Gave it a try but stalled out on chapter 9. Harry is just too unbelievably good. Like, he was discussing magical theory with Flitwick in his first month, when he has no prior magical knowledge. I don't care how much of a prodigy you are, you need to actually learn the basics before that, for terminology if nothing else.

 

I like this story - for me, the biggest flaw is that it's a bit overwrought in some cases, but it never got in the way. This is a story about an inexplicably powerful Harry, but the road to power isn't the plot, it's the effects of it. Harry is the catalyst that creates all the problems and plot points, and refreshingly, this story doesn't keep things leashed to canon. Definitely agree that you'll need to embrace the inexplicable part of OP!Harry and roll with it to enjoy everything.

It's stylishly written, engaging, and (unlike Sesc) I think the brisk pace is a big merit - the author always keeps the ball rolling and knows when to introduce new elements to complicate what's already happened. I'm not a big fan of Slytherin!politicz and thankfully it never got bogged down in them.

Good read. Looking forward to the sequel - 4/5.

Spoiler

The final chapter feels unfinished. We're missing out on the resolution to Dumbledore's plan to catch the stone - that final scene with Moody and the offhand way of mentioning the owl was probably meant to resolve that but just confused me - and critically I think we're really missing out on finding out what Quirrel/Voldemort's reaction is to the stone being snatched before he could get his hands on it. In fact, Quirrel isn't even mentioned at all after Halloween. The extent and origin of Harry's injury needs to be expanded upon, too.

All this probably leads to that feeling you mentioned, @Sesc, of the quality declining - I don't think it's an issue with pace so much as the combined weight of unresolved plot threads.

 

Went through the rest of it because it turns out 9 isn't far off from the end. Yeah can't really give it more than a 3/5. It's perfectly readable, but it feels like it can't make up it's mind about how good Harry is, beyond 'better than anyone expects'. If they hadn't established that Harry didn't know magic before Hogwarts I could buy that Tom is bleeding through the scar or something, but he regularly tackles incredibly advanced books that people think he's taking from the Restricted Section on a lark because of how ridiculous the thought that an 11 year old could understand them is.

Like, it's not impossible to have prodigies like that, the problem is that Harry has had no education before this. It's possible for an 11 year old to have mastered advanced calculus, but it's not believable if he was introduced to mathematics less than a year ago.

 

So generally I'm not much of a fan of the Slytherin Harry or Dark Harry subgenres and the cliches that come with them, but I think this story does those cliches fairly well. In essence, the Slytherin kids' politicking and scheming actually sounds like the sort of thing that smart kids would do rather than a dumb person's idea of what smart kids would do.

I do really like the brisk pace in theory, and it is refreshing to have an author deal with a year in only 65k words, but I wish that those words had been devoted to Harry's POV instead of jumping around like it does. I think an example of the multiple POVs that works well is the prologue, with Dumbledore talking to the orphanage matron. Starting with Dumbledore and having him be relieved that Harry doesn't appear to be like Riddle at all is good, especially because the author is dropping in foreboding hints.

I also think sticking with Rosier's POV as he confronts Harry in the Common Room is good, because we keep the mystery alive about how exactly Harry was able to deal Rosier.

The most grievous example of the POV shifts not working well is during the two chapters after the prologue. We get Draco encountering Harry on the train, we get Daphne encountering Harry in the Great Hall, and then finally we shift back to Harry and have him remember the events of the train. I can't help but feel like I would rather have just stuck with Harry the whole way rather than see the events from another POV and then have Harry remember them back.

I would rate this a 3/5. Props for making a type of story I generally don't like as much very enjoyable, and props for not falling into the word bloat trap that so many do. I just wish more time had been spent with Harry rather than other people's reactions to Harry. I think it has a lot of potential as it moves along into the subsequent years, though.

 

I think this is really good and am surprised to see how poorly it reviewed so far. The thing I can compliment it the most on is the multiple perspectives, I absolutely hate them, or so I thought before I read this. The multiple perspectives are used to turn what would be a boring slog of "harry is OP and pure slytherin and does everything right, thank you and plz review" into a perpetual series of asking yourself what happened before and what is going to happen next. I do think Harry is more than a bit too good at everything but the use of alternate perspectives mitigates it to a certain extent. I like that the Slytherins seem more prone to aping their parents rather than actual full on scheming. Daphne is a bit too ludicrously suspicious of Harry at times, her Samhain plot would have made more sense to be planned after rather than before a certain critical event of that evening. Other than that i feel few criticisms have merit, while the pace is brisk it doesn't seem overly so and I have yet to notice a "plot hole" that isn't resolved the chapter after with some form of explanation or another. 5/5

@Palindrome I think you need to take a closer look at that scene in particular it is the opposite of an unresolved plot thread and instead a resolution to one. I do however think it is one of the most ludicrous examples of Harry being too good in the entire story.

 

I read it and to be perfectly honest its kind of garbage, but high tier guilty pleasure. Basically Harry is super smart and ahead in all of his classes to an unreal degree because he is also doing like a thousand different things. And by 3rd year he is basically waving his dick around at everyone being the best of the best at everything. It stays interesting just because he is basically stomping everything, which can be entertaining when pulled off correctly which this fic does.

3/5

 

Enjoyable enough.

4/5

 

I had high hopes going into this fic; the first chapter, despite the minor grammatical errors, was written relatively well. It had all the hallmarks of a story that could bridge the gap between guilty pleasure and genuinely good. Unfortunately, it soon fell flat on its back.

The quality of writing stayed pretty consistent, but the narrative approach the author chose made it read more like really long summary than anything else.

The main problem I had with this fic was that the only two characters with a believable voice were Draco and Dumbledore. Everyone else had the same edgy, contrived voice that seems to plague most guilty pleasure fics.

However, once the characters are a little older, this may be less of a problem.

All in all, I'd give this a solid 3/5.