Chaos Reborn by ChaosDragoon

Chaos Reborn is a story of Gods and myths, legends and epics. Twilight and friends must venture forth with their trusty companion, Discord, to track down the Epitaphs and put a stop to Chaotic.

There are a number of detractors that keep me from fully enjoying this story. In the interest of time, I will keep to the major aspects that I’m seeing.

The first thing I noticed were the redundancies. In the first two paragraphs alone, there were five instances of the word ‘darkness’, there was a lot of looking around and a lot of walking. With an already generic hook, this becomes incredibly distracting for me. Here, I’ll pull some snippets from the first two paragraphs to show you what I mean.

...he looked around the inky darkness. The darkness was... if he was looking left or right. He continued to look… The stallion looked around... to illuminate the darkness with his horn...

The Unicorn stallion traveled through the inky darkness... simply walking in place. He began to trot, but still, he felt like he was still standing in place. He then began to gallop... The darkness was so thick… a spotlight illuminating something... He started walking...started to trot and then gallop..

To its credit, that are two things about the beginning’s redundancies that I would play around with and keep in some manner. The voice echoing in his head ‘Find your prize’ is purposeful with its redundancies, and clearly shows that the character is obsessed with it. The other thing that I would look at is an amalgamation of the walking in place. I wouldn’t phrase it quite the way it was in this opening, but there is also purpose to it in that the Unicorn feels trapped in place. All the other redundancies that I found, as well as others later on in the story, make it harder to appreciate the ideas fueling the character’s motivation to press forward.

Something else about the hook that I must emphasize comes in the form of the character's origins. See, this character is trying to resurrect a being called Chaotic to help them win a war with the Changelings. It is said that the situation is dire, although I don’t get much more than a glimpse of a single battle and the fact that the character is seeking help from the powerful being. Apparently the forefathers of his family passed down knowledge of old legends and myths, and his grandfather told him of this great being with supernatural powers that would help Equestria. He was a keeper of the old tombs and found this ritual book which had a page torn out…

The problem I have with this is that it feels contrived. All these explanations about how he came to know about Chaotic are only given superficial description before the plot moves along, and it was mentioned in their conversation that Princess Celestia didn’t know about his continued existence. Later it was revealed that she actually did (she and Luna both recognized Chaotic when he confronted them), but for the sake of the hook we are at least entertained with the idea that Shattered Blade has knowledge of this super powerful being that Princess Celestia does not, and for somepony who’s so keen on protecting Equestria, it feels like an oversight on her part. By my understanding, she’d have intimate knowledge of these sacred texts. She would have a working relationship with the granddad. She’d have been able to give the stallion context for the missing page, or something.

Perhaps the sequence of events can work out in some form or another as they did in the story, but the point I’m trying to drive home is that it feels like something is missing.

The description can sometimes be a slog to get through. Some of it might stem from the aforementioned redundancies, but that doesn’t capture the complete picture that I’m seeing.

The two sisters were sucked into the flame twister as it suddenly changed into a large flame orb. It sparkled for a moment and then exploded sending flames through the sky. From the flames, fireballs rain down from the massive blanket of fire and slammed into the ground creating smoldering craters. From the craters came skeletons engulfed in flames. Ponies scream in shock and fear as the skeletons start charging towards anything living.

The blanket of flames suddenly receded and shrunk back down to the large orb before it rocketed towards the ground. It slammed into the ground and a tower of flames erupted into the sky and sent more fireballs into the sky.

I highlighted some of the key phrases that either looked odd to me or I had trouble parsing with everything going on, but the description in general here made it hard for me to visualize the battlefield through the author's eyes. All I can really see is just flames everywhere. Flames and explosions and more flames encompassing everything.

One thing I might suggest is adjusting the focus more toward the characters and how they react, or fail to react, to a situation that’s breaking out into chaos. An example I’m showing below is something I came up with to try to provide some direction as how to do that. It doesn’t precisely line up with the scene (I think I may be blending two scenes together for my example), but I hope I succeeded.

“Everything suddenly descended into madness. Shattered had no time to think as he narrowly dodged ball of flame that struck the ground. When he looked back, a skeletal dragon stood in its path. It was engulfed in fire, and when it lurched forward, it bared its menacing fangs. His surroundings became a splotch of browns and reds as he skirted to the side and fled the encroaching husk.”

There’s some other grammatical mistakes, missing commas, missing capitalization on proper nouns… there’s at least a couple dialogue tags from some of the characters that just don’t sound like them. Some of this can be caught by giving this story another round of editing. As for the characters specifically, practice exercises for writing character dialogue will be beneficial.

I hope this review has provided you some additional tools to utilize in moving forward with your writing, and I look forward to seeing your progression. Thank you for putting the time into creating this and allowing me the opportunity to read and review it. If you need additional insight with your creative pursuits, don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

Verdict: 3.5/10 (Reject)

Thank you for taking the time to review my story. As of right now I've put a hold on any new chapters for this story and will go back and revamp and edit the story so it flows smoothly without all the grammatical errors, redundancies, and work on the characters so they feel like their show counterparts so it can be enjoyable to the reader. I re-read the first chapter and realized how many times I mentions Darkness and felt like a damn kingdom hearts villain. Thank you again for taking the time to review and help my story.