The Doom That Comes To Canterlot by MadMethod

I am surprised. This will be the fifth crossover story I’ll have reviewed, even more interesting when you consider that it's based on a video game that wasn’t received all too well, Vampyr. This crossover follows the tale of a dude named Gyre that goes to Canterlot high and inextricably wakes up one day to discover that he was at a mad party last night and got so wasted he forgot he was turned into a vampire, as you do. Unfortunately, this is nowhere close to the game it is based on. It's not in ye olde London, there’s no plague, and only the dudes father was in the military while his mom is the doctor (points though for having him at least know a little medicine). Fortunately, the moral conundrum of eating people or die is still there. Wait, I am being informed that this is not in fact a crossover and is instead its own story that just has very similar plot elements. Huh. Well, let's start over.

The Doom That Comes To Canterlot is a story of a teenage boy that, after experiencing the world's worst sunburn, discovers that he has superpowers! But that he’s also dead medically speaking, so there is that little drawback. We follow the first days of his new life as he attempts to come to terms with being a flat out Bioraptor from Pitch Black and not tear the throats out of everyone he knows to get that delicious hot, red Kool-Aid. Along the way he meets; a horny female werewolf {this is literally how she is described, I couldn't come up with a funnier description}, a spooky and magical IED survivor, stereotypical American police, and MMMOOOOOOMMMM!!!

So, in terms of what I liked, this story is one of those ‘long hauls, everything is happening in real-time, it's already been 80K words and we’re still only on day two’ stories. The pacing at least for me is perfect. It takes it's time to establish the world and the characters and really feels like a hybrid between a character study and an action: it’s rather nice. Additionally, the story is perfectly structured for mystery. We start out and BAM, character is a vampire with no explanation and even he is confused. We then get spooky mystery voices and the world's most confusing and messed up version of the holy grail war where all we told is dudes got to die. Whos the dude? What does said dude look like? Is said dude just a new part of what’s going on like Mr vamp or the date rape wolf or has he always been there? I don't know, but I have a feeling these will be answered eventually as every other question is starting to head in that direction (It's hard to actually tell how the mystery is going to be handled because at some points it goes just a little Lovecraft, and if you know that style, you know not knowing is a good portion of the appeal).

So, here is where I describe why the archaic writing in the story isn't as well implemented as it could be, especially when considering the help he gave me on my own archaic story. The archaic writing isn’t in regards to it sounding like a Lovecraft story, nor is it utilizing a plethora of antiquated words. Simply put, every hundred or so words, close to about 500 by my count, we get a word that is not used in today's parlance, or the writing gets just a little more complicated to understand, other than that, it's basically a modern story. Now, I am railing on the story being like this simply because I talk to the author fairly regularly since I’ve started to edit for him. It’s really weird because the entire first chapter has this archaic feel, and so does the first half of the second chapter, but then it becomes suddenly modern. I reread this several times just to see if I spontaneously developed the ability to comprehend the style at a glance, but all I did was confirm a subtle stylistic change. 

[As a personal note, O+ is not the universal donor, that is O-. The + and - denote an antigen (Rh), similar to the ones in the ABO blood groups but refers to the presence or absence of this antigen. If a person that is Rh-negative receives blood from someone that is Rh-positive, the results will be similar to if you were to receive the wrong blood group.]

Final Scores;

Writing; 9/10, This story had only minor errors from what I could tell and was written in a way that was conducive to conveying a story without beating your audience over the head with a thesaurus every twelve seconds.

Pacing; 10/10, This was beautifully done, at least in my books. This is a slow story that wants to bring you along on ALL the little things that happen and allow the world to play out like we might see in real life. There is no feeling that things are being rushed nor that the author includes things just to pad out the word count.

Characters; 10/10, This here is one of the stellar examples of how to do characters right. Everyone feels like they were included for a reason and isn’t just there to serve as an exposition provider or plot reminder, everyone feels like they have lives that are not included in the story proper. 

Worldbuilding; 9/10, While the pacing is exactly my cup of tea, this lends itself to the issue that the world-building at some points is as clear as molasses. The worldbuilding is definitively on point, I just need to have a few more things explained in future chapters so I don't feel like I’m trying to keep track of 12 plot threads that are still being promised to be concluded while more are on the way. 

Atmosphere; 10/10, What was I promised? A gritty story about a spontaneous vampire in a fight to the death against god knows what and society/morals. What did I get? A gritty story about a spontaneous vampire in a fight to the death against god knows what and society/morals while a horny werewolf tries to get some of that pasty outcast booty. I call that some good atmosphere.

Total score; 48/50 or 9.6/10, This is by far one of the best stories I have read. If you find the time, definitely check out this story.

{And yes, I know that as an editor I am coming off as biased, but the truth is, I was brought in for only the last two chapters, and only started reading the story after I had already finished my edits. If I wouldn't have been happy, I wouldn't have held back.}