When a hero and a princess can’t get along by Light Heart101 is the sequel to the Rise of the Shadow Knight, which I have reviewed here! And okay, we have a pretty short story here promising a fight of epic proportion between Book Knight and Twilight Sparkle. So, let the fight begin! Ding ding!

Before I carry on, please note that this review covers the content of the story in a detailed manner. Do not read further if you do not want to spoil it for yourself!

Summary

Twilight Sparkle believed that Book Knight (Shadow Knight) was unnecessarily violent in the manner he dealt with the criminals of Equestria and decided to lecture him (alongside the other princesses) on her points of contention. An initially amicable discussion quickly collapsed into a heated fight between the two. I wonder who would win in this showdown?

Content/Plot Analysis + Flow/Communication

The story begins with the Twilight Sparkle explaining everything she had against Book Knight in a fairly cordial manner. From the narration of the story, I think that Twilight’s rationale for this seems justified to me. As the princess of friendship, she was supposed to be spreading the magic of friendship to the realm in a friendly manner, yet you have the Shadow Knight who she believed was ruthless and decisive in dealing with the criminals of the land, without giving any chance at a hand of friendship. In this scene, the author did describe Twilight to be the analytical and meticulous character she is by portraying how she went into the fine details of her points through well-developed arguments, which is well on-point.

To that, the Shadow Knight criticized Twilight’s view sharply by taking this argument personally.

When Twilight finished her speech Book stood up. "Well, now that you're done and have practically gone over my whole career, may I speak?"

Twilight knew that it was only fair to let him have a say, so she politely nodded. "Of course."

"Well then, you're an idiot."

And my reaction was just…wow. The sudden contrast in the tone of the Shadow Knight’s dialogue was more than telling of how annoyed he was at the time of listening to Twilight’s “baseless” arguments, which I could relate to if I were in his hooves as it did tie in together with his personality developed in the previous story.

Anyways, the situation quickly escalated to a fight. Twilight could not stand to hear any more of the Shadow Knight’s incredulous arguments against her points of contention. In rage, she instinctively fired a magical beam at the Shadow Knight’s back, resulting in a full-on fight.

Well, I mean, I did expect a fight, but not a fight that would have started like this. Twilight’s character seemed to be warped to fit the promise of the story, for I did not anticipate for her to strike first. Granted, she was undeniably upset by the Shadow Knight’s insults of her work and her ethics, but I felt that the writing was evidently pushing for Twilight to be portrayed as a hypocrite. Unfortunately, it was hence hard for me to believe that she would be the aggressor in a fight despite the words uttered by the Shadow Knight. The story made the Shadow Knight appear as the level-headed personality during the fight, yet he was the one who was hurling the personal insults at Twilight that caused the fight to be initiated. To me, both sides were at fault for what they did, for their own respective reasons. Due to this, I could not feel any sort of injustice to either side to inspire any significant emotion towards any character.

Notwithstanding with what I have discussed above, however, I think that the fight scene was developed quite nicely. I liked the direct approach the story took when painting the fight scene for the reader to visualize, though I have some comments about the flow of the content. Perhaps it is better if I refer to an example –

Twilight's eyes glared daggers at this stubborn pony. Book was being extremely rude and insulting. "Why you..." Twilight charged an energy beam and hit him in the back. As Book stumbled on the ground Twilight stormed to him angerly. "How DARE you! You are a stubborn and obsessive freak! I have protected this country long before you put on the mask! Don't you dare judge me!" Normally she would never allow herself to get violent like this, but she had enough of Book's thick-headedness.

While I do agree that the fight scene should have a fast pace to showcase the swiftness of the actions by the characters, I posit that the author could have demarcated the ideas more aptly here through the use of paragraphing. For instance, in the above quoted paragraph, there are many action sequences merged together that slightly hampered the flow of the content. I think that paragraphing the ideas would help the reader to digest the scene more vividly and instill a sense of suspense without any fear of eating into the word limit. The usage of a few linking phrases with reference to time to convey the speed of the actions in each paragraph would also help to show how rapidly the fight actually went down.

The story continued with Princess Luna paying her sister a large bag of bits as they were betting on the outcome of the fight they knew would break out, before the story concluded on a more comedic note as the two princesses began fleeing at the prospect of a fight with the Shadow Knight. Unfortunately, I must say that the ending of the story did not help to drive the story’s message forward, which makes me inclined to believe that the ending ultimately diluted the overall execution of the story.

All in all, I understand that it is difficult to develop this story due to the word limit of 1 500 words set by the competition. Admittedly, it would be a challenge to show the hatred that Twilight had of the Shadow Knight, to show how this all came to be and to develop the fight scene as required for the competition. I was considering developing the story with a longer excerpt at the start to help better convince the reader to convey why Twilight was doing all of this, but this would mean that the development of the following sections would have to be trimmed and this would affect the quality of the content down the road. Restructuring the content and the portrayal of the story, especially at the ending, may help to trim some of the words and concentrate the ideas of the story more appropriately, with a more resounding message at the end.

Language

Now, moving on, let’s look at the language used in the story. By and large, technical errors are uncommon in this story, and they are listed in the appropriate sub-section.

Spelling

"You forget who I am. I am the master of shadows and the top of my class in martial arts. I don't back down." Book said coldly as he pined her by her wings.

"You forget who I am. I am the master of shadows and the top of my class in martial arts. I don't back down." Book said coldly as he pinned her by her wings.

Tenses

Twilight had just finished giving a half-hour lecture about the one pony she actually hated, Book Knight, or as he is known at night time, Shadow Knight.

Twilight had just finished giving a half-hour lecture about the one pony she actually hated, Book Knight, or as he was known at night time, Shadow Knight.

Punctuation

As I have pointed out in my previous review, I believe that the author should be more active in using commas to separate unique ideas in each individual sentence to benefit the rhythm and flow of reading, such as –

When Twilight finished her speech(,) Book stood up.

Normally(,) she would never allow herself to get violent like this, but she had enough of Book's thick-headedness.

As Book stumbled on the ground(,) Twilight stormed to him angerly.

Stance

I felt that the story had a great fight scene with the aid of lore already developed in the previous story, though I dearly wished that the story could have been given more room to be developed. I’m certain that if the shackles of the word limit were destroyed, this would have been a beautiful piece. Anyways, do feel free to contact me if you would like to talk about your story!

Content/Plot: 4/10
Flow/Communication: 6.5/10
Language/Readability: 6.3/10
Overall: 5.6/10