Title: Harry Potter and the Primes of Merlin
Author: ZenoNoKyuubi
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure
DLP Category: General would probably be best
Pairing: Harry/OC (minor to the story but he eventually ends up with a veela)
Status: Complete
Summary: Merlin, on his deathbed, split his magic, and prophesized that nine people of his choosing would be given a piece of it. They would be the Primes of Merlin, and the Ninth of them was prophesized to be the strongest, inheriting the most of Merlin's magic.

Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7139183


This is a completed 198k word story posted on FFN over a ten day period. It is likely to be more of an acquired taste in this crowd. Some DLPers will like it and others will hate it.

To be completely honest, I almost didn't read this story because of the name and summary. There are a few detractions including a narrator that I found fairly annoying towards the beginning of the story but less so as the story progressed.

The story starts out at the beginning of 4th year and goes all the way through 7th year and the end of the dark lord. It follows along canon but slowly diverges in interesting ways. This Harry isn't a DLP Harry. He kicks arse but avoids being lethal.


Having said all of that, it held my interest and by the end I had grown to enjoy the story. I would give it a 3.5 or 4 star. At the least, recycle worthy.

 

But nine isn't a prime.

Or, wait... maybe the power was split... uh... 78 ways, and the ninth got 19/78ths of the power?

 

That was my first thought, too. Nine not being prime, heh.

With that being said, it... sounds like a cliched, very horrible story, from the title and summary alone - but I can't precisely pass judgement just on that. Might have some free time today to check it out, since it at least has the potential to be something different.

 

Hmmm.....................


It's cliched as hell, uses magical cores, staffs, magical sensing, etc, etc, etc- and I'm only on chapter 4. I wouldn't be surprised if a magical animagus comes into the picture. Very big on the cliches...

I'm still reading it though. Technically speaking, it's not bad writing- I mean, it's not good but it doesn't rape your eyeballs and it's been a while since I read a "4th Year AU" story that didn't repeatedly violate my cranium. Good for the "Almost" thread but, at the moment, that's about it.

3/5


Edit: Oh god. Now he's on to wandless magic... that lowers it a point automtically

 

A total failure and I would give 0/5 if the scale allowed it.

What makes this so crappy aren't the bad cliches, Gary Stu nonsense or uninspired everything works out plot. It's cloning huge amounts of text from the books, insert your pimped up Harry and piling up plot holes like a bad jungle road because the changed character should have a real influence on the cloned canon plot. It's as if he never thought beyond the scenes he wanted to change.

 

My first impression was that it was a ripoff of Disney's new Sorcerer's Apprentice. Crap film, decent score.

And then I read the story, and realized I was right. :facepalm

1.5/5

 

Harry spent the months before Voldemort's canon resurrection breaking rules of magic and becoming bad ass in many different ways, yet guess what spells he uses when he's released from Tom Riddle Sr.'s tombstone?

That's right: Stupefy, Expelliarmus, and accio. How. Fucking. Original.

2/5 for decent writing, but no plot and numerous cliches.

 

I tried to read it. I really did. But I couldn't get past this part of the first author's note.

Yeah, just no.

 

Came in here expecting a Transformers crossover. Sadly disappointed.

 

Just the same old recycled crap running on ff.net...recycled.

1/5.

 

Being DLP doesn't mean Harry in a story has to be dark, it just means the story has to be good, which this isn't.

 

Thank you OP for this failtastic recommendation, I don't know what I would've done if I had missed this great work of... utter crap!

I read the first two chapters and that's enough to wish I could delete the last 20 minutes from my memory. The fic starts of with a boring info dump on the "awesomeness" that is Merlin and the introduction of a confusing and totally uninspired plot device that can be summed up as "time delayed magic cannibalism".

The meeting between Harry and Merlins "shade" (or whatever) is just another run-of-the-mill failure at writing an epic scene, peppered by random stupidities like this:

The AU change to Smart!Harry isn't made plausible by showing his inner dialogue or any discussions with his friends, but through telling the reader this:

The author doesn't even use his own cliched plot device to motivate Harry, no sense of wonder about being a chosen heir of Merlin, just bland Instant!Ravenclaw Harry. *Yawn*

I could go on with an in depth critique of the less than stellar technical writing (grammar problems, many jarring word repetitions) but that's not necessary because "ZenoNoKyuubi" condemns his own abilities as an author by his utter laziness:

Don't hate you? Too late, you slothful bastard! I hope you contract a venereal disease so that your fingers are occupied by constant scratching instead of mindless c&p!!!

How the OP (who is most likely identical with "ZenoNoKyuubi") could think that members of DLP would be interested in reading a potpourri of 8th grade writing and page long rip offs from GoF is beyond me. The author is so stupid and indifferent that he doesn't even notice when his copy and paste orgy disrupts the continuity of his own "story", as can be observed in chapter 2, where the whole scene of Hedwigs return from Sirius is inserted at random- a rather big surprise for any reader who doesn't know GoF by heart and has thereby forgotten that Harry wrote a letter to his godfather before "Harry Potter and the Primes of Merlin" even started. Obviously, it would've been too much bother for the "author" to remind his audience of this fact beforehand.

I'll stop here, this heap of rubbish masquerading as a fanfic isn't worth more of my time. 1/5 for knowing how to c&p.

 

Anytime Merlin is brought up in any way other than "Merlin's beard," failure is imminent.

 

I hate it when people take a terrible story and preface a recommendation by saying "It's not a DLP story". They simultaneously get to demean DLP while making the story more than it is. They make DLP the intolerant, close-minded site it used to be, so if they get rejected they can say that it's DLPs problem, not theirs. They hope for a reverse psychology effect like DLP wanting to prove itself to be open-minded and accepting the fic, but it never works.

How can it work when we have this to work with?

After a bland couple of paragraphs about exposition, that's how the plot kicks off. Very strong beginning, isn't it.

He randomly meets Merlin outside of a convenience store, whose consciousness manifests and proceeds to give Harry a wake-up call. It's so audaciously and unapologetically contrived that the author could probably carry some readers through this story with that sheer lack of creativity alone.

Author tries to be funny by using self-aware, but fails. About 8 people, the OP among them, think that this is clever and ingenious.

He's trying to do the Disney narrator thing, you see it? When I realized what was happening, I decided to give this a 1/5 instead of a 0/5 because that's pretty cool. Nice.

At the very least, the writing has to be secure enough that weird speech patterns, loose tangents, and unnatural repetitions aren't infecting the character dialogue.

I skipped ahead a few chapters and now I know why the author could shit out 200,000 words successfully - canon retreading.

Mindless exposition, exposition, contrivance, contrivance, exposition, one goddamn retarded concept after another.

No good. 1/5. If you like this, unacquire your tastes as soon as possible.

 

I read it a few days ago. It's not library worthy but it is a half-decent time-waster.

2 stars because I read the whole story.

The story needed: more conflict, more conflict, more conflict.

Spoiler

When Harry revealed that he was the ninth prime *and* that Voldemort was eighth prime but didn't have the powers because, well, it was a power he knew not to Dumbledore, I halfway expected Voldemort to find out somehow. Sadly that didn't happen. It'd been cool to see a great battle scene, not that I was expecting one. It'd been nice though.