This was much more enjoyable than I thought it would be. The wands and spells and things are a little WTF, but the Marauders in canon doing the animagus transformation at a similar age along with their original work on the map is sort of above and beyond what you'd expect watching Harry's generation too.

I'm actually feeling that Buffy is going to be central to the main plotline after OotP, since from what I can tell she was called near the start of HBP and ended up in Sunnydale about midway through. Also, the way that Willow wasn't summarily chucked out the nearest airlock bodes well for Buffy's inclusion.

As for how useful she'll be, the Slayer package could be represented as more of the sort of high-end upgrade that you see in most of Dreamsmith's stuff, with pretty excessive speed and sensory boosts as well as the more usual impressive strength. In that case, even a competent wizard can have a hard time in remotely close quarters with only human reaction times.

The grammar is twitchy and edges of Xander and Wednesday sueness show through, but in spite of that it's solidly deserving of a 4/5.

 

Figured I'd drop this little bit of info in here, as Tenhawk has commented on the expected size of the story.

He's answering a question about continuing the Journeyverse.

Looks like this one's planned to be huge, as in Journeyverse huge. Oh, and the next chapter's up. Not really a review, but it answers a question some of us have had.

 

I thought the end of the last chapter captured the real feel of the addams family.

 

Thats good to read actually, thanks for that Peaslums.

I just hope the updates get a bit faster, if it's gonna be JV size.

 

New updates are good updates.

Oddly enough, I'm not too concerned about the fact that this story is likely to be never completed. I'm simply enjoying the ride. Hell, the line about Gringotts still being unable to find their Berlin branch due to Grindelwald just made me smile with possibilities.

 

4/5
I really want to read the first meeting between Giles and Xander..... and maybe Wednesday and Angel that would be fun as well.

Sadly most of the interesting things in BtVS happen during the year.... would be fun to the Eathen's Halloween magic interact with a Magical Xander, Sirius and Wednesday.

I don't give it a 5/5 because sometimes Xander seems to be too good at what he's doing....

 

Other than the Wandererverse ( http://www.wandererverse.com/ ), which was the fanfiction universe the Journeyverse was modelled on. Tenhawk was one of the authors who contributed to this Universe so for anyone who's interesed here's a couple more stories from Tenhawk:
http://www.wandererverse.com/Stories/RoadTrip-Solo.htm
http://www.wandererverse.com/Stories/RoadTrip-Duet.htm

IMPORTANT NOTE: For anyone who's new to the Wandererverse, it is recommended you start on this page ( http://www.wandererverse.com/Stories/main.htm ). The Wandererverse is a real mess with contributions made by many different authors, the link above takes you to the page which contains only the main stories.

Furthermore, the first story you should read is 'New Beginnings' which was written by the Universe's original author... who sadly died of pneumonia a few years ago. Then just work your way down the list. 'Calling out the Clan' is probably the best the series has to offer, the fact that it has the A-Team is just one of the reasons why.

 

This fic was horrible. I got 2/3rds through the first chapter and I had to put it down. I like BtVS fics. I even like well-written Xander-centric fics. Shadow Council is not well-written; it's one cringe inducing moment after another.

Xander is ridiculously OOC and is far too aware for an 11 year old. He's an obvious Mary Sue. Xander could have been okay as a wish-fulfillment character, but he's so overtly favoured by the author that he just becomes annoying. The most obvious example is that Xander almost seems to have adopted an unconscious awareness of the story and the characters from the author. He seems to know who the good guys and bad guys are at first meet and always makes the right decision the first time he meets them. For example, instantly liking the monstrous half-giant Hagrid, and the not-as-disturbing-and-off-putting-as-she-should-be Wednesday Addams. He instantly dislikes Malfoy after the author awkwardly contrived for Xander to happen upon the canon confrontation between Draco, Crabbe, Goyle, and Harry and Ron aboard the Hogwarts Express.

Wednesday Addams is so forcibly ostracized by the wizarding community and Ravenclaw that she seems pushed to accept Xander's friendship just so that she's not completely alone and isolated. It's a pitifully poor method of forcing a relationship between the two on the author's part. Wednesday deserves better.

The interactions between characters seem forced. Actually, all of the characters are written poorly.

The author's writing ability is sub-par. It's not just his grammar, dialogue, and characterisation, but also using < > symbols to indicate a character's thoughts. <This kind of amateur-hour writing technique is ridiculous in a supposedly library-worthy fic>.

I saw some comments in this thread about Shadow Council being better than expected, highly entertaining, worthy of being in the library, excellent characterisation, et al. None of these things are true. It's a shit fic and you all should know better.

 

So glad you can understand the entirety of a so far 96 chapter story from the first two-thirds of the first chapter. Now will you kindly get the fuck out while I enjoy this story.

 

After reading a thread full of uncritical support for this story and then being utterly disappointed at the typical Mary Sue rubbish to be found within, I had to speak up. There needs to be at least one dissenting opinion in here so that other DLPers won't get their hopes up as high as I did.

Reading one chapter is usually all it takes to work out whether a fic is going to be crap or not.

Ordinarily I might consider that it's just the first chapter which is rough and the story improves later on, but this is Tenhawk we're talking about. I last read some of Tenhawk's work about 10 years ago before dropping it for something, anything, better. I went into Shadow Council with the full expectation that after 10 years of honing his craft he'd have improved remarkably. Sadly, I can't see any improvement at all. His awkward self-insert writing seems just as bad to me now as it was to me 10 years ago.

If he hasn't improved in 10 years, then I don't think another 95 chapters of the same drivel is going to help this fic any.

Maybe there's a finely crafted plot underneath the rough exterior, but I'm never going to be able to stomach the bad characters, dialogue, mary-sues, and grammar long enough to see it.

 

It is a Xander-Sue, but has its moments too. Sometimes I find I'm just in the mood for a likable Knowledge-is-Power-esque protagonist. While there are early world-integration wrinkles with slamming the three universes together, they do smooth out in time. The story does have quite a few interesting ideas and a relatively fast update rate, so it has that going for it.

Shadow Council isn't the be-all-and-end-all of fanfiction, but it is enjoyable enough when I'm in the mood. I don't think it's entirely misplaced being in the Library. I rank it among my less guilty of guilty pleasures and rated it a 3/5.

 

Also anyone else read the AU that Tenhawk wrote for this story? The Journey of Shadow Council begins.

 

Yeap, been reading it. It's interesting, not too bad really, but in all honesty, i'd rather have heaps of SC.

 

I'd like to see some of the Journeyverse stories finished off myself.

 

Just to stick my own 10 cents in, I agree wholeheartedly with Yak, this is just painfully rubbish. I love Buffy and HP crossovers, which appeared to be the central premise, but like so much of Tenhawk's work he was unable to resist filling it with more unnecessary characters like a sewer pipe leaking shit.

What's amazing is how he manages to add in so many characters and possibilities and yet make it so unrelentingly mercilessly dull. This may not be a popular opinion amongst the majority of those who have managed to read this fic, but it is definitely not DLP library worthy.

Of course this will likely always be a minority opinion amongst those here who've read it as its hard to find someone who'll make it past the first few chapters, let alone someone who bravely forges on past chapter 10 or so desperately hoping it will become good. I abandoned all hope despite the bizarrely glowing reviews around chapter 40, fictional man in the sky preserve my soul.

So anyway, this is pretty shit. I gave it a 1/5, and hope more people don't click on it whilst bored and looking for something to tide them over.

 

So the second chapter of the AU is up. It's pretty decent so far.

 

Are you a member of the yahoo group?

You get partial chapter updates really consitently. I'd check it out if I was you.

 

I find it difficult to read parts of chapters. So I'd rather wait. In fact the only partial chapters that I can read are from Syaoran's Fictional and nuhuh's Stalking Blood Sack.

 

Does anyone have a PDF of the chapters 113-185? They have been stripped from the Yahoo group, and I only have the first half. I remember reading the rest at one point, but can't find it anywhere. The author's website and yahoo group are both gone.

 

@Midnighter13 : Hope this helps.
https://caerazkaban.groups.io/g/mai...,0,0::recentpostdate/sticky,,,20,2,0,74044291