Fandom Classics Part 65: A Dream of Dawn

To read the story, click the image or follow this link

I'm part of a CSA with a local farm this year; if you're unfamiliar with the premise, you basically pay a lump sum to a local farmer at the start of the year, and then every week you get a box full of whatever they're growing that's harvest-ready that day.  It's been fun and has rather drastically increased the amount of veggies in my diet (when your box has five different kinds of leafy greens, you end eating a lot of salads and sautees), so I guess if you're the kind of person who can handle that level of "healthy eating" (I put it in quotes because I tend to do things like cover my salads with bacon) and live near a farm that does it, I would recommend it based on my experience.

Click below the break to read my review of Starsong's A Dream of Dawn.

Impressions before reading:  An AU tag always frightens me a bit, but the premise certainly has potential: Nightmare Moon beats the Elements, but is then defeated by Discord shortly thereafter.  I'm going to guess going in that how well Discord is characterized is going to be what makes or breaks this fic; if he's bland or just plain generic, this could go south fast.  But, if Starsong can make him chaotic and conniving while still growing him as a character and unlikely hero, there's a lot of promise.

Zero-ish spoiler summary:  In an Equestria where Nightmare Moon defeated Twilight and her friends, and where Celestia never reappeared, the massive amounts of disharmony free Discord early, and after defeating the Nightmare he discovers that he's Equestria's savior.  But Celestia's still missing, and together he and Twilight plan to find her.

Thoughts after reading:  I'll start by saying that I think this is a great example of what an AU story should be: make one significant change to canon (in-show or just implied), then extrapolate and explore the ramifications.  So, idea-wise, I have no problem with the setup.  Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of other positive things to say about this fic.

The writing is a letdown on multiple fronts.  Misused or (unintentionally) irregular words are not uncommon, and the best way to describe the narration is "dutifully telly," stolidly informing the reader of the focus character's thoughts time and again, sometimes in almost excruciating detail.  Dialogue, meanwhile, suffered a number of problems, from a frequent absence of contractions (making characters like Dash sound stiffly formal, albeit only in places) to overwritten accents (again, perhaps more noticeable because it seems to come and go) to a really awful Zecorah ("You seem to have a way with fauna... but you don't have to explain if you don't wanna").

Characterization is a little harder to judge in broad strokes, because it varies so much over the course of the fic.  Sometimes, this is unambiguously unfortunate (Applejack is the designated doubting Thomas throughout the fic, to the point where her opinion of other characters seems to change more than once simply so that she can express disapproval of whomever happens to be in charge at the moment), but more often it's that there's a mix of good and bad.  Discord, for example, displays all of his trademark whimsy at times... but the story can't seem to decide whether the primary conflict he must overcome in order to be a good ruler is empathy, evilness, or just an inherent bent towards disorder.  While it's true that all three of these traits can exist within the same character, the effect here is that in some places Discord seems to be an attention-hungry villain who's playing nice because he loves attention (slightly) more than inflicting evil on the world, while in others he appears to be genuinely interested in doing the right thing but near-incapable of identifying what that is.

The plot was the saving grace of this story.  Although it takes a while for what I would call the "adventure" part of this story to kick in, that wait wasn't unwarranted, and the ponies' quest to find Celestia (and what happens thereafter) are regularly interesting, and show that some thought has been put into how Equestria would be different in a world subjected to temporary eternal night (my new favorite phrase) and sans its most stable ruler.  The wide-ranging quest(s) touches on myriad races and characters, many from canon, and is almost always interesting in how it extrapolates what could have been.

Star rating:  

  ★☆☆☆☆

I don't have any trouble seeing the appeal of this story: it's a clever take on a tired trope--what if Nightmare Moon won? was done to death within a month of the premier, and yet this story manages to feel fresh and original in how it uses and builds on that idea.  But the inconsistent characterizations and writing issues (along with the occasional odd extrapolation; although I've seen it in other fics, I've never really bought into the idea of Fluttershy as an animal-dominating wilderness "warrior") are telling me that this is more "good concept" than "good story."

Recommendation:  This is worth reading if you're mostly in a fic for the ideas it sells, and for the way it builds and expands upon its premise.  But readers interested a story that has more to offer than that won't find it here.

Next time:  On the Importance of Spelling, by Softly8088