Haha! I’m back!

Well, I guess I’ve never been a reviewer here or anything, but most of the team knows me from the other group, so I guess…?

Whatever. Point is, I’m here, and I’m ready to write some reviews! At least temporarily, just to free up some space in the General folder.

So, let’s get to reviewing, shall we?

EThe Heart of the Sun

• MLP: FiM
• Drama
• Sad

After watching her first love, the Good King Sombra from the alternate world absorbing the evil princesses to save the good Princess Celestia. She retired to her private bed chamber at the Canterlot Royal Palace and breaks down. The lost was great t

• Alt. Universe
• Celestia
• Luna
• OC

keithsterling · 13k words  ·  12  7 · 1.4k views

Celestia’s son, Somnus, finds a diary she wrote a long time ago when she was in a depressed and dark place. He starts to question his mother’s love for him, leading to a shadow creature (think like, the Nightmare Moon kind of shadow) taking over his mind. This story follows the efforts of Celestia and co. as they try to remove the shadow demon from his mind.

Before I start with reviewing the actual story, I wanna address something important first. This story has 531 words worth of description.

531 words!

Descriptions are supposed to grab my attention, not make me read through a literal essay before I actually get to the story!

It’s even worse because it’s required reading, somehow? It contains a lot of the backstory of this story, without which the story would be a lot more confusing than it already is. This is an AU fic, as the tags imply, and the differences from canon are just glossed over without explanation in the beginning, which makes things very difficult to follow if you haven't read the description.

It explains what the diary Somnus found is, for example, as well as who Somnus is, and who Celestia’s two other children are. There are also lots of other small details that should be in the story instead of in the description.

For the record, having the description be a 531-word-long exposition essay about the backstory of the characters is a terrible idea. Firstly because no one wants to read an essay rather than a story, but more importantly, if it’s important to the story, it belongs in the story.

Right, now that that’s settled, how’s the story itself, anyway?

Thoughts, in brief

In short, the answer is: not great. Even just scanning through the story, there are a huge number of tense errors, punctuation errors, awkward sentences and grammar errors. Even beyond that, however, there are glaring issues with the story structure, characterisation, and, especially, pacing. Because of all these problems, this is not a story that I can recommend reading.

Let’s dissect this story, shall we?

Who are these characters, anyway?!

Before I start, I would like to remind anyone who hasn’t read the story (or even those who have) that this is not a sequel. Or at least, keithsterling hasn’t marked it as a sequel to any story. Now, with that said:

The prologue begins in the middle of the final scene of the story.

Now, that’s not to say this is always a bad idea, but in this particular case, it’s been executed quite poorly. A lot of the prologue is taken up by Somnus (that’s Celestia’s son, just as a reminder) screaming at Celestia about how she doesn’t have the right to be called a mother, while firing magic missiles at her, or something. And, because we have no idea who this “Somnus” is or why we should care about him, this prologue is totally lost on first-time readers, especially if they didn’t read the description.

That’s not the end of our character woes either, because a number of apparently important characters in the story come and go without receiving much (or any) development. Somnus’ sisters, for example, Aurora and Blueberry, just show up in pivotal scenes without any sort of fanfare.

Credit where it’s due, however, at least keithsterling does explore a little bit more of Celestia and Somnus’ characters. Somnus is a deeply conflicted stallion, caught between a sense of duty and love for his mother and the revelations he finds in the diary. Celestia is a mare with an obviously long history, with several parts she’s not proud of. These all serve to make the scene of their conflict even more emotional.

Or, well, it would, if the circumstances of their conflict were less contrived.

Plot Convenience

Many, many parts of this story just don’t really make sense, but probably the most important is the central problem that generates the conflict in this story. Here’s a basic rundown.

A long time ago, after the death of her first love, the “Good King Sombra from another world”, Celestia vents by writing in a diary, filling it with dark thoughts. Afterwards, she realises how horrible the things she writes inside are, and names it her “Black Diary” (though apparently it’s actually a pink diary). She can’t bear to destroy it, and so locks it up in the Canterlot Archives. Somnus finds it in the present day, and loses control to the Nightmare because of it.

Everyone following? Okay, so, several problems.

Why doesn’t Celestia just destroy the diary? Why doesn’t she put it in a more secure place than on top of a bookshelf? Why is Somnus so emotionally unstable that reading what should clearly be vent writing turns him into the Nightmare?

The problems with this plot point are just a few examples with the numerous plotholes and inconsistencies in this story. Taken all together, it makes it very difficult to suspend disbelief while reading through the story, which means that getting engaged in the story and maintaining interest gets even more difficult.

Now, I probably could accept some of the plot here if there were a lot more justification of the characters’ actions (like what Celestia actually wrote in the diary, that’d be a good start), but those seem to be non-existent in this story.

And that’s as good a segue-way as I’m going to get to talking about the main problem that I have with this fic: the complete lack of pacing.

Pacing

This story is told at a blindingly fast pace. If you haven’t read the fic, from my vague descriptions of the plot alone, you might expect this to be a fairly long story, with a large cast of characters and plenty of sub-plots. But instead, we have here a thirteen-thousand-word story, which is far too little for a story with this heavy of a plot.

As a result, everything is given so little attention and screen time that it’s really difficult to even keep track of the things that are happening. For example, as I mentioned above, everything that had to do with the characters’ backstories were left out. What’s this history with Celestia and “the good King Sombra from an alternate world”? Who was Celestia’s husband? Who are her children? These things are barely explained at all.

If you want to write an AU, it’s important to at least go into a little of what differentiates it from canon!

Beyond just the backstories, actual important information about their personalities and character are given no love too. An example: in the final chapter, Blueberry (that’s one of Celestia’s daughters, because you probably forgot) mentions that Somnus “runs off honor, loyalty and trust”. 

Unfortunately, this point is barely convincing, because we’ve seen none of that behaviour from Somnus up to this point. Ironically, the only scene we get of him before he finds the diary is one of him lying to the Captain of the Lunar Guard to clean the Archives for him, which kinda contradicts the “running off trust” thing?

Anyway.

The actual scenes of this story also proceed at light speed. That scene with Somnus lying to the Captain resolves in literally a single paragraph:

“Adrian, do you know how much trouble you will be in if you strike a royal foal…I bet it’s more than you would like….so tell me what happened?” Luna asks so she gives the explanation. After hearing what happened Luna kicks Somnus with her back leg to make a point to him and promised Adrian she will discipline him for faking a Royal Order from a Princess.

“With that settled, would you both like to join me for lunch?” Luna inquires...

Wrapping Up

To sum up, this is a story that feels like it had more thought put into the backstory than into the story itself. With so little actual substance in the story, combined with the massive amount of backstory that is only alluded to and never explained, it’s a very difficult story to read and understand.

Beyond that, it’s a story that’s plagued with all sorts of technical errors. I won’t go into too much detail here because it’s hardly the most pressing issue with this story, but here’s an example which I found the weirdest:

“Well another subjective concept I would like to make you aware of your highness…. (Blowing the dust off the underside of her front horseshoes) It’s called ‘make you feel the pain of lying to me!’”

That is not how you use brackets.

“Well another subjective concept I would like to make you aware of your highness…” Adrian blew the dust off the underside of her front horseshoes. “It’s called ‘make you feel the pain of lying to me!’”

A lot more thought needs to go into fleshing out scenes, character and plotlines than there currently is. This story undeniably has potential, but it has so little actual substance to it that it falls completely flat.

Scores

Plot: 4/10
At least coherent, but still doesn’t make sense, which makes it difficult to engage with.

Character: 2/10
Barely developed characters with substantial backstory that is never explained, so characters are difficult to get invested in.

Writing: 3/10
Readable, but littered with many, many odd grammar errors, tense errors and awkward sentences.

Final Score: 3/10
Needs to be much longer, and with better editing.

Whew, it’s weird giving a negative score for my first review in this group. Hopefully the next one isn’t quite so negative.
<For archive purposes: 3/10>

I even forget I sent it for review.
But anyway this story was written went I was trying to stay in a three chapters format early on. Most of my earlier story we’re in this format. I been told by another reviewer that it should have been longer. I totally agree with that.
But thank you cyonic for the review.

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Welcome!

7475826
Thank you again