Other Guy: You gotta give Free a moment. He’s crying because his old boss said his reviewing style is shit.

Me: I’m not crying, I’m just… rethinking how I go about doing these.

Other Guy: While whining like Fluttershy.

Me:

Well, my self-made alter asshole is kind of right. I have a terrible tendency to ramble on without making clear what my focus on the review will be about. Well, no more! We’re doing a U-turn, and Void Trails…. You get to be my victim

So, we’re not going to give the all-around score nor the score on the areas that I’m focusing on right off the bat. They’ll be added at the end of each section in the usual “X amount out of ten” format that we use here in the Cafe, and the total score will be added at the end.

Void trials is about Shetland Sparkle who is trying to train her amazonian ass off (this girl is huge) to join the Voidmarines, Equestria’s Space Force. Since this is the first of two stories, it mainly serves as a setup to what will be seen in the sequel (which I have not read because these guys don’t pay me for this). Shetland struggles with a vague system that seems to be against her while wanting badly to fulfill her dream of going to the stars. She does eventually accomplish her goal, but at a cost that I won’t spoil because goddamn you Obsi...

In being a setup for the sequel, we must know where are we set, when are we set, and what is the tone of the story. You know, good ol’ fashioned who, what, where, when and why. This is where the story excels. We are told from the beginning that our main character wants to be without it actually being told to us outright. The third paragraph is showing us the lengths that she’s going to become a part of this interplanetary (interstellar?) Marine Corps while giving an insight into how badly she wants to fulfill her dream.

That moment, a gust of cold wind swept over her forehead and Shetland raised her head, relishing in the small gift as it blew the sweaty, cream colored mane out of her face. Every second felt painful and yet, it blurred together, and she lost track of the time. Instead of focusing on her count, her perception shrunk to only the next turn, the next few steps. And while it was painful, each time she reached her small goal, it blurred together with the goals before. She was so focused that she almost missed the shrill scream of a whistle, which brought everyone to freeze in their tracks, wiping their foreheads and address their thanks to the heavens. They all gathered around the old pegasus with the whistle, leaning on each other, splashing water on their faces while Shetland did her best to stand upright and avoid panting too loudly. She looked over to the judges as they made their notes on clipboards, an uneasy feeling settling in her chest. This must've been enough, she told herself. She had beaten everyone else by a distance on this test, surely that would get her a place in this mission.

Since she was a filly, Shetland had always dreamt of visiting the stars, and this was her last chance. If she did not get one of the two spots for this job, she'd have to wait for the next year and go through the same process again.

We see that this is set in an Equestria that has become space-faring, we see, feel and hear with smooth sentence flow and audio cues about how hard she’s pushing to show whoever is testing her that she’s got what it takes, and we get a subtle name drop. Why did I show you this? Well, many veterans and rookies here on our lovely site often times forget that in order to draw readers in, you have to come out of the gates swinging. You have to gain some momentum when you start or else the rest of your story will fall flat as a result.

As for the tone of this fic, it’s mostly character driven with Shetland, Ciloa (good luck pronouncing that by the way) Press, Twilight Sparkle, and White Whistle. We see Shetland’s struggle to gain entry to the Void Marine program while her best friend Ciloa Pie (who is a changeling) was accepted for mineralogy… clever clever author. Press, who is their best friend and Shetland’s ex (Thank you, author, for not adding any petty love triangle drama!) who was accepted on the same criteria that Shetland is trying for.

So, Shetland is our main character. She comes off as a bit of a jerk sometimes, but she fulfils her role of being compelling. Driven, aggressive, and outspoken. Nothing can keep her from her goals. Why do I say she comes off as a jerk, and borderline ass? Well, you’ll see when we talk about White Whistle. Does she work as a main character you can imprint on? Yes to some, no to many. Some will like her driven and aggressive attitude, others will find her to be a bit of a bitch at times.

Ciloa is Shetland’s changeling best friend, who has that chipper Pinkie Pie attitude, but with less of the reality-breaking effects

Pinkie: Oooh! Another review! Man, you guys are really serious about this stuff!

Other guy: HOW IN THE FCK DID SHE GET IN OUR HEAD!

Me: BEGONE DEMON!

Pinkie: I’ll leave you to your nitpicking. Bye!

I’m slowly realizing that I may need psychiatric help… Anyway, Ciloa is the adorable sorta ditzy one of the group, yet she feels grounded. She gives Shetland some good advice about being patient and about not being petty to family. Oh! And she has the hots for Press.

There isn’t anything super special about Press. He’s just the supportive and kinda snarky guy friend of their trio. Even though he and Shetland used to date, he still feels comfortable around her and regularly acts as her stabilizer.

About Ciloa and Press. They're extremely supportive and even defensive of Shetland when she finds out that it’s Twilight’s fault that she hasn’t been accepted into the program. These two decided to step up to a fully realized alicorn Twilight mother fuking Sparkle

Shetland stopped at the castle's doorstep, her ears peaking as they picked up several bickering voices from inside. She placed her ear at the door and barely caught herself from falling as it swung open and now the voices swept from across the room, crystal clear into her ears.

“-no such thing!” Twilight declared with an uncharacteristic absoluteness in her voice. Shetland followed the voices to a side room, freezing as Press's voice came clearly from the door. Overcome by bewilderment, she opened the door, peeking through a narrow crack where she saw her friend shake his head.

“I know Shetland, I train with her every week. And… her results outclass mine by far, there is simply no way I passed and she didn't.”

Opening the door a little further, Shetland catched a glimpse of Ciloa, who awkwardly waddled on her hooves and… Twilight, whose expression was as unreadable as a book in pitch-dark blackness.

“Those are all merely assumptions.” Twilight said, declared. “And, forgive me, but your judgement in this matter is clouded.”

“And yours isn't?!”

Astonished by her hypocrisy, Shetland had been taken aback, long enough for Ciloa to preempt her outrage. Twilight whirled around, hot blood shooting in her face. “What do you mean?” She asked coldly.

“We…” Ciloa swallowed, her anger fizzling out momentarily. After a short pause, she attempted the sentence again. “We, that is, me and Press, we don’t think… we don't think Shetland could lose in any fair test.”

“Are you accusing me of SABOTAGING MY OWN DAUGHTER?” Twilight said, every word increasing in volume until she was screaming at the top of her lungs, the last scraps of calmness falling off of her like a used-up mask.

Twily won’t send you to the moon, but she’ll definitely talk circles around you until your face melts like you glimpsed the Ark of the Covenant

The point is that dear author, Obsi conveys very well through each chapter that these three care deeply for each other to the point that they are willing to stand up to a princess just on the fact that one of them was being treated unfairly. That and they have some enjoyable banter with Ciloa and Shetland taking the spotlight.

Twilight, on the other hand, was a bit to adjust to. She wasn’t out of character, but she was very… stoic, to say the least. I’m not sure how much time has passed, but in the story, Shetland does mention her uncle being in old history books. The only other mention to the main characters is Spike, but only briefly when she’s snapping on Twilight.

“Shetty…” Twilight whispered, distress filling her voice as her shoulders sagged and her wings hung limply from her sides.

“You'll have a full year.” Shetland met her eyes with a glare. “A year where you can do the same as always: push me into what you want me to be, just like the ones you had before me, huh? Midnight, the great scientist and Smarty pants, genius inventor or Spike, the-

“No.” Twilight cut her off, flaring her wings.

Awe, come on. Give mah boi some love

Anyways, Twilight’s main emotions are: I’m busy. Being Petty towards Shetland while Shetland is being petty towards her. And, “Who the hell do you little pissants think y’all talkin’ to like that!” in regards to her exchange with Press and Ciloa. It doesn’t really bother me, but a little bit of the rambling about science Twilight would make her feel like she’s still her. Like how much of a fucking dork Celestia was when Discord was telling dad jokes. Maybe if when Shetland returned the book, Twilight would have tried to enthuse her about a new book she read or a project she was working on and Shetland shut it down. That would have worked better to show that there is a rift of misunderstanding between them aside from her just walking in and being petty on sight.

White Whistle, you poor, poor old stallion. He’s the weakest out of all of the characters, to be honest. And it’s mainly because all he is in this is a literal pssy who gets pushed around by Shetland and Twilight. And he doesn’t really deserve it. He’s an old recruiting stallion with a jacked up wing who is simply doing his job to the best of his ability. There’s one scene where I genuinely dislike Shetland. She went into what I presume was a government office just to cuss him out specifically when he told her dozens of times that he couldn’t tell her the results of her test. Only to find out that it was Twilight’s fault for plain up not responding to the recruitment letters sent to each candidate’s parents/family.

It did have quite an effect on Whistle. He took another step back and his eyes darted to his desk. “But… it makes no sense, if she wasn't opposed, why would she-” He bit his lip, stopping himself and staring back to the hulking mare. Shetland's mind blanked.

“What was that supposed to mean?” She asked coldly, taking a step towards him. She didn't care anymore if she looked threatening. Heck, she might actually be!

“Nothing, nothing!” Sensing the change in the atmosphere, Whistle backed off further.

“Really?” Shetland growled. “Because it sounded like you were making assumptions about my mother's attitude towards this job.”

His back hit his desk. “I-I-It's nothing like that, Miss Sparkle-”

“THEN WHAT DID YOU MEAN?” Shetland screamed, glaring at him as if he would melt if she stared hard enough.

“W-we,” he stammered. “We sent your mother l-letters!” He squeaked under her angry scowl. “It's a standard procedure, we hope to find out about family issues t-to note if we have to give recruits more opportunities to build comradery.”

“I know of that.” Shetland hissed. “But you're not allowed to exclude any recruits for that reason. Is that what happened? My mom talked shit about me behind my back?”

“No! She- she never answered us at all!” He said, regaining a bit of courage. “And you'd be better advised to not talk badly about her!”

Like, Jesus! The poor guy was basically strong-armed into defying his superiors because the royal authority basically came in and held him at verbal gunpoint. I understand that his character was supposed to stand as a temporary antagonist, but when you make him a literal bitch, it kinda evokes… pity. And not the sympathetic kind more of the, “Grow a fuking pair” kind.

To end this section, aside from White Whistle, and a tad of Twilight, the characters are handled well and given their own ways of communicating that distinguish them and give each a moment to shine while they’re with each other. Also, I wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t add this.

He swallowed and turned. “Uhm… Ciloa?”

“Yes?” She asked innocently, although Shetland was fairly certain she'd heard everything.

He took a step closer. “Uhm… would you like to, I mean... “ He cast a help-seeking glimpse to Shetland. She gestured him to step closer.

“I mean,” he started again, sweating. His face was mere inches from hers. “Maybe we could, because of this, we… and Shetland, we could celebrate thi-HURG!”

His voice cut off as Shetland, finally losing her patience, grabbed both lovebirds and pushed their heads together.

Characters and Setting: 7/10

Other Guy: Fun Fact: Free usually bullshits his way-

Me: *screeches* NO I DO NOT! Grammar is just a bit harder, okay

I will admit that this is the section where I struggle a bit because I am not going to edit your story for you. With that being said, there may be some things that I missed on an initial run. It’s easier to catch them in shorter stories since I can reread them fairly quickly, but this one is a great deal harder because of its 33k run. Since I’m cutting the category into three instead of five, this section and the next will be double points! Now that I got that out of the way, and I’ve successfully made Og’s ears bleed.

Other Guy: *whines*

Let us try and highlight the grammatical issues. So, Obsi does state that he had multiple editors working on this. Which is fine, nice and coolio and stuff, buuuuuut I caught several misspellings in the examples from the character section that I put in the quotes above. A few of them being

“Shetland catched”. Should be “Shetland caught”

“judgement”. Should be “judgment” (don’t worry lad, I add that ‘e’ all the time)

Some missing hyphens, because you need to chain words together, such as “snake-like, cross-reference, space-faring” etc. Like how this should be chained.

“cream colored”

It’s a bit hard to find out what needs to be hyphenated, but it usually works if you’re trying to join words to indicate that they have a combined meaning, or to modify a noun as an adjective would. Say like “Her blood had a copper-like scent” or to modify a verb “The creature moved in an erratic-jerking manner”

Why am I saying this? Well, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I did not go through this with a comb whose teeth are microns apart to literally nitpick what I see wrong with punctuation and structure. It sucks, but that’s a part of the job. The conclusion to this section is, that the misspellings and punctuation (like those damn commas ) wouldn’t take even the most staunchest Grammar Nazi away from the narrative.

Grammar: 19/20

This story spreads so well, I can’t believe it’s not butter!

Other Guy: You think that’s bad? We share a body. He was thinking of something much worse…

Yeah, yeah, well. I’m going to ask you readers a question, and I’ll wait for the answers that I won’t get. What is more important? How well a story flows, or how intricately a story is written? You have five seconds…

Other Guy: Get to the damn point!

Ugh! FINE! Look, this is a question that I’m finding is becoming more and more common with writers these days. They want to jam pack as many wow words as they can into their fics to make it seem eloquent and deep, but there are others who can achieve the same effect with some well-placed wording, metaphors, and a pinch of onomatopoeia. Where does Void Trials fall? Right on the simple and clean side (don’t make that joke free. The review is long enough). I need not show any more examples because you can obviously see from the paragraph where I showed the story and the main character’s intent how well this fic flows. I cannot tell you how many times I became disengaged because of how choppy Og sounded while reading in my head. He’s a bit slow.

Other Guy: Ya fat ass momma!

This one literally has not one instance where I had to stop, go back a sentence, and pick it up again. It’s chained together beautifully, and gives a healthy amount of room for the characters, the plot, and the setting to shine. This is kind of odd because after reading the first chapter, I noticed someone who answered opposite of what I believe made this fic work so well. User Cybers Link commented that

it is still pretty good just one detail. It is somehow hard to follow, I don't know why. Maybe your words are way too eloquent, I needed to backtrack a few times because I didn't fully get the paragraph. Need to simplify things, a bit less descriptive.

I hadn’t even begun to take into consideration that maybe the silky flow that I love to see could cause others to slip and stumble. I bring this up because, at the end of the day, my job is to paint a picture of a story that you should read. And I believe that this one is well worth it, but if you cannot follow the way that the sentences flow together then you could see this story as a skip. Unfortunately, that exact criterion that may turn those who don’t like fancy prose off, is what we love dearly at the Cafe.

Other Guy: You’re rambling again.

Am I? This section is based solely off subjectivity my dear asshole. I’m not here to present a fact-based argument. All of that was done above. Now I’m trying to convince a Sci-Fi character-driven fic lover who may want to give this story a chance to glimpse into the world that Obsi has created, because I know that I enjoyed it thoroughly

Syntax, Dialogue, and Sentence Structure: 19/20

Total Score: 45/50

Final: 9/10

Conclusion

I don't have anything esle to say except that I loved this and I hope you all will too. I am most likely going to read the sequel because I need to know what happens to Shetty. Other than that, I hope that review was as helpful and informative with as little rambling as possible

Okay, I'm gone! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ