The Irony of Applejack by: Mister Friendly is a great story with a fair number of faults hiding within it. As of starting this review I am unsure as to whether I'll reject it or recommend it. So, let me sort out my thoughts.

First off, what's the story about? Applejack is a changeling, and after the events in A Canterlot Wedding, she's coming to grips with how this affects herself, her friends, and her family. It goes from there and evolves into a dark adventure story. It's somewhere between 600 and 700 pages if it were in novel form, so it takes a fair amount of time to read through.

Here's what I liked about this story:

The world building is by far its strongest aspect. It seamlessly provides changeling lore and explores how this lore affects both the Equestria we know, and Applejack as a character. I admire how much thought must have gone into the delivery of so much world-building without it feeling boring when you are reading about it. It's very solid and keeps the reader quite immersed in the character's struggles as they come across new information and learn more about certain aspects of the world.

The next strongest part of this story is very much the characters of this story. Applejack, and Rainbow in particular are well realized and play off each other very well. Their interactions are believable and their struggles provide very immersing moments for the reader, and you can't help but root for them to succeed. Beyond those two, the villain/antagonist of this story was quite interesting. We're provided with a conflict that seems good-vs-evil on the surface, yet you slowly get to understand that the struggle goes deeper than that. The antagonist of this story shows us an 'evil' whose intentions are the right thing to do in one perspective, and it works very well in defining and exemplifying our main protagonists.

There are also a few morals at play in this story. When is it the right time to fight, and when is it the right time to run and hide? How important are friends, and how much can you trust them? How does one earn trust? How does one make up for lying to their friends? One's happiness versus the happiness of loved ones. The struggle between who you are and who you are perceived to be. And how hard and terrifying it is to truly let someone get truly close to you.

These morals are explored for the most part rather effectively, however I think some of them could have had better execution. Particularly running vs. fighting. I can see why one would champion facing problems directly over running from them, and for the most part, running from one's problems won't solve things. However, I personally believe that running from problems can be a good solution from time to time. So, on a personal level I felt the one sided portrayal of this moral, kind of felt heavy handed to me.

I also like how the plot itself—while in retrospect being pretty straightforward—was organic enough for me to not always be able to know exactly where it was going. I like seeing that in adventure stories. It never really felt as though what was happening were a contrived means to forward the plot, but rather a manipulation of elements and events that were already on the board (and had a reason for being there).

Oh yes, pacing. That was something quite solid in this story. The dialogue and intrigue scenes were well paced, and pulled me along. When the story got to action, it picked up pace just the right amount and delivered the action. Indeed between the pacing and the world-building, I never felt I had to break immersion.

Now for things I didn't really like:

When the story highlighted some of the side-characters, it felt a little dull, honestly: I found if part of the chapter wasn't focused on one of the two OC main characters, or on RD or AJ, the story started to lose my interest a bit. Those parts were usually there to provide contextual disposition, allowing the reader to be a step ahead of most of the characters on the whole. But, come on! I want to read about the important stuff, like AJ or RD or seeing the big-bad's plan being unveiled. Even though the exposition provided was often relevant, I found those characters' points of view to be lacking as the appropriate vehicle with which to engage me as a reader while doing so.

Ah, the action scenes. There is some pretty solid action in here. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed when the story picked up pace and the protagonists got their chances to shine. However, some of the action seemed a little too over-the-top for my tastes. (Of course action isn't the reason why I love adventure stories. I'm certain that many who love action scenes will just love reading the action in this story, it's very satisfying, but I have a smaller appetite for it than many.) I do also think it went on a bit long. Past the mid-point of the story, it's almost constant action scene after constant action scene, and after about 40K words of pure action, I felt the need for a change of pace, and it doesn't really let up until the climax is over.

The latter half of the story. While the pacing for the individual sections were well-paced for the types of scenes that they were, I felt the overall pacing of the latter half of the story was a little much. The big struggle (which is a fantastic struggle that lets our protagonists truly shine) is a bit too lengthy. Lots of fireworks, inner struggles, physical struggles, discovering of true intentions, and a huge display of tenacity. It really starts to wear on the reader when there's not enough downtime to catch a breath or two, there's no catharsis for that built up tension. It just ends up making the reader tired at times before the show is over.

Also in line with this, I felt the last bit that fed into the epilogue went on a bit long. Yes, all the loose ends were tackled admirably, but I felt as though each loose end was almost tackled twice. It just felt a bit lengthy for the amount that was going on.

The climax scene and consequent fallout. This, I am a little annoyed with, because it felt a bit contrived, and was perhaps the most irritating part of the story for me. I don't want to spoil anything about it though. It wasn't awful, and it was mechanically explained well enough, but for a final action, I don't feel as though it held enough of a struggle for AJ to really outshine many of the other scenes. Compared to some of the other awesome action scenes, the climax seems so much more rushed and smaller than it should have.

Some other smaller nitpicks:

Throughout the story (though more toward the first half of the story) I was distracted by a few grammatical errors and superfluous words. Not enough to really upset me, but enough for me to take note.

There was some head-hopping going on, where we are clearly following one character's Point of View, and sharing their thoughts, when it suddenly switches to another present character without warning. It's a bit jarring, but doesn't happen too often.

The humour in this story was a bit hit or miss with for me. I really enjoyed the continuity of certain jokes, other ones felt a little contrived or out of character (oh Pinkie... maybe her gags just generally work better in a visual medium). Some of those jokes pulled me out of the atmosphere of the fic, rather than changing the atmosphere to be more light-hearted for a time. Some of those jokes felt really out of place and annoyed me. Some were really clever.

And I think that covers how I felt about this story. I've decided to give a heartfelt recommendation for this story. The world-building was fantastic, allowing an Alternate Universe fic like this to thrive and explore some rather worthwhile themes, which were delivered through strong characters and their struggles. If you like adventure, like seeing unexplored show concepts dug into and worked seamlessly to create a whole new view of the Equestria we know, and especially if you enjoy action that makes some of your favourite characters seem really bad-ass while keeping your disbelief suspended, surely give this story a read. I know I enjoyed it.

Thanks for Reading,
~SilentBelle