First, a notice: for unexpected, personal reasons, there will be no post on Friday. I'll either resume normal posting on Monday, or put up another notice before then, depending on the circumstances.
I had a few mini-reviews already typed up, though, so I'm going to go ahead and post them. Below the break, as usual.
A Hiccup in Time, by Pascoite
Zero-ish spoiler summary: Twilight's figured out how to effectively use her time-travel spell, so long as she doesn't go back too far. Unfortunately, temporal magic and hiccups turn out not to mix...
A few thoughts: By far, my favorite thing about this story is the fact that the various incarnations of Twilight, and their interactions, hang together if you think about them enough (or, more likely, too much). Without delving into the details, Twilight meets herself a lot, and while this technically isn't a time-loop story (the past is fluid rather than fixed despite her interacting with her "past" selves, so it's more of a time baklava, really), you can track the actions of the Twis who've been through x number of times and figured out y, z, and h, and they all make sense from "her" perspective. The story itself has some nicely comic moments, but is mostly an excuse to create a Gordian Knot and then unravel it... but excuse plots are nothing new in short-storydom (see: Asimov, Issac), and the excuse here is more than enjoyable enough to justify reading.
Recommendation: This is definitely one to check out if you're into logic puzzles with a bit of fiction wrapped around them, or if you like time play in general.
Glimmerhorn Vale, by Abalidoth
Zero-ish spoiler summary: Twilight meets with her personal student in a special place, to teach her a bit about the nature of Unicorn magic--and for ulterior purposes, as well.
Thoughts after reading: This story was a real disappointment for me, because through the first half or so, there's a lot of potential for interesting worldbuilding (lest the "student" thing give you the wrong idea, this story was written long before Twi's alicornification), and I was looking forward to finding out more about that side of the story. Unfortunately, the story doesn't really resolve any of its worldbuilding in a satisfying way; the questions left are more frustrating than conducive to immersive sub-creation. Also, I was really hoping this wasn't going to turn into second-act shipping... and it did. Not aggressively in-your-face illogical shipping, granted, but "why is this even here?" is only a short step up from that.
Recommendation: People who aren't put off by pointless shipping may be able to enjoy the first act for the great setup without finding the ending to be too much of a letdown, but I'd still have trouble recommending this to most readers.
The Collected Poems of Maud Pie, by Titanium Dragon
Zero-ish spoiler summary: The title on this one is pretty self-explanatory: twenty of Maud's rock-themed poems.
Thoughts after reading: I absolutely loved this collection. A collection of Maud poems could easily turn into an extended one-note joke, but the author here doesn't fall into that trap. The collection opens with pieces which play to that single joke, before branching out into new and unexpected avenues--from the comically surprising author's note in Soil to the surprisingly serious Farming Rocks. There are a lot of pleasant surprises in this collection--and with most of the poems coming in at only a few dozen words, they make great bite-sized bits of fiction.
Recommendation: With quick-turnaround stories like this, I always wonder about staying power; will this collection still resonate with FIM fans in a month? In a year? For now, though, as we sit less than a week out from the episode in question, I'm comfortable saying that this is likely to be an enjoyable expansion for anyone who enjoyed the show's poem gag.
I didn't like Glimmerhorn Vale either, for what it's worth.
ReplyDeleteinb4 pointless shipping's redundant
ReplyDeleteRead (and loved!) A Hiccup in Time. I'll add Collected Poems to the queue
Because I'm the guy:
ReplyDeleteWho talks about how some things are like other things, I'll point readers back to my all-time favorite "multiplying time traveller" story, "The Seventh Voyage of Ijon Tichy" by Stanislaw Lem, originally published in Polish in 1957 and then in English translation in 1976. :)
Mike
Only when our adventurer was a child was he wise enough to be a friend to himself. The shenanigans were hilarious but they only happened because this guy was stupid enough to be a complete jerk.
DeleteEhhhhh... Okay, fine. I'll read the poems one. I'm not that big on poetry, but if it's really that short, it's hardly going to be a massive waste of my time if I decide I didn't like it.
ReplyDeleteWell... shit. That was actually really good.
DeleteI was trying to figure out where these views were coming from, when I never made the feature box!
ReplyDeleteApparently the answer is "Reddit, some people in Czechoslovakia, Googling for Maud Pie poems, Facebook..." and here.
I'm glad you enjoyed the poems. I had a lot of fun writing them, and I'm glad to hear some of your other readers enjoyed them as well.
Checking your referrals regularly can be a magical experience. You'd be surprised what can turn up in those. A fic you wrote could have a dramatic reading on YouTube or a piece of fan art on some guy's tumblr that you never even knew about. It's rare, but it happens.
Delete...Fanart the artist stopped halfway through and will never finish. ;_;
DeleteHooray for Czechoslovakia! Which hasn't existed since 1993!
Wait, really?! How am I that behind on world events? I was only five when that happened! Next you're gonna tell me the Soviet Union no longer exists, or that the Jews have their own nation
DeleteTrue. It is the Czech Republic these days, and has been for two decades.
DeleteI suppose part of the reason is that Czech and Slovakian are dialects of the same language (though the Czechs and Slovaks will deny it vociferously) so I still think of it as the same, even though they aren't the same country anymore and haven't been for a long, long time.
The other problem is that Yugoslavia, which is right next door, broke up into like five different countries, and Slovenia and Slovakia look and sound rather similar.
Poor Czechs. No respect. And they even gave me like 30 views. DON'T WORRY CZECHS I AM NOT IMPUGNING YOUR SOVEREIGNTY JUST BEING A DORK.
HEY OATS, THERE'S ONLY ONE GERMANY NOW
DeleteI've read that the Slovak and Slovene embassies get together once a month to exchange missent mail.
Now who's behind the times? Austria's been fully independent for almost sixty years now
DeleteRubbish. Next you'll be telling me old Denmark-Norway's broken away from Sweden.
DeleteThey did, but I hear they've gotten back together since. On-again, off-again relationships like that are never healthy, though. They should really just see other nations
DeleteI neglected to thank you for the review, Chris, so I will rectify that now. This one was just a hoot to write, though I cannot claim to have invented the premise. That came from Uma, someone I greatly respect, but who hasn't been seen around the fandom in months now. It does play fast and loose with some things in service to that premise. For one, as a commenter pointed out and a number of others upvoted, the spell apparently can have only one use. While that seems like an odd thing to impose, and it's not necessarily meant in a sense that this story violates, I did not catch that detail during the episode, and will accede to readers who are certain that's the case. I also used a non-deterministic version of the spell; otherwise, like in the episode, Original Twilight would have seen all of herselves before casting the spell the first time. But sometimes, I'm willing to let go of the details for the sake of fun, and this was fun, at least for me. What's been almost as fun is watching the two arguments in the story comments. One's about whether this is a time loop or a time travel story, and the other (still ongoing as of a couple days ago) is about the difference between a book and a pamphlet. People are strange sometimes.
ReplyDelete