6-Star Reviews Part 126: Daring Do and the Shiny Crystal

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On Saturday, the radio station I was listening to played It's Five O'Clock Somewhere, following which the show host came on, said he loved that song so much that he was going to play it again, and did precisely that.

It was a strange and wonderful moment.

Below, my review of Unlucky Roll's Daring Do and the Shiny Crystal.

Impressions before reading:  And so we hit our first Daring Do 6-star.  I haven't read a lot of Daring Do fanfics, honestly; I don't know why, they just don't often seem to grab my attention.  Is there a word for story types or genres that you don't so much dislike, as which fly completely under your radar?  Anyway, this claims to be a random/comedy, which as a rule are easy to write, but hard to write well.  Hopefully it stays funny.

Zero-ish spoiler summary:  A typical Daring Do action sequence, only with spaceships, lasers, zombies, space dinosaurs, and explosions.

Thoughts after reading:  My thoughts about this story are similar to my thoughts about many random/comedies.  The first thousand words or so are ridiculous and funny, precisely as stories of this type are meant to be.  Unfortunately, it keeps going.

The problem is that, although there's a fair amount of humor packed into this story, there's really just a single overarching joke: crazy stuff that borrows from the MLP universe, despite making no sense within that context.  Which is a fine, funny joke, but one which can grow stale easily.  As I said, the story did a good job at the start of shepherding the joke along, with plenty of action, as well as an abundance of writing style and situation/characterization parody (a deliberate overuse of exclamation marks and a black-and-red alicorn with an "evil-colored" mane, by way of respective examples).  Things start to fall apart with the introduction of a pair of singing villains, however.

Simply put, the (relatively) lengthy song sequences were too slow and too dull for the story.  Likewise, there are a few jokes in the latter part of the story which, rather than being delivered rapid-fire, are stretched out or repeated in ways which slow the pacing of the story.  By the middle of the story, it's easy for a reader to start skimming ahead.

For the most part, the writing quality is of the "deliberately over-exuberant" variety, and has a well-executed parodic style.  There are some regular punctuation problems, however, and occasional slip-ups with tense or word selection which are obviously not intentional.  That said, the story is entirely readable, and there is some genuinely clever language scattered throughout.

Star rating:  ★★☆☆☆ (what does this mean?)

Although there was plenty of comedy, poor pacing in the latter part of the story was a problem.  That's a major issue when one's story is literally nothing but a precariously connected series of setting, character, and linguistic gags, as random/comedies typically are.  That said, there are some very funny bits to this story, and the fact that the author never once had the characters break the fourth wall sets this above the majority of such stories by itself.

Recommendation:  Anyone looking for something quick and entertaining to read could do far worse; this is a ten-minute story that will probably get a few chuckles out of anyone willing to give it a chance.  But in the end, it's not much more than that.

Next time:  My Little Alicorn, by InsertAuthorHere