Ancient's Smashing Reviews

Hi, It's James. James Potter by @Lotta1225

Before we get down into the review, lets see what we have to work with. This is a fanfiction of Harer Potty, specifically of his son who is apparently named James. I have mixed feelings of this from the start because I am a fan of fanfiction, having spent a decade and nearly 2 million words writing on fanfiction -dot- net and reading hundreds of fanfictions across multiple fandoms. However, the only one I avoided like the plague was Harer Potty. I read the first couple, saw the first and last movies, and overall found it remarkably average compared to other stories I have read that don't have its popularity. 

So with this being a fanfiction of Harer Potty, there are a few things to know going in. 1. It will not be sellable for money no matter how much work is put in, only made for pleasure on the author's part and to share a fandom the author loves. So I will be taking it less seriously. 2. The story will need to be able to stand on its own weight, providing necessary information on its own without outside sources being required.

Also the author is German and not a native English speaker.

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TLDR; A quaint little fanfiction of Harer Potty.

Main Character - There is no main character - Making the main character distinct from the rest of the cast was the first problem. I knew James was, because that was the name of the story, but there was nothing else signaling to me he is any more important to the narrative than anyone else. Especially with us being thrown 10+ characters very quickly, most of whom don't go away. In addition, a main character needs a primary flaw to work through on a journey or needs to have a truth to present to a flaw'd world by which to heal a bit of the world. It is a bit like comparing Iron Man to Captain America in another way. James Potty seemingly had neither, if only because he was too normal. Quite literally too normal for what I was given. I got the sense his father was supposed to be extremely important, politically powerful, and a bit of a celebrity potentially, but this was never utilized. Instead Super-Famous-Rich-Father is as normal as the 9-to-5 every day joes struggling to make it pay check to pay check and his kids are your every day brats. This was cute for the slice-of-life aspects, but I got the sense the story was specifically aiming for a hero journey without even knowing what that is or how to begin.

Side Characters - oh mama! - There is a lot of side characters. It was precisely what I dreaded. There were a lot and you had basically no warning labels on any of them explaining their signifiance or what they were doing here. There is an obvious expectation that the readers need to have read, if not completely memorized, the Harer Potty series. We do get a sentence or two for most of them to get a slight idea who they are, but this is basically nothing. The pacing of introducing the characters was overwhelming to say the least. Normally a story, when it expects readers to go in blind, will give you time and pacing to get to know the roles and attributes and personality of characters a few at a time. This fanfiction falls into the very normal fanfiction trap of not doing that. This is a problem, as I mentioned above before starting the story, because then the story cannot be evaluated on its own weight because it cannot exist unto itself. You have to do reading outside of the story to be able to understand the story. This is less problematic for a series after book 1, but is crucial for fanfiction, stand-alone novels, and the beginning of a series. I will get a bit more into this later.

Grammar - Not native-English Speaker - I knew going into the story that the author was German and English was not his or her native language. To my pleasure it was still easy to read. The words are technically correct, so the author has learned a lot of English and is doing quite well. At this point the problem with the grammar is more advanced into the way that germanic languages and English differs in our way of thinking. Words in german are usually divided into masculine and feminine types, while English is more past, present, and future tenses. This way of thinking was evident in the story as the verb tenses were pretty random but were phrased in ways very common by non-native English speakers who haven't grown up with thinking of words in past, present, and future tenses. I am quite proud of the author doing so well at the basics that now the problems are mostly more advanced.