Death Eater Takes a Holiday by Lee Lee Potter

[jane_elliot]

Yes, I know, I'm supposed to be writing, not reading.  But the Small Fandom Big Bang website just went live and there's already two stories posted and I'm just too excited to be creative.  Thus, this...

Death Eater Takes a Holiday

Everyone and their grandmother has recced this story, to me and to the rest of the world.  I've been hearing about it for

Comments

[cassiopeia13]

Hermione honestly was a better Hermione than JKR’s Hermione who got on my nerves after book 5 until book 7 where she was okay again. You gave her a natural seeming mix of know-it-all and likability without making her seem OVERLY knowledgeable. Like she knew everything about personality as well as book knowledge which is just not how people in the real world work. Highly intelligent people, like Hermione, don’t often relate well to others, or if they do, they don’t ususlly understand everyone’s innerworkings as JKR made Hermione in the books. You managed to make her fun, loyal, loving and at the same time a person who wanted to know everything they possibly could without seeiming to BE a know it all… tough to do.
I believe my biggest surprise with this story, and a happy one, came with your characterization of Ron. SO. MANY. WRITERS make Ron a MORON or someone who abandons Harry and I often wonder what story they read, because clearly it was not the one that was published. I feel your Ron was spot on. He was loyal to Harry to a fault, didn’t care what Harry did, or was, or who he was with, that was his Mate and he wasn’t going to leave Harry’s side. You also gave him that silliness and his wanting to prove himself that he was just as good as his brothers were. I loved that most of all. Through the whole story, Ron’s character was amazing.
I admit to being a little irked at your character of Snape. While he started off the snarky bastard, he ended up a bit sappy. Now I realize you can’t have a Book Snape fall in love with Harry, it just wouldn’t work, but he just seemed to get a bit sappy at times. His fierce loyalty to Dumbledore I loved, and his relationship with the Headmaster I loved. I liked how he was still a snarky git to the students, and mostly snappy to everyone else, being his usual dark self. Him using Harry’s friends’ first names so much did seem a little odd to me. I just can’t picture him, even in a strong relationship with Harry, calling anyone by their first name overly much. But either way, I enjoyed Snape’s relationship with Harry
It is a HUGE petpeeve of mine to have people write stories where Draco and Lucius turn nice. After reading the last book I can in a way understand your point of view of Lucius, what with him not giving a flip about Voldy and only wanting his son safe, of course that might have been because he fell out of grace with Voldy. The part that really annoyed me was Draco. Draco’s character in the book is so arrogent and spiteful that he would take the Mark just because it would make him look like a big man to his friends. He was so PROUD he got the mark, and he was proud to try and kill Dumbledore in Book 6, even if after he got the assignment he realized he couldn’t do it. Because he’s a coward who can’t REALLY stick up for what he believes, or says he believes. So that character in this story I really didn’t like, though I do understand your reasons for doing it.

[cassiopeia13]

PLOT: I loved your plot, though, the set up with the holiday was a mite strange given that you rushed through it to get Harry and Snape together, might have been more enjoyable if they'd only slept together on the last day, at least it would have been 7 days leading up to it...

But I did like that you HAD a plot beyond the usual “how to get Harry and Snape to live Happily Ever After” It started with a plot, it continued with a plot and while it most mostly a character study of how they all grew and changed and came together, you still managed to have an interesting twist with Harry’s stupidly powerful self, the abuse, him going through that, reliving it, the healing and eventual fight of Voldemort. I greatly enjoyed the story and wondered through the whole thing what would happen next…though I did find the end predictable

WRITING STYLE: This is where my crit comes into play and while I realize you had a beta, there were still many things that could have been cleared up. Taking out the continuity errors which you’ve mentioned you know about, I’ll touch on other aspects, though perhaps in the future an outline or at least some notes to keep people, places and the time straight might help. I have to admit that at first I wasn’t sure if I was going to continue reading as your changing of tenses was highly annoying and VERY confusing at times, though I am glad I continued.
Your tenses at points changed from past to present. You should watch that. I realize, as a writer myself, it is hard to sometimes get your sentences to come out on paper as you see them in your head. Many writers, especialy starting out, write as if they’re telling a story with spoken words, rather than written words, which is a VERY different way of communicating. Things that sound right out loud don’t always translate well onto paper and I think that is where the problems lay. Also, Flashbacks cause your story to be choppy and seem unorganized. It makes it appear as if you had an afterthought you wanted to mention and so did a flashback to cover it. If I could make a suggestion, instead of doing flashbacks, have those parts of the story be at the beginning of your chapters. Manytimes you would have something like “harry laid on his bed thinking back to earlier” and then did a flash back. No need to do that when you could have just started with what had happened earlier.
The last thing was you’re telling this story from YOUR point of view, meaning you know what’s in all the characters heads, which is fine, but sometimes you would switch to a new character without any indication and it got confusing. There was one part that stood out, where Snape’s apprentise messed up a potion. Voldy said “You stand and watch” and then crucioed someone…. Only, it was unclear who he was talking to since there were three people in the room. Was he crucio-ing Snape? Which to me wouldn’t make sense since Snape was doing his job right, or was be crucioing the apprentis who messed up? There were a few times when things like that happened, and I think it was because of the quick changing POV ‘s.

So that’s my very long…. Er…review. All in all it was an enjoyable story, even with some grammatical errors causing confusion.

[jane_elliot]

I have to admit, knowing that the POV and tense change issues occur throughout the story makes me really, really glad I didn't keep reading. Did the author respond to the review?

[cassiopeia13]

Not yet, but I only sent it yesterday.

I honestly after the first few chapters didn't notice most the time, but there were times where it became blaringly obvious.

the tense was little things... I think she was writing in a style that would SOUND good, but read, just didn't work. I believe a lot of authors start off that way, because honestly, that's what we know. We, as young people, tend to think how we speak will translate into writing and sadly that is not the case.

[jane_elliot]

I have a degree in English lit, which has made it pretty much impossible for me to ignore seriously bad grammar and/or style mistakes. Though, if a story is *really* good, I sometimes can overlook minor punctuation issues. Sometimes:)

[cassiopeia13]

Haha. Yeah I definitely understand that. I have noticed even publications tend to have mistakes in them. So small grammar mistakes I don't really mind. Especially commas which is such a general mistake I most the time don't notice unless it's REALLY obvious.

I highly doubt you would have been able to get through this story even with the edited version that I read. *HEH* You'd be bald by the end of it.