You strike a very nice tone in this piece; it's very sad, and one can feel the depth of Snape's lonliness. You have also put together fairly elegant prose, although the sentence construction gets a bit convoluted. However, this works well when it's Snape's thoughts we're hearing, since we expect him to be very eloquent. However, he also sounds too melodramatic sometimes, and the story has a few cliched phrases that could stand to be re-thought, e.g. Lucius threw me away like yesterday’s trash. Some of the emotional content of this story I didn't connect with. I think the reason is that Snape tells the reader everything that's going on. You did a good job of getting me to picture a lot of what he'd been through, but some things - like the hurt that Snape felt at Lucius' hands - I just couldn't see. The story hadn't made it clear how much feeling he had for Lucius. Sentences like I became obsessed with that man don't actually carry much emotional weight, because you are "telling" the reader something, rather than "showing" them. It would be much more effective to describe in some detail how Snape remembers himself acting around Lucius, and then let the reader figure out from that just how obsessed he was. Also, why is Lucius only being brought to trial now, if he's been in Azkaban for five years? It's plausible, given what Scrimgeour was like regarding Stan Shunpike in HBP, but you should sneak some explanation in there, or it just seems like a continuity error. All in all, however, I really did enjoy this piece of work - I'm a terrible angst-hound. :-D I liked the way you had Lucius being untouchable even when he's desperate to be touched, and I liked how Snape is also desperate to be touched, but finds he can't when there's no connection between himself and Lucius. It is a really good little story!
Author's Response: Thanks for this detailed review! Now this is very helpful regarding my future writing! I'll try to especially remember what you said about the clichéd sentences and showing instead of telling, but to my defense I should say that English is NOT my first language. I know I still have to work on it, and I try, but I guess it'll never come out the way I want it to. But I'm definitely going to pay more attention to the things you mentioned. That thing about these five years - I wanted to write something else all together, but changed plans then, and I guess I just didn't see that remaining mistake. Thank you for catching it! And again, many many thanks for this review!!! |