereotypes, mere collections of tropes without much in the way of distinctive personalities. It would be better to describe them as "roles" rather than "characters", since they all fulfil the basic expectations for their roles and little else.

World: 5/20 - Handling of show canon or alternate universe worldbuilding.

As bad as the rest is, this is where the story really breaks down. There is nothing aside from Princess Luna's dreamwalking ability that bears the slightest relation to anything in canon. Worse, it shows inconsistencies. This is an Equestria with advanced magic-based technology; but it's portrayed in clashing terms of familiar industrial technology. One particularly notable example is referring to an automobile as having "sixteen cylinders", while at the same time describing it as being powered by what is essentially a mana battery. Cylinders are an artifact of an Otto-cycle reciprocating internal-combustion engine. There is no reason for a vehicle more akin to an electric car to have them. And, conversely there's no reason for an IC engine to need a mana battery to power it. The technology is clearly not adequately thought out.

Aside from that, there are really no other qualities linking it to the canon Equestria. The world feels lifted piecemeal from any number of cyberpunk/steampunk/dieselpunk stories. Remove the names, and the small amount of ponified language and terminology, and nothing whatsoever about it feels familiar, or can be extrapolated from the familiar. Even the "Human raised as Pony" doesn't really stand out, as species could just as easily be changed for race without affecting anything else. In fact, racism has been made a substantial issue in this story, despite being non-existent in canon since well before the reign of the royal sisters, with no clear explanation for why it has seen a resurgence.

(To forestall the obvious objection, there is one incident where the protagonist Orion mentions in a press conference about having been referred to as his family's "pet" in one scene. Unfortunately, this was, and not all that long ago, an all-too-common real-world epithet applied to African-American or mixed-race children adopted by white families. Thus underscoring the real-world racism link.)

Story: 15/20 - Concept, coherence, internal consistency, story structure, pacing, flow.

Pacing is uneven, and verges on glacial at times, mostly due to extended expository infodumps that range from several sentences to multiple paragraphs. Details in the infodumps go beyond what is strictly necessary to support the scene and provide useful background information. Aside from the technological inconsistency mentioned earlier, the rest of it seems to be internally consistent, but mainly because it's essentially a flood of tropes played almost entirely straight, and fairly clumsily, with no notable variation, resulting in cliche after cliche.

Aside from that, there are no serious breaks in the story, and the tone is maintained effectively throughout.

Total Score: 54/100 for a score of 54%

Conclusion - Final thoughts and recommendations.

The "Alternate Universe" tag is one of the most mis-used on all of FiMFiction. An alternate universe should be a variation of the canon universe, where some canon event or character is changed in a believable way, which then causes the universe to depart from its canon portrayal. But, and this is the crucial part, it should still be recognizable as a version of Equestria, there should be a sense of familiarity, of relationship to the original. Take away the names and ponified language, and it should still evoke the canon world. This, however, does not. Aside from the aforementioned Princess Luna, there is nothing here that evokes anything recognizably canon.

Even worse than that, there are internal inconsistencies which, while small, still break immersion.

The author has stated it's not a crossover, but everything in this story feels like it came from somewhere else. Characters from this anime, settings from that book, events from the other game. It feels like a hodgepodge of bits taken from various other properties and clumsily pasted together before being given a pony paint job. It's possible that will change as the story progresses, but the story summary does not hold out any hope for that, and as it's already six chapters and over 26,000 words into the story, I'd have given up on it already if I wasn't reviewing it.

5940101 Thanks for the review. It's good to have honest opinions from time to time. That being said, I can't agree with you a 100% with some of your points because most of it sounded as if it steamed from your own personal perceptions, preferences and taste when it comes to stories rather than reviewing this story from a neutral standpoint as you have pointed out in your earlier PM to me that you have your own personal set of rules when it comes to Canon, AU and Crossovers, which is fine, don't get me wrong. Perhaps it was the way you wrote your review, which sounded a tad bit biased to me in more ways than one, which then again, may not have been your overall intention. But we are all entitled to our opinions and preferences, and I respect yours. Thanks once again for taking the time to read and review.

5940469

No review can ever be truly free of personal biases, no matter how objective one tries to be, it's an impossibility.