REVIEW - The Alicorn Warrior, by iAmSiNnEr - Reviewers' Mansion

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Ninjadeadbeard

Ninjadeadbeard #1 · May 19th, 2021 · 8 · ·

TThe Alicorn Warrior

Twilight Sparkle was banished from Equestria a long time ago. Now when the rest of the Mane 6 finds her, they find that she has changed.

iAmSiNnEr · 59k words · 1,141 77 · 17k views

The Alicorn Warrior

by iAmSiNnEr

Summary

Twilight Sparkle was banished from Equestria a long time ago for a crime she didn't commit. The rest of the Mane 6 have been searching for her to tell her that she can return. When they do find Twilight, they realize that the trials of surviving outside Equestria have changed their old friend. Not all the changes are necessarily good.

Initial Thoughts

I’d seen The Alicorn Warrior around on the front page before, and I’ve been at least somewhat curious to see what it was like for a while now. The author reached out to me for a review, and I thought that this would be the perfect excuse to bump it to the top of my reading order. It’s an intriguing concept, seeing Twilight go through some character-building struggles alone and outside of Equestria. I am very interested to see what Sinner does with it.

SPOILERS

My General Reaction

This story is… tricky. On the one hand, it’s incomplete. Many or most of my impressions at the moment could be drastically different in only a few months, depending on how the author continues this work. On the other hand, while a lot of this story works well on paper – heck, it actually pulls off one or two of my favorite tropes for stories like this – the exact execution of some of its major elements leaves a lot to be desired.

The story begins right after the last frames of the Season Five finale (The Cutie Re-Mark), with Starlight Glimmer just heading off to sleep after her initial reformation. While alone for the moment, Twilight Sparkle is suddenly accosted by Celestia, who declares that Twilight shall be banished from Equestria for the use of Time Magic. She doesn’t wait to hear an explanation, instead casting a spell that seems really, really far outside of her power level if we go by the show.

Seriously, this thing randomly teleports Twilight to somewhere in the world, cuts her off from the Element of Magic, and proceeds to also put up a shield to prevent her from re-entering Equestria ever again.

I really don’t like this development. Not only does it come out of nowhere, and not only is it really, really out of character for Celestia to behave in this way, and not only is it so overpowered for what Celestia’s been shown to be able to pull off, but it’s also so convoluted and conveniently designed of a spell that it breaks suspension of disbelief. Not too soon after, Celestia even tells the other Element Bearers that she shouldn’t have acted that way, and felt like something was messing with her mind.

They do nothing about this. It’s a huge issue for me, simply because of the leaps in logic this demands of the reader right off the bat. Celestia can mess with the Elements, the borderline all-powerful magical objects of her world… and yet she can be toasted by Chrysalis, or put under pretty amateur mind control, as will be shown later.

This is all in the first few chapters, and if I’m being honest, I would have dropped this story here if this wasn’t for a review.

The Main Six/Seven (including Starlight and Spike) are sent off to find and bring back Twilight, under the explanation that they are imbued by Celestia with the ability to repatriate her through a magical bond. They then apparently spend four years searching the world-over for her, while in the meantime a shadowy conspiracy seizes control of Equestria in their absence.

I also don’t like this particular development, because of what happens to the Mane Six, versus what happens to Twilight in those four years. Twilight, as we find through flashbacks, is enslaved in the badlands, and forced into bloody gladiatorial combat by a griffon. Eventually, she breaks free of his control and kills him, taking over the arena and running it in a more humane manner. She also takes the time to become an unquestioned badass war-wizard, a potential millionaire investor, local problem-solver, and borderline anarchist government.

In short, she’s so completely changed from the Twilight Sparkle from the show that I legitimately consider her a different character. This might not be a terrible decision, except that her friends have also been out and about away from Equestria for four years. They’ve also been having adventures and looking everywhere for her. They have put their lives on hold to do this. Applejack hasn’t seen her family. Pinkie hasn’t thrown her parties. Rarity isn’t running her fashion empire (or hasn’t even formed it yet). Fluttershy hasn’t built her sanctuary. Rainbow Dash isn’t a Wonderbolt. And Starlight hasn’t stopped a changeling invasion and redeemed herself for her past sins.

And yet, they aren’t any different from how they were before. There’s no change in them, outside of a single line about Pinkie being less happy than before, which isn’t used at all in the rest of the story. They just haven’t had any character-development, whereas Twilight has had arguably too much. The comparison between Twilight and all her friends is so jarring it takes me out of the narrative again.

That’s about as far as the story has gone, with Twilight and her friends deciding to return to Equestria (at least to visit, according to Twilight). If the story picks up after this point, I don’t know.

There are major issues with this story, mostly in the pacing and plotting. It’s very rushed, to the point where nothing that happens has enough dramatic or emotional weight behind it to matter, since we didn’t spend enough time building towards that beforehand. Worse, the characterization has been rushed as well, especially with Twilight. Her character growth and change, as extreme as it might seem, could work better if we spent more time with her as she developed, and if the flashbacks were in a different order than currently presented.

See, all of Twilight’s development happens very quickly, or off-screen. And we see the flashback of her gaining freedom before her time as a gladiator. This can work, but at present it creates a sort of emotional divorce between the reader and the story. If we saw Twilight in present-day, and then it would flashback to when she first arrived, we could see the disparity between them. Then, as the story progresses, more flashbacks of her time in captivity could show how she developed into such a different character, culminating with some sort of character revelation or emotional peak as the emotional core of the present-story lines up with her finally defeating her captors and becoming the pony she is in the present.

As it is, the story feels disconnected and jumbled up. Non-linear story-telling can work, but here it does not carry through with an emotional core or connecting element.

As a final note, I’m also not impressed with the villains, but at least Twilight seems to keep facing off against them like I would expect someone so powerful and battle-hardened. As much as I may decry Twilight’s character for not being Twilight Sparkle enough, and for being… essentially boring and already having completed her character arc before the story’s really begun, there are interesting elements in there. As rushed as everything is, the combat is quick and snappy, and Twilight actually does come across as being a sort of boogieman to her enemies.

I like that. I like the fact that she doesn’t act stupid in combat. So many stories built on action and fighting tend to fall back on cliches and silly protagonist behavior. This story does own up to the idea that this character is a gladiator, and would be quite methodical and effective in dealing with threats.

In line with that, I would say that the story generally improves as it goes. The rushed pace slows down, slightly, and the flashbacks… well, they don’t stop entirely, but they do start to change from merely being Twilight’s memory to some sort of possible Dream Realm effect. As I said, I would have preferred a different structure for these scenes, but the change isn’t all that bad, and it hints at some other intriguing plot points that could come up as the author adds more to the story.

So, overall? This story needs work. Serious work. But outside of re-writing over 30-thousand words, the damage isn’t something that can be easily fixed. I’m still hopeful, however, that the story will continue to improve. It still has an impressive following, and the author is showing improvement with every update, so… who knows what the future may hold.

Grammar and Word Things

9/10 – Paragraph Spacing needs work

Outside of a minor bit of British (or Wrong) English grammar with the quotation marks here and there, the only real problem with the story’s grammar is the fact that the spacing between paragraphs is wildly inconsistent. I am tempted to take away points for having Applejack say “Twahlight”, as well.

Story/Plot/Pacing

5/10 – Rushed, and in some ways backwards

There are two major structural issues with this story’s structure. First, it is incredibly rushed. A lot is covered in its (currently) sixteen chapters, and is done so at such a pace that it doesn’t have time to build up enough drama or emotional weight for these events to matter. Second, what emotion and drama are built through flashbacks are wasted due to the structure of this tertiary plot. Twilight’s struggles are marginalized and downplayed by this decision and disconnected from the main events of the plot, which limits the emotional impact they could have had.

Characters

3/10 – Paper-thin, inconsistent, or insulting

“Twilight Sparkle” is in name only, as are most of the other characters. The most interesting parts of the main character’s development are glossed over by the story, leaving the reader with a boring replacement for a character we actually know about. The other Main Six and Starlight show no change despite them also going through a terribly traumatic experience. And the lack of concern for Celestia’s blatant bout of mind-control only makes this worse.

Final Word and Rating

5.6/10

The Alicorn Warrior is a good first attempt. For being the author’s first story, it does show a lot of promise, but it’s also held back by some serious structural and characterization issues. Despite the issues I’ve already brought up before, I’m interested to know what’s going to happen next. That’s a big point in this story’s favor.

To the author: Since the story is incomplete, there’s a lot of space for you to fill with potential fixes and changes. But in general, I would advise you to slow down the pacing. There’s just not been enough time to take in this world, or its characters. I don’t feel like I know anything about the town this story takes place in, since the events of the story blitz past too quickly for us to really learn about it except in clips. The flashbacks would be harder to fix, but for when/if you ever rewrite the first part of this story, I would also advise you to slow these down, reverse their order, and try and tie their appearance more closely into whatever is going on with Twilight in the present. And as for Twilight, I feel like her character arc was complete before the story began. She’s too forgiving of Celestia, and too composed/okay with her situation, it seems. There’s nowhere to go with her, it feels like, so she comes across as a flat character.

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